PRELUDES AND STUDIES.
 
 Preludes and St 
 
 MUSICAL THEMES 
 
 BY 
 
 W. J. HENDERSON 
 
 AUTHOR OF "TUB STOKV OF MUSIC " 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 91 and 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK 
 
 LONDON AND BOMBAY 
 
 1901
 
 Copyright, 1891, BV 
 W. J. HENDERSON 
 
 First Edition, October, 1891 
 
 Reprinted, October, 1S92, September, 1894 
 
 November. 1897, and March, 1901 
 
 T«ow mmcioit 
 
 WKTIHO «H0 lOOKBiNOINO CO«««lf 
 MW YORK
 
 Go 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND AND FELLOW LABORER 
 
 H. E. KREHBIEL 
 
 " To know what you prefer, instead of humbly saying ' Amen ' to 
 what the world tells you you ought to prefer, is to have kept your 
 soul alive."— Robert Louis Stevenson
 
 PREFATORY NOTE. 
 
 The " Study of ' Der Ring des Nibelungen ' " 
 now appears in its completed form for the first 
 time. Parts of it have been printed in the col- 
 umns of the New York Times, but much, if not 
 most, of it was written expressly for this vol- 
 ume. The articles under the general heading of 
 " Wagneriana " are republished from the Times. 
 My thanks are due to the editor and the pro- 
 prietor of that journal for liberty to treat these 
 essays as my personal property. The first and 
 second parts of the paper on " The Evolution 
 of Piano Music," are taken from lectures deliv- 
 ered before the students of the New York Col- 
 lege of Music. In its completed form this essay 
 is practically new, and the major portion of it 
 has not been in type before. The study of 
 Schumann's symphonic music was written for 
 
 this volume. 
 
 W. J. Henderson.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 / 
 
 
 A Study of "Der Ring des Nibelungen." fAGK 
 
 I. — The Story. . . , 3 
 
 II. — The Philosophy and the Humanity 34 
 
 III. — Some Objections to Leit-Motiven 50 
 
 IV. — Comments and Commentators 63 
 
 Wagnerian a. 
 
 I.— The Book of "Parsifal" 87 
 
 II.— A Study in "Tristan" 105 
 
 III. — The Endurance of Wagner's Works. 116 
 
 The Evolution of Piano Music. 
 
 I. — Laying the Foundations 125 
 
 II. — Development of the Technique 150 
 
 III. — The Modern Concerto 174 
 
 IV. — Some Living Players 185 
 
 Schumann and the Programme-symphony 203
 
 A STUDY OF "DER RING DES NI- 
 BELUNGEN."
 
 A STUDY OF "DER RING DES NI- 
 BELUNGEN." 
 
 I. — The Story. 
 
 Why is it that the Nibelungen music-dramas, 
 constructed on methods wholly opposed to those 
 with which generations of opera-goers are famil- 
 iar, often moving on planes of gloom and trag- 
 edy, offering none of the glitter and complex 
 movement of spectacular operas, frequently illus- 
 trated in music prolific in harshness and discord, 
 have taken such a hold on the public mind wher- 
 ever they have had a fair hearing ? 
 
 The answer is simple. They are great dra- 
 matic poems set to music. Wagner was, first, 
 last, and all the time, a lyric dramatist ; and 
 though this present epoch, still bearing in mind 
 the old-fashioned libretto, which had little or no 
 dramatic force and no poetic strength, insists 
 upon estimating the value of the man's work 
 chiefly by his scores, it can hardly be doubted
 
 4 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 that the future will award him a rank as a libret- 
 tist equal to that which he holds in music. The 
 prophet is not without honor in his own coun- 
 try. There his dramas are regarded as great 
 works. Elsewhere the exclamation of the anti- 
 Wagnerite continually is, " I do not like Wag- 
 ner's music." He seldom troubles himself to 
 express an opinion as to the libretto, though 
 the entire Wagnerian system rests upon the 
 proposition that the music must be subservient 
 to the book. Operas, such as " Euryanthe," 
 have succeeded by sheer force of musical ex- 
 cellence in spite of bad librettos ; but this does 
 not shake Wagner's position. It is possible to 
 have music without a libretto ; further than 
 that, it is possible to have music with a libretto 
 and nothing more, as in the cantata and oratorio. 
 But the moment we adopt the apparatus of the 
 theatre we assume the form of the drama, and 
 it is obvious that Wagner is right in asserting 
 that with the form we must take also the sub- 
 stance. That the lovers of the operatic stage 
 are generally falling into Wagner's way of think- 
 ing is indicated by the fact that the operas 
 which have attained or retained favor of late 
 years are those which have dramatic librettos. 
 " Aida," " Otello," " The Queen of Sheba," 
 may be mentioned among those which have
 
 THE STORY. 5 
 
 achieved success ; " Faust," " La Juive," " Les 
 Huguenots," among those which have kept it. 
 On the other hand, an operatic season which 
 relies for its attractiveness on " Lucia," " La 
 Traviata," and their kind, unless succored by 
 the factitious aid of some renowned singer, is 
 doomed to disaster. There is nothing in the 
 plays to interest the auditors, and in the present 
 state of public taste they will not sit through 
 three hours of inanity to hear three or four in- 
 spired numbers, unless those numbers are to be 
 delivered with matchless eloquence. 
 
 An art work must be viewed through its de- 
 sign. To enter upon the consideration of any 
 creation of the human mind with a pre-estab- 
 lished hostility to the plan on which it is con- 
 structed, is not only ungenerous, but unjust. 
 The primary postulate of the Wagner theory is 
 best expressed in Hamlet's words : " The play's 
 the thing." Let us then review the story of the 
 Nibelung's ring. 
 
 " From the womb of night and of death," says 
 Wagner, allowing his mystical fancy free play, 
 "there sprang a race who dwelt in Nibelheim 
 (Nebelheim, the place of mists), that is, in dim 
 subterranean chasms and caves. They were 
 called Nibelungen. Like worms in a dead body, 
 they swarmed in varying, reckless activity,
 
 6 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 through the entrails of the earth ; they wrought 
 in metals — heated and purified them. Among 
 them Alberich gained possession of the bright 
 and beautiful gold of the Rhine — the Rheingold 
 — drew it up out of the depths of the waters, 
 and made from it, with great and cunning art, a 
 ring, which gave him power over all his race, the 
 Nibelungen. Thus he became their master, and 
 forced them henceforth to labor for him alone, 
 and so collected the inestimable treasure of the 
 Nibelungen, the chief jewel of which was the 
 Tarnhelm (helmet), by means of which one 
 could assume any figure that he chose, and 
 which Alberich had compelled his own brother, 
 Regin, to forge for him. Thus equipped, Al- 
 berich strove for the mastery of the world and 
 all that was in it. The race of the giants — 
 the insolent, the mighty, the primeval race — 
 was disturbed in its savage ease ; its enormous 
 strength, its simple wit were not enough to con- 
 tend against Alberich's ambitious cunning. The 
 giants saw with apprehension how the Nibel- 
 ungen forged wondrous weapons, which, in the 
 hands of human heroes, should bring about the 
 ruin of the giant race. The race of the gods, 
 rapidly rising to omnipotence, made use of this 
 conflict. Wotan agreed with the giants that 
 they should build for the gods a castle, from
 
 THE STORY. 7 
 
 which they might order and rule the world in 
 safety, but after it was done the giants demanded 
 the treasure of the Nibelungen as their reward. 
 The great cunning of the gods succeeded in the 
 capture of Alberich, and he was compelled to 
 give the treasure as a ransom for his life. The 
 ring alone he sought to keep, but the gods, 
 knowing well that the secret of his power lay in 
 this, took the ring from him. Then he laid a 
 curse upon it, that it should prove the ruin of all 
 who should possess it. Wotan gave the treas- 
 ure to the giants, but the ring he kept to insure 
 his own omnipotence. The giants, however, 
 forced it from him by their threats, and Wo- 
 tan yielded at the advice of the three Fates 
 (Nornen), who warned him of the approaching 
 downfall of the gods." 
 
 This is Wagner's own picturesque version of 
 that part of the Nibelungen story on which the 
 whole of his tetralogy is based. Let us go back 
 to the great original source of this tale. In 
 the translation of the Volsunga Saga, made by 
 Eirikr Magnusson and the poet, William Morris, 
 Regin, son of Hreidmar, and foster-father of 
 Sigurd (Siegfried), tells the youth his story. He 
 was one of three brothers, the other two being 
 Fafnirand Otter. Regin himself was a cunning 
 smith. Otter was a fisherman who lay on the
 
 8 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 river bank disguised in an otter skin. Fafnir 
 was of the three " the greatest and grimmest.'' 
 " Now," says Regin, " there was a dwarf called 
 Andivari [Alberich], who ever abode in that 
 force [waterfall, from the Icelandic fori] which 
 was called Andivari's force, in the likeness of 
 a pike, and got meat for himself, for many 
 fish there were in the force. Now, Otter, my 
 brother, was ever wont to enter into the force and 
 bring fish a-land, and lay them one by one on 
 the bank. And so it befell that Odin, Loki, and 
 Hoenir, as they went their ways, came to Andi- 
 vari's force, and Otter had taken a salmon and 
 ate it slumbering upon the river bank. Then 
 Loki took a stone and cast it at Otter, so that he 
 got his death thereby. The gods were well con- 
 tent with their prey and fell to flaying off the 
 otter's skin. And in the evening they came to 
 Hreidmar's house and showed him what they 
 had taken ; thereon he laid hands on them and 
 doomed them to such ransom, as that they 
 should fill the otter skin with gold, and cover it 
 over with red gold. So they sent Loki to gather 
 gold together for them. He came to Ran [God- 
 dess of the Sea] and got her net, and went forth- 
 with to Andivari's force, and cast the net before 
 the pike, and the pike ran into the net and was 
 taken. Then said Loki :
 
 THE STORY. 9 
 
 " ' What fish of all fishes 
 
 Swims strong in the flood, 
 But hath learnt little wit to beware ? 
 
 Thine head must thou buy 
 
 From abiding in hell, 
 And find me the wan waters' flame.' 
 
 " He answered : 
 
 " ' Andivari folk call me, 
 
 Call Oinn my father, 
 Over many a force have I fared ; 
 
 For a Norn of ill luck 
 
 This life on me lay 
 Through wet ways ever to wade.' 
 
 " So Loki beheld the gold of Andivari, and 
 when he had given up the gold he had but one 
 ring left and that also Loki took from him ; 
 then the dwarf went into a hollow of the rocks 
 and cried out that the gold ring, yea, and all of 
 the gold withal, should be the bane of every 
 man who should own it thereafter. 
 
 " Now the gods rode with the treasure to 
 Hreidmar, and fulfilled the otter skin and set 
 it on its feet, and they must cover it utterly 
 with gold ; but when this was done then Hreid- 
 mar came forth and beheld yet one of the muzzle 
 hairs and bade them cover that withal. Then 
 Odin drew the ring, Andivari's loom, from his
 
 10 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 hand and covered up the hair therewith. Then 
 sang Loki : 
 
 " ' Gold enow, gold enow, 
 
 A great weregild, thou hast, 
 That my head in good hap I may hold ; 
 
 But thou and thy son 
 
 Are naught fated to thrive ; 
 The bane shall it be of you both.' 
 
 " Thereafter," says Regin, " Fafnir slew his 
 father and murdered him, nor got I aught of 
 the treasure. And so evil he grew that he fell 
 to lying abroad, and begrudged any share in the 
 wealth to any man, and so became the worst of 
 all worms, and even now lies brooding upon 
 that treasure ; but for me, I went to the King 
 and became his master-smith ; and thus is the 
 tale told of how I lost the heritage of my father 
 and the weregild for my brother." 
 
 Then Sigurd bids Regin, whom the reader 
 will readily identify with Mime, to weld him a 
 sword that he may do great deeds therewith. 
 To which Regin replies : 
 
 " Trust me well herein ; and with that same 
 sword shalt thou slay Fafnir." 
 
 This story, as well as the others employed to 
 form a ground-work for the Nibelungen Tetral- 
 ogy, Wagner has modified to suit his own pur-
 
 THE STORY. II 
 
 poses, but without changing the ethical condi- 
 tions lea ^ 3Tng^tot he " Gotterdamm erung ," or 
 final decline of the gods. The rising of the cur- 
 tain in " Das Rheingold " reveals the depths of 
 the Rhine, with the three Rhine daughters, 
 Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Flosshilde, sporting 
 in their native element. Alberich, the dwarf, 
 the Andivari of the Volsunga Saga, ascends for 
 the first time from the nether gloom of Nibel- 
 heim, and, though a subterranean personage, 
 has no trouble whatever in breathing and speak- 
 ing in the watery waste. He is infatuated with 
 the beauty of the maidens and seeks to capture 
 one of them. They elude him with taunts and 
 gibes, which inflame him to fury. He reviles 
 them bitterly. Suddenly a glow breaks through 
 the waters. " Look, sisters," cries Woglinde, 
 " the wakener laughs in the deep." The sisters 
 greet the flaming treasure, for this is the glow of 
 the wondrous Rhinegold, and shout together : 
 
 Rheingold ! Rheingold ! Leuchtende Lust ! 
 Wie lachst du so hell und hehr. 
 
 Which is, being interpreted, " Rhinegold ! glit- 
 tering joy ! How laughest thou, so bright and 
 holy." Alberich, astonished by the glow, asks 
 what causes it. The maidens inquire where in 
 the world he came from that he never heard of
 
 12 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 the Rhinegold, and they proceed to expatiate on 
 its beauties and its power. Tppy tell him that 
 he shall be mightiest of all living who can fash- 
 ion a ring_from this gold, but they add that only 
 one who renounces love forever can accomplish 
 this. Alberich, after a minute's meditation, 
 shouts7~" Hear me, ye floods ! Love I renounce 
 forever." Seizing the gold, he disappears in the 
 depths below. The maidens dive, wailing, into 
 the deeper waters, and the scene changes. 
 
 In the background is Walhalla, the new castle 
 built for the gods by the giants. Fricka, the 
 Goddess of Marriage, lies asleep by the side of 
 her spouse, Wotan. Between them and the 
 castle lies the valley of the Rhine. Wotan 
 awakes and salutes the new castle. Fricka re- 
 minds him that he has promised the giants 
 Freia, her sister, the Goddess of Eternal Youth, 
 as the reward of their labors. Wotan frankly 
 admits that he never had any idea of giving her 
 up. She now appears, demanding protection, 
 being closely pursued by the giants, Fafner and 
 Fasolt. Wotan tells them to seek other guer- 
 don, as he will not give up Freia. Fasolt re- 
 minds Wotan of the fact that it is dangerous 
 for him to break a contract. " What thou art," 
 he says, " art thou only by treaties conformable, 
 well defined as thy might." The giants insist
 
 THE STORY. 1 3 
 
 on their reward. Froh and Donner, the broth- 
 ers of Freia, interpose and threaten violence. 
 Finally Wotan admits that he is forced to keep 
 his contract, but his spirits rise when he be- 
 holds Loge, or Loki, approaching. Loge is the 
 cunning counsellor of the gods, who is in his 
 heart plotting for their downfall. He has been 
 searching for some substitute to offer the giants 
 instead of Freia. He finally tells the story 
 of Alberich's theft of the gold, and says he 
 has promised the Rhine daughters to speak 
 to Wotan about the outrage. The giants are 
 alarmed at this additional power gained by their 
 natural enemies, the dwarfs, and Loge increases 
 their fears, as well as excites the ambition of 
 Wotan, by describing the wonderful power of 
 the Ring of the Nibelungen. The giants de- 
 clare that they will accept the Rhinegold instead 
 of Freia, and carry her off to be held as hostage 
 till Wotan shall have decided. 
 
 Loge and Wotan descend through the cavern- 
 ous passage to Nibelheim. The scene changes 
 and the caves of the earth are revealed. Alberich 
 enters dragging Mime. The latter has just 
 made the wonderful tarn helm which enables 
 the wearer to become invisible or assume any 
 shape. Alberich takes the tarn helm away 
 from Mime and disappears in a column of smoke
 
 14 " DEN RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 after beating his unhappy brother. Wotan and 
 Loge arrive, and Mime tells them of Alberich's 
 power. The latter returns, driving his Nibel- 
 ung slaves before him. He tells Wotan and 
 Loge that he will master the whole world, and 
 that even the gods will become his subjects. 
 Loge induces Alberich to give an exhibition of 
 the tarn helmet's powers. The dwarf changes 
 himself to a serpent, and then to a toad. When 
 he has accomplished the second transformation 
 Loge sets his foot on him, while Wotan seizes 
 the helmet. They bind Alberich and drag him 
 away. 
 
 The scene of action is once more the plain 
 before Walhalla. The two gods appear drag- 
 ging Alberich. He asks what ransom they 
 demand, and they name the gold. He gives 
 this readily, because he knows where to get 
 more. Wotan demands the ring, and on Albe- 
 rich's refusing to give it up, tears it from his fin- 
 ger. Then the Nibelung lays his curse upon 
 the ring and disappears. The giants approach 
 with Freia. Fasolt demands her ransom and 
 Wotan points to the hoard. The giants meas- 
 ure off a space as broad and as high as the god- 
 dess. The tarn helm has to be thrown in to 
 make the pile good. One little crevice lets the 
 light through, and the giants demand that the
 
 THE STORY. I 5 
 
 ring shall be placed there. Wotan refuses, but 
 Erda (Mother-Earth) rises out of the ground, 
 warns him against the curse, and foretells the 
 downfall of the gods. She sinks and Wotan 
 tosses the ring to the giants, releasing Freia. 
 Alberich's curse begins to operate at once. The 
 giants quarrel. Fafner slays Fasolt, and goes 
 off with the hoard, the tarn helm, and the ring. 
 Wotan is filled with gloomy thoughts, but is in- 
 spired with the idea of creating a race of demi- 
 gods who shall defend him against his enemies. 
 Donner mounts a rock and swings his hammer. 
 Black clouds descend : lightning flashes, and 
 thunder peals. The clouds disappear, revealing 
 the arch of a glorious rainbow spanning the sil- 
 ver valley of the haunted Rhine. Wotan, in a 
 speech of sublime majesty, summons his wife to 
 come and dwell with him in Walhalla, thus for 
 the first time naming the new castle. The gods 
 move toward their new abode. The Rhine 
 daughters in the waters below cry to Wotan to 
 restore their ring. He bids them cease their 
 cfcrmor, and the gods and goddesses march tri- 
 umphantly on the rainbow into Walhalla as the 
 final curtain descends. 
 
 This drama plays the part of a " prologue in 
 heaven." It is the key to all that follows, and 
 I have, therefore, given its story more fully than
 
 1 6 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 I need to give those of the other three dramas. 
 My dear friend and fellow-laborer, H. E. Kreh- 
 biel, has clearly demonstrated the fact that the 
 true hero of the tragedy of " The Nibelung's 
 Ring " is Wotan, and the real plot is concerned 
 with his struggles to free himself from the inev- 
 itable retribution that must follow a crime. At 
 the very outset of the " Rhinegold " we behold 
 in Wotan a tragic hero, a victim of remorseless 
 fate. Jealous of the growth of the darker pow- 
 ers, he has offered the giants a bribe that he 
 does not mean to pay. This is the secret of the 
 whole tragedy. This making of a false promise 
 is the beginning of the downfall of the^Esir; 
 for Wotan's power is based upon the inviola- 
 bility of his word. It is this which causes the 
 astonishment of the giants when Wotan bids 
 them dismiss the idea of obtaining Freia. 
 " What!" they exclaim, "will you dare to break 
 a contract ? What you are, you are by the sa- 
 credness of contracts." 
 
 This single error is the basis of Wotan's de- 
 struction. A brilliant novelist of our time has 
 written these words : " This is the greatest 
 evil which lies in evil, that the ashes of past 
 guilt are too often the larvae of fresh guilt, and 
 one crime begets a brood which, brought to 
 birth, will strangle the life in which they were
 
 THE STORY. 1 7 
 
 conceived." Wotan, finding that there is no es- 
 cape, turns for help and advice to Loge, the God 
 of Evil, the spirit of flickering, treacherous fire, 
 the master of cunning and deceit ; and he in- 
 troduces to gods and giants the lust for gold. 
 Loge seeks the downfall of the gods. Therefore, 
 he induces Wotan to avoid the crime of break- 
 ing a contract by committing that of robbery. 
 The giants are willing to accept the Rhinegold 
 and the ring in lieu of Freia. In order to get 
 the Rhinegold, Wotan must take it by force from 
 Alberich, and thus the crime is begotten of the 
 false promise, the inviolability of Wotan's god- 
 hood is shattered, and the " Gotterdammerung," 
 the decline of the gods, is brought within appre- 
 ciable distance. The fact that Alberich curses 
 the ring, which thenceforward becomes fatal to 
 all who hold it instead of giving them the 
 power of the world, gains in significance when 
 viewed from this stand-point. It is not a mere 
 decree of destruction against some of those 
 whom Wotan is to create for his own help, but 
 it is also a formulation of the principle of retri- 
 butive justice which is to work out the god's fate. 
 It endows the stolen thing with the power of 
 punishing the theft — that misdeed for which 
 Wotan suffers, the wrong which he vainly strives 
 to right. It is for this reason that Erda, the
 
 1 8 " DER RING DES NIBELC/NGEN." 
 
 wisest of the earth, rises to warn the god, say- 
 ing: 
 
 Heed my warning, Wotan ! 
 Flee the curse of the ring ! 
 
 Irretrievable, 
 
 Darkest destruction 
 With it thou wilt win. 
 
 And before sinking again she says : 
 
 A day of gloom 
 Dawns for the godly ; 
 I warn thee, beware of the ring. 
 
 When Erda has sunk into the earth once more 
 Wotan is wrapped in thought. He may not 
 take the ring away from Fafner, who now holds 
 it, because he is forbidden to use force where 
 he has made a contract ; but he may create a 
 race of demi-gods, one of whom, working as a 
 free agent, shall secure the ring and return it to 
 its rightful owners, the Rhine maidens. Then 
 for the first time he names the new castle Wal- 
 halla, and Fricka asks the meaning of that 
 name. Wotan replies : 
 
 What mighty in fear 
 I made to my mind 
 Shall, if safe to success, 
 Soon be made clear to thy sense.
 
 THE STORY. 1 9 
 
 Now, who is to right a wrong done by 
 Wotan ? Obviously only the person whom he 
 has in mind in this speech, a being who is of his 
 own blood. By Wotan's seed alone can Wotan's 
 sin be atoned. The ethical significance of this 
 idea is the key to all that follows " Das Rhein- 
 gold/' It is the only apology for the humanly 
 unholy relations of Siegmund and Sieglinde ; * 
 and it is the explanation of the failure of the 
 god's plan through the sin of Siegfried in " Die 
 Gotterdammerung," which sin is brought about 
 by the machinations of Alberich's son, Hagen. 
 
 The sacrifice of Siegmund is not understood, 
 I fear, even by many of Wagner's admirers. 
 Wotan's plan of restitution through a free agent 
 is good, but the troubled and hampered god 
 does not carry it out successfully. Siegmund 
 is a failure because he is not a free agent, and 
 
 * I am not bound to defend Wagner's morals. The relations 
 between Siegmund and Sieglinde are outrageous, in spite of 
 the logical demand that Wotan's wrong should be atoned for 
 by Wotan's blood. It is a pity that Wagner could not have 
 found means to avoid this difficulty. It is like other errors, in 
 that it leads the erring one still farther astray ; for it results in 
 Siegfried's marrying his half-aunt. Siegmund and Sieglinde are 
 children of Wotan ; so is BrUnnhilde ; hence she is their half- 
 sister, and her relation to their son, Siegfried, becomes pain- 
 fully obvious. This comes of dealing with mythologies, which 
 are proverbially improper.
 
 20 " DER RING DES NIBELC7NGEN." 
 
 it is Fricka who, in her indignation at outraged 
 marriage ties, lays her finger upon the weak 
 spot in Wotan's plan. Here is the passage * 
 which explains the issue of the combat in " Die 
 Walkure:" 
 
 WOTAN. 
 A hero we need 
 Who, free from the word of the gods, 
 Is loose from the grasp of their law. 
 Such one alone 
 Can accomplish the deed 
 That, though of need to the gods, 
 May not by a god be outwrought. 
 
 Fricka. 
 
 By dense enigmas 
 
 Thou wouldst fain daze me. 
 
 What high deeds, then, 
 
 Can heroes accomplish 
 That must be gainsaid to the gods — 
 Through whose will alone they can work ? 
 
 * It is a curious fact that some of those scenes in which the 
 most important elements of the plot of the Nihelung tetralogy 
 are exposed are talky, tiresome, and undramatic We are told 
 by those whom I call extreme Wagnerites that the music sus- 
 tains the interest. They ought to comprehend that this is 
 simply an adaptation to their needs of the view of the Ital- 
 ianissimi, who contend that the music should be the princi- 
 pal object of interest all the time. Let us admit the truth : 
 Wagner is sometimes a German dramatist and writes talk, talk, 
 talk.
 
 THE STORY. 21 
 
 WOTAN. 
 
 Their own good courage 
 Thou countest as naught. 
 
 Fricka. 
 
 Who breathed this courage in them ? 
 Whose brightness breaks from their glance ? 
 
 Beneath thy shelter 
 
 Great is their strength, 
 
 Stirred by thy spirit, 
 
 Upward they strive. 
 Thou urgest them onward — 
 So blatantly boastest thou oft. 
 
 With new deceit 
 
 Thou wouldst deceive me ? 
 
 By new devices 
 
 Seek to avoid me ? 
 
 But for this Volsung 
 
 In vain dost thou plead : 
 In him I find but thyself; 
 From thee alone his defiance. 
 
 She also shows her knowledge of the fact 
 that Wotan placed the sword in the tree in 
 Hunding's house on purpose for Siegmund and 
 then led him there to get it and find Sieglinde. 
 Hence, when Wotan tells Brtinnhilde the whole 
 story of the theft of the Rhinegold, the en- 
 mity of Alberich, and the events preceding
 
 22 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 " Die Walkiire," he concludes with these hope« 
 less words : 
 
 O stress of the gods ! 
 
 O shamefullest need ! 
 
 In loathing seeing 
 
 Always myself 
 In all whatsoever I work ! 
 But the other, for whom I search, 
 The other I never shall see. 
 Himself must the fearless one fashion, 
 Since I none but serfs can knead. 
 
 Briinnhilde asks whether Siegmund is not a 
 free agent. Wotan answers that he himself 
 dwelt in the forest with Siegmund and fanned 
 the flames in his breast. He says : 
 
 I fondly fancied 
 Myself to befool, 
 Yet how lightly Fricka 
 Found out the lie ! 
 To its farthest depths 
 She fathomed the shame, 
 And her will to work I was forced. 
 
 Briinnhilde asks if he will remove his protec- 
 tion from Siegmund, and then Wotan answers 
 with the key-note speech of the whole tragedy.
 
 THE STORY. 2$ 
 
 He declares in despair that he cannot escape 
 the consequences of his crime ; his efforts are 
 vain ; he abandons the work, and awaits but the 
 end. For that Alberich will provide. This 
 attitude of Wotan explains the majestic dignity 
 of his suffering while inflicting the punishment 
 on the disobedient Valkyr. She has striven to 
 save Siegmund, thereby making a movement 
 toward continuing the existence of Wotan's 
 wrong-doing and toward fixing more firmly upon 
 him and all the other gods the inevitable retri- 
 bution that must follow. Her punishment is 
 not the outcome of a father's wrath against a 
 disobedient child, but is the result of Wotan's 
 surrender to the demands of that eternal jus- 
 tice of which he and all the other gods are sub- 
 jects. 
 
 From this time on to the end of the tragedy, 
 Wotan stands aside and allows the human forces 
 to have free sway. Siegfried knows no Wotan ; 
 he knows no god's will. He is a free agent. 
 Wotan is a wanderer on the face of the earth, 
 watching the progress of events with which he 
 is powerless to interfere. Alone and as a free 
 agent, at the suggestion of Wotan's enemy, Mime, 
 Siegfried slays Fafner. Then with the knowl- 
 edge imparted by the bird, he obtains the Rhine- 
 gold, seeks and wins Brunnhilde. Of his free
 
 24 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 will he fulfils Wotan's prophecy made in the 
 closing scene of "Die Walkure :" 
 
 He who the point 
 Of my spear shall fear 
 Shall pass not the wall of fire. 
 
 Oh, the ineffable beauty of " Siegfried ! " 
 This is the immortal epic of the world's youth, 
 the song of spring-time, young manhood, love, 
 and unspeakable bliss. It is this marvellous 
 fairy tale that the opponents of Wagner have 
 chosen to ridicule, because of its talking bird 
 and its cumbersome dragon. Oh, the folly of 
 prejudice ! 
 
 Behold young Siegfried grown to manhood 
 under the care of Mime, the brother of Al- 
 berich. The dwarf is aiming at the recovery 
 of the ring, the tarn helm, and the gold, which 
 Fafner, now become " the worst of all worms,'' 
 is guarding in a cave in the forest. Mime pro- 
 poses to have Siegfried slay the dragon, after 
 which he himself will slay " Siegfried." But 
 the poor dwarf cannot weld the sword of Sieg- 
 mund, which is necessary to his plan. Sieg- 
 fried arrives, and after some by-play, examines 
 the sword which Mime has been forging, and 
 rails at its weakness. Mime endeavors to calm 
 him. Siegfried expresses his dislike of the
 
 THE STORY. 2$ 
 
 dwarf, and inquires who were his father and 
 mother. Mime declares that he himself was 
 both. Siegfried cannot be deceived thus, and 
 finally wrings the truth from Mime, who pro- 
 duces the pieces of Siegmund's sword in sup- 
 port of his statement. Siegfried orders him to 
 weld the pieces, and then rushes out into the 
 forest. Wotan disguised as the Wanderer 
 comes to the cave and enters into a long dis- 
 cussion with Mime. The outcome of it all is 
 that Wotan prophesies that the sword must be 
 welded by a hero who knows not fear. Wotan 
 disappears, leaving Mime in despair. Siegfried 
 returns and finds Mime hidden under the anvil 
 in abject terror, caused by his own fancies. 
 Siegfried asks him if he has welded the sword, 
 but Mime tells him he has one thing yet to 
 learn, namely, fear. Mime tries to teach him 
 what fear is, and seeks to frighten him by de- 
 scribing the dragon Fafner. Siegfried, instead 
 of being alarmed, is eager to meet his foe, and 
 demands the sword. Mime confesses that he 
 cannot weld it, whereupon Siegfried proceeds 
 to do the work himself. Then follows the 
 great scene of the welding of the sword. When 
 the sword is finished, Siegfried, with one 
 mighty blow, cleaves the anvil, and, as the 
 orchestra bursts into a prestissimo of tremen-
 
 26 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 dous energy, stands brandishing the sword and 
 shouting while the curtain falls. 
 
 The second act reveals Alberich, the Nibel- 
 ung, in the depths of the forest gloom near 
 Fafner's cave, awaiting an opportunity to seize 
 the treasure. Malice and greed are breathed 
 through the music. The wind rushes through 
 the forest and a dim light grows. Wotan 
 enters. Alberich and Wotan express their 
 hatred of one another, the music graphically 
 illustrating the dignity of the one and the mal- 
 ice of the other. Wotan departs ; Alberich 
 conceals himself, and Siegfried enters with 
 Mime. The latter hopes that both the dragon 
 and the hero will die in the impending combat 
 and departs saying so. 
 
 Siegfried, alone in the forest, lies down under 
 a tree. Then comes the " Waldweben" — forest 
 weaving — the voices of the woods, often played 
 in concert. It is one of the most masterly 
 tone-pictures in existence. Siegfried wonders 
 who his mother was and how she looked. He 
 tries vainly by means of a reed flute to imitate 
 the voices of the birds and so understand them. 
 Failing in this he winds a blast upon his horn, 
 which brings the dragon, Fafner, from his 
 lair. Siegfried fears him not, but boldly at- 
 tacks and slays him. The blood spurts upon
 
 THE STORY. 27 
 
 the hero's hand and he puts it to his lips. At 
 once he can understand the language of the 
 birds. A bird tells him to get the treasure 
 from the cave. He enters it. Alberich and 
 Mime appear. The ineffably lovely music be- 
 comes harsh and scolding. The dwarfs quarrel 
 and separate as Siegfried returns with the ring 
 and tarn helmet. Mime comes back and tries 
 to induce Siegfried to take poison which he 
 has prepared, but the bird warns him, and, 
 moreover, Mime unconsciously betrays himself. 
 Siegfried slays him. Again the hero lies under 
 the tree and the voices of the forest speak to 
 him. The bird tells him of Briinnhilde and 
 leads him away in search of her as the curtain 
 falls. 
 
 The third act opens with portentous music. 
 The awful strife between the might of youth 
 and love and the powers of darkness is ap- 
 proaching its climax. The rising of the curtain 
 discloses a rocky mountain. The shadows of 
 night are on the hills, and the elements are at 
 war. Wotan appears and invokes the goddess 
 Erda — old Mother-Earth. From her he seeks 
 to know how to save the gods from destruction. 
 She cannot aid him, and, weary of increasing 
 strife, he renounces the empire of the world. 
 Siegfried enters and Wotan blocks his wav with
 
 28 " DER RING DES NIB E LUNG 'EN." 
 
 his spear. With a single blow Siegfried shatters 
 the spear of the ruler of the gods, and destroys 
 therewith the old order of things. Crying, " In 
 vain ! I cannot prevent thee," Wotan flies. 
 An ominous glow grows upon the scene. The 
 mystic powers of nature array themselves 
 against the hero's progress. The strength of 
 matter girds itself to meet the might of spirit. 
 Fire and smoke roll down the mountain till the 
 very world seems ablaze at Siegfried's feet. 
 But still that giant heart knows no fear. Thun- 
 dering notes of defiance from his horn, he 
 plunges into the flames and disappears ; but 
 the echoing notes of the horn return to say that 
 he is not vanquished. 
 
 The storm of fire sinks. The glory of the 
 dawn surrounds the hills and the rising mists 
 disclose the noble form of the Valkyr asleep be- 
 neath her shield. Siegfried approaches. The 
 tremendous moment is at hand. He stoops 
 and cuts the fastenings of her armor, which, 
 falling aside, reveals, wrapped in the softest 
 drapery, a perfect woman, nobly planned. The 
 soul of the invincible youth is transformed into 
 the spirit of the captive, but conquering man. 
 " A touch — a kiss — the charm is snapped/ 
 Briinnhildc awakes to salute the earth, the sun, 
 the gods, and to fall upon the breast of her hero-
 
 THE STORY. 2g 
 
 lover, while their voices mingle in the passion- 
 ate strains of fierce, overmastering love. The 
 manhood of Siegfried and the womanhood of 
 Brtinnhilde are accomplished. The perfect race 
 is come to rule the world. The old gods are 
 to die and be forgotten. 
 
 The final tragedy opens with a scene in which 
 the " dark fates weave the web of life and 
 death." The Norns, the Fates of northern 
 mythology, wind a rope of sand and foretell the 
 downfall of the gods. This scene is frequently 
 omitted in the performances of the work. Dra- 
 matically it is ineffective, though its music is 
 rich. Siegfried and Brunnhilde, who have been 
 dwelling together in the Valkyr's cave, come 
 out, and the woman sends her hero forth in 
 search of new adventures. Just why she should 
 do so I have never quite understood. I am told 
 by superior minds that it is done in order that 
 he may win a name worthy of a Valkyr's 
 reverence ; but when he arrives at the Castle of 
 the Gibichungs on the Rhine, whither he at 
 once goes, he is already known there as a most 
 tremendous hero, though no one except Hagen, 
 son of Alberich and vassal of King Gunther, is 
 acquainted with the history of his life. One 
 must recall the fact that Siegfried is the great 
 heroic figure of mediaeval German lore in order
 
 30 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 to understand the honor he at once receives 
 from the retainers of Gunther. Hagen has 
 proposed to Gunther that when Siegfried ar- 
 rives, Gutrune, the king's sister (a charming and 
 much-wronged girl, by the way), shall give him 
 one of those magic drinks which abound in 
 opera, and cause him to fall in love with her. 
 Then Gunther is to have Briinnhilde as his 
 queen. Gutrune falls desperately in love with 
 Siegfried the minute she sees him and adminis- 
 ters the potion willingly. Siegfried is won and 
 agrees to go through the fire and get Briinnhilde, 
 whom he as once forgets, for Gunther, with 
 whom he swears an oath of brotherhood. Sieg- 
 fried puts on the tarn helm and assumes the 
 likeness of Gunther. He goes to Briinnhilde, 
 tears from her finger the ring of Rhinegold 
 which in his own person he had given her, and 
 proclaims her Gunther's bride. 
 
 In the second act Siegfried, Gunther, and 
 Briinnhilde arrive at Castle Gibichung. As soon 
 as Briinnhilde sees Siegfried in his proper form 
 with the ring on his finger, she proclaims to the 
 assembly that she has been betrayed by him. 
 Siegfried, still under the potion's influence, 
 swears he does not know her. She swears he 
 is the man who penetrated to her rocky abode. 
 Siegfried says that she is crazy, which assertion
 
 THE STORY. 3 1 
 
 temporarily allays suspicion, and the hero goes 
 on with the wedding festivities attending his 
 union with Gutrune. Gunther, Briinnhilde, and 
 Hagen remain and decide, on Hagen's sugges- 
 tion, that for his treachery Siegfried must die. 
 Briinnhilde reveals the fact that she did not 
 make Siegfried's back invulnerable, knowing 
 that he would never turn it on a foe. 
 
 In the third act Siegfried is hunting on the 
 banks of the Rhine. The Rhine maidens ap- 
 pear and try to get the ring from him. He 
 keeps it, and they depart foretelling his impend- 
 ing doom. Hagen, Gunther, and the vassals 
 appear. To cheer, the gloomy Gunther, Sieg- 
 fried tells the story of his youth. He cannot 
 quite recall his meeting with Briinnhilde, and 
 here Hagen, whose whole object is to get the 
 ring, the tarn helm, and the gold once more into 
 Nibelung hands, steps in with another drink, 
 which makes the hero remember. For the first 
 time Gunther sees the extent of the treachery. 
 Siegfried at an opportune moment in his story 
 is stabbed in the back with a spear by Hagen, 
 and dies breathing the name of Briinnhilde. 
 The vassals take up the body and in stricken 
 silence bear it away over the moonlit hills to 
 Gibichung. 
 
 Arriving there Gunther and Hagen quarrel
 
 32 " DER RING DES NIBEIL'NGEN." 
 
 over the possession of the ring, and the former 
 is killed. Briinnhilde learns the plot of which 
 she and Siegfried were the victims. She causes 
 his body to be placed on a funeral pyre. She 
 proclaims his greatness, announces the downfall 
 of the gods, and hurls herself into the flames 
 with the corpse. The Rhine rises, and the fatal 
 ring is engulfed by the waters and thus restored 
 to the Rhine maidens. Hagen rushes into the 
 water after it and is drowned. The flames of the 
 funeral pyre ascend to the skies and fire Wal- 
 halla. Wotan and the gods are destroyed, and 
 the great tragedy is ended. 
 
 It is reserved for Briinnhilde, who knows the 
 dread significance of the events of her time, to 
 act the final and crowning scene in the drama of 
 deeds which Wotan had begun but was powerless 
 to finish. She it is who puts the torch to the 
 pyre and fires Walhalla. The reign of the gods 
 ends, and henceforward there is a new order of 
 things. The ring goes back to its rightful 
 owners and thus is restitution made. But 
 Wotan does not escape retribution. He is the 
 victim of fate and carries down the gods with 
 him in one general fall. Thus does this tre- 
 mendous tragedy work itself out, revealing to 
 us as its hero a god who forgot the essential 
 nature of his godhood, transgressed the law by
 
 THE STORY. 33 
 
 which he was, and fell a victim to outraged 
 justice. 
 
 There are those who seek to ridicule this 
 tragedy because it contains supernatural impos- 
 sibilities, some of which belong to the fairy 
 tales of our childhood. The magic ring and 
 tarn helm, the lumbering dragon, the bird that 
 sings German words, the marvellous drinks of 
 Hagen — these are things over which Wagner's 
 opponents make merry, and which they call 
 upon his friends to defend. I shall not defend 
 them. I agree with the anti-Wagnerites. They 
 are as puerile as the family relations in the 
 tetralogy are repulsive. I grant all these things. 
 But is there nothing left ? Is there nothing 
 under the surface of the mighty tragedy on 
 which these things float like fallen leaves upon 
 an ocean ?
 
 II. — The Philosophy and the Humanity. 
 
 I DO not propose to enter into an extended 
 discussion of the merits of the tragedy. I shall 
 simply point out some features of its strength, 
 and perchance touch upon certain defects which 
 are worthy of consideration. 
 
 In "Das Rheingold" we make our first ac- 
 quaintance with Wagner's mythological adapta- 
 tions in their primeval condition. The gods 
 of the Norse mythology were not immortal, but 
 gifted with extraordinary length of days. Their 
 fellow-creatures in the world were inferior be- 
 ings, always at war with them, but equally 
 gifted in respect to longevity. The true myth 
 is a deification of a human type. Jupiter and 
 Hercules, Wotan and Thor, Isis and Osiris are 
 human types idealized and exalted into godhood. 
 They are heroic in person, essential in emotion, 
 elementary in action. Civilization tends to av- 
 erage men. A common culture imposed upon 
 a body of people reduces elementary inequal- 
 ities to a general level, and tends to the con-
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY AND THE HUMANITY. 35 
 
 cealment of individual characteristics because it 
 represses the display of them. Wagner has 
 shown a fine perception of these truths in his 
 Nibelungen works. The artificiality of civiliza- 
 tion is wholly absent. The foul is foul and the 
 fair is fair. The springs of action are laid bare. 
 Every personage is as transparent as a child. 
 The substructure of humanity is unearthed. In 
 Wotan we have a large mind dominated by the 
 lust of power; in Alberich a small one. Loge 
 is the personification of primal cunning and 
 treachery. And so it is with each of the other 
 personages. Every one is a characterization, 
 and their deeds are in accord with their hearts. 
 
 The atmosphere of unreality which surrounds 
 these personages does not mar their poetic 
 value, any more than the supernatural envi- 
 ronment of Milton's arch fiend mars his. As 
 Lucifer impresses himself upon us as an ideal- 
 ized type and the central figure of the "Paradise 
 Lost," so does Loge remain in our minds as the 
 weaver of the plot of the tetralogy. He stands 
 forth conspicuously as one of the most interest- 
 ing characters in dramatic fiction, and beyond 
 a question one of the few fine character stud- 
 ies in opera. Around him the events of the 
 story of " Das Rheingold," the germ of the 
 whole tragedy, revolve with a consistent coher-
 
 36 " DER RING DES NIB E LUNG EN. 1 ' 
 
 ency that is as admirable as it is unsurpassed in 
 operatic literature. His final words, while they 
 assist in destroying the completeness of " Das 
 Rheingold " as a play, are eminently fitting as 
 the conclusion in the first act of a drama whose 
 chief events are yet to come, and whose founda- 
 tion he has laid. 
 
 But in all probability there is no feature of 
 Wagner's poetry that will strike the average 
 reader with more force than his treatment of 
 the passion of love. " Let us reconstruct this 
 world," says Taine, writing of Shakespeare, " so 
 as to find in it the imprint of its Creator. A 
 poet does not copy at random the manners 
 which surround him ; he selects from this vast 
 material, and involuntarily brings upon the 
 stage the moods of the heart and the conduct 
 which best suit his talent." Wagner could not 
 brook the shackles of conventionality. The 
 " moods of the heart and the conduct " which 
 best suited his talent were not those of modern 
 courts and society. In his reconstruction of the 
 world he felt that the limits of established cus- 
 toms were too small for him. He would be 
 hampered by no religious or social dogmas, by 
 no small corollaries of clothes-philosophy. Ele- 
 mental passions, free and fierce and blazing as 
 the first sunlight, were to be the tremendous
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY AND THE HUMANITY. 27 
 
 moving forces of his dramas. To disrobe them 
 of all the purple and fine linen of convenient 
 codes and reveal them in the heroic and chaste 
 glory of their perfect nakedness he went back 
 into the realm of fable, seized upon the shadowy 
 myths and made them men and women. 
 
 The love of Wagner's elementary beings is like 
 lightning in its suddenness and fierceness. As 
 Taine says of the lovers of the Shakespearean 
 drama : " They cannot but love, and they 
 must love till death. But this first look is an 
 ecstasy ; and this sudden approach of love is a 
 transport." Shakespeare and Wagner are alike 
 in their treatment of what we call love at first 
 sight. The latter exposes his idea of it in 
 " The Flying Dutchman," in " Lohengrin," in 
 "Tristan and Isolde;" and in the Nibelungen 
 series we have two magnificent pictures of it in 
 the meeting of Siegmund with Sieglinde and of 
 Siegfried with Briinnhilde. Siegmund lies 
 fainting upon Hunding's hearth. Sieglinde 
 enters, and, without seeing her, he cries for 
 water. She gives him drink. Having finished 
 the draught, he turns his head, sees her face for 
 the first time, and gazes long upon her. He 
 speaks to her : 
 
 Cool is the draught of thy bountiful cup ; 
 Vigor returns to my tottering limbs ;
 
 38 " DER RING DES MB E LUNG EM." 
 
 My heart is made strong, and my eyes grow glad 
 With the gladness of thine. Now speak me the name 
 Of the woman who lifts me again to life. 
 
 SlEGLlNDE. Hunding's the house and I am his wife; 
 
 Welcome art thou to rest till he comes. 
 SiEGMUND. Weaponless I and wounded. I pray that 
 
 I be not unwelcome to Hunding, thy lord. 
 Sieglinde [anxiously]. Where thou art wounded now 
 tell me at once. 
 
 She offers him mead to drink. He begs her 
 to sweeten the draught with her own lips. 
 Then, conscious of the misfortune that ever fol- 
 lows him, he would leave her. But she bids 
 him stay, for she, too, is a child of sorrow. 
 Thus in a few moments mutual sympathy and 
 confidence and a hunger for each other's society 
 are established between them. The stronger 
 nature draws the weaker to it like a magnet. 
 The woman, having lulled her husband to sleep 
 with a draught of herbs, returns to Siegmund. 
 She tells him where there is a weapon with 
 which he can meet Hunding in battle. Al- 
 ready she believes in her soul that this is the 
 hero who shall draw it forth from its oaken 
 sheath whence none other could take it. lie 
 clasps her in his arms. The spring night 
 breaks upon them in all its glory. The man 
 bursts into a triumphant love-song, full of the
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY AND THE HUMANITY. 39 
 
 vigor of youth, strong with the power of mature 
 passion. 
 
 Winter storms have fled in the smile of May, 
 
 In glory of light arises the spring ; 
 Wafted with wind and wonder along his way 
 
 Through woods and meadows that breathe and 
 sing. 
 
 " Nay, 'tis true," says Rosalind ; " there never 
 was anything so sudden but the fight of two 
 rams and Caesar's thrasonical brag of ' I came, I 
 saw, and overcame ; ' for your brother and my 
 sister no sooner met but they looked, no sooner 
 looked but they loved, no sooner loved but 
 they sighed, no sooner sighed but they asked 
 one another the reason, no sooner knew the 
 reason but they sought the remedy.'' 
 
 In " Siegfried " we find the passion of love 
 treated again in a similar manner. No sooner 
 does the young hero look upon the sleeping 
 form of Brunnhilde than he feels a thrill he 
 never felt before. For the first time in his life 
 he is frightened, and he calls upon his mother. 
 Then he summons Brunnhilde to awake. He 
 kisses her, crying : 
 
 Thus drink I the sweetness of life from her lips, 
 Though drinking I die.
 
 40 " DER RING DES NI BE LUNG EN." 
 
 She awakes, and in a single moment is trans- 
 formed into a heroic, love-absorbed woman. To 
 him alone, she says, could she have awakened. 
 Her love had been a prophecy, and she had 
 been his in soul before ever their eyes had 
 met. The drama ends with one of the most 
 tremendous outpourings of human passion ever 
 couched in language. This, indeed, is the 
 apotheosis of love. The manhood of Siegfried 
 and the womanhood of Briinnhilde are accom- 
 plished. The race has come at last that shall 
 supersede the sin-stricken gods. Human love 
 is henceforth to be the well - spring of ex- 
 istence. It has been objected that Wagner's 
 love is a mere passion. In " Die Walkiire " 
 and " Tristan " there is support for this objec- 
 tion ; but in "The Flying Dutchman," " Tann- 
 hauser," " Die Meistersinger," " Siegfried," and 
 " Die Gotterdammerung" Wagner proclaims in 
 immortal tones his theory of life. It is the 
 theory celebrated in Goethe's " Faust," where 
 the poet sings, " The woman-soul ever leadeth 
 us upward and on." Even in those stories 
 of Wagner's which are indefensible on moral 
 grounds this theory is to some extent a key to 
 the personal force of his heroines. They may 
 stagger blindly into dark ways in their love, 
 but their influence over man is always inspiring.
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY AND THE HUMANITY. 41 
 
 They ennoble his manhood and mould his hero- 
 ism. Wagner's hero is always greater because 
 of his heroine. 
 
 Closely related to the two great love episodes 
 in the tragedy is the death of Siegfried. This 
 incident of " Die Gotterdammerung " is not 
 only the most poetic and moving thing in the 
 whole series of dramas, but one of those most 
 true to nature. It has been noted to the poet's 
 discredit that after utterly forgetting Briinn- 
 hilde and becoming faithless to her, Siegfried 
 all at once remembers her. Critics who take 
 this ground must be unfamiliar with the work- 
 ings of memory. The truth is, that Wagner has 
 so constructed this scene that it would have 
 been marvellous if Siegfried had not remem- 
 bered. The poet's well-known fondness for 
 metaphysics will easily account for his skill 
 here. He was undoubtedly well acquainted 
 with the psychology of the memory and pre- 
 pared his drama accordingly. Siegfried's sud- 
 den remembrance of Briinnhilde is the result 
 of the operation of the laws of association ; not 
 of one law, but all of them at once. Aristotle 
 laid down three relations as constituting the 
 law of mental re-presentation : contiguity in 
 time and space, resemblance, and contrariety. 
 Modern psychologists have found other rela-
 
 42 " DER R7A r G DES ArfBELL/ATGEAr." 
 
 tions and ramifications of them which more 
 fully account for the phenomena of reproduc- 
 tion in the mind. Contiguity in space is a 
 primary element in the revival of mental pict- 
 ures. The recollection of the physical appear- 
 ance of Lime-Rock Light recalls the whole of 
 Newport harbor. Contiguity of time is an- 
 other primary element. As Noah Porter puts 
 it : " When a single event is thought of which 
 occurred upon some day of my life made mem- 
 orable by joy or sorrow, that event suggests the 
 others which occurred in connection with itself 
 — either before or after — till the whole history 
 of the day has passed in review before the eye 
 of the mind." The relation of contrast is subtly 
 employed in this scene, but it is discernible. 
 The fact that the circumstances which he is re- 
 lating are so different from those under which 
 he claimed the hand of Gutrune, must have its 
 influence on Siegfried's memory. The relation 
 of cause and effect is forcible here. The whole 
 history of his victory over Fafner and his sub- 
 sequent understanding of the language of the 
 bird is a series of powerful causes of which the 
 effect was his discovery and love of Briinnhilde. 
 In fact, the whole scene appears to have been 
 written with the law of redintegration in view*. 
 This law is that the " mind tends to act a^ain
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY AND THE HUMANITY. 43 
 
 more readily in a manner or form which is sim- 
 ilar to any in which it has acted before in any 
 defined exertion of its energy." 
 
 Thus we have, as already noted, a powerful 
 operation of all the laws of association. Con- 
 tiguity in space is suggested by the fire. What 
 was in this fire ? The mental image of Briinn- 
 hilde is at once conjured up. Contiguity in time 
 is the property of the whole series of events. 
 It is impossible for him to remember the do- 
 ings of that day without recalling their climax. 
 The relations of contrast and cause and effect 
 we have already noted. In fact the events were 
 as closely united as the facts of that science 
 which Carlyle ridicules as " common-school log- 
 ic, where the truths all stand in a row, each 
 holding by the skirts of the other." No draught 
 of magic could still the memory thus awakened. 
 And the poet was here wonderfully aided by 
 the musician. Instead of writing new music for 
 the death of Siegfried, Wagner, with one of his 
 mightiest strokes of genius, has set this death 
 scene to the music of the love duet between 
 Siegfried and Brunnhilde, thus telling us in the 
 highest language of emotion the feelings that 
 were welling up in the soul of the dying hero. 
 The laws of association renewed for him the 
 scene and its heart-throbs, and the orchestra re-
 
 44 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 veals for us what is passing in the inner man. 
 The love of Briinnhilde is once more the mov- 
 ing power of his life, and triumphs over him even 
 in the hour of death. In my early study of the 
 Nibelung tragedy it always seemed to me that 
 an unhappy blot on this scene was Hagen's 
 presentation to Siegfried of the drink with the 
 juice of an herb in it. If, however, Hagen's 
 words are to be taken literally, it is not a blot. 
 He says — I quote the Metropolitan Opera- 
 House libretto — 
 
 Drink first, hero, 
 
 From my horn : 
 I mingled an herb with the draught 
 To awaken and hold thy remembrance, 
 That past things may be apparent. 
 
 From this speech it is plain that Wagner 
 wishes us to understand that Siegfried's power of 
 recalling his relations with Briinnhilde had been 
 literally put to sleep by Gutrune's potion, and 
 that Hagen is now administering a drink to coun- 
 teract the effect of the former and " awaken " 
 the reproductive power of the man's mind. To 
 be sure, this is a nice point ; for we may read- 
 ily wonder why Gutrune's drink did not para- 
 lyze the man's entire memory, and not simply 
 that part of it relating to his Valkyr bride,
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY AND THE HUMANITY. 45 
 
 and we may ask why he could not recall her if 
 he was able to recall the events leading up to her. 
 But if we accept the fable of a magic drink at 
 all, we have no right to put fanciful limitations 
 to its powers. It is just as reasonable to believe 
 in a potion that could suspend part of a man's 
 memory as one that could put the whole of 
 it to sleep. So we must regard Hagen's drink 
 as the antidote to Gutrune's. It is adminis- 
 tered simply to remove the paralysis of en- 
 chantment from the man's mind, after which 
 removal his memory works according to the 
 laws of psychology. 
 
 To ask, however, what had become of Sieg- 
 fried's memory of Briinnhilde during the time 
 of his unholy infatuation for Gutrune is to dis- 
 play ignorance of a well-known problem of psy- 
 chology. Where an idea has its existence when 
 absent from a mind which subsequently recalls 
 it, is a question which the experts have not an- 
 swered. Dr. McCosh, writing in his " Scottish 
 Philosophy" of Sir William Hamilton, says: 
 " What is the state of an idea when not fall- 
 ing at the time under consciousness ? This is 
 a question which has often been put. Thus, 
 having seen the Crystal Palace of 185 1, the 
 question is put, What place has that idea in my 
 mind when I am not precisely thinking about
 
 46 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 that object ? We must, of course, answer that 
 the idea can have no existence as an idea when 
 not before the consciousness. Still it must have 
 some sort of existence. There exists in the 
 mind a power to reproduce it according to the 
 laws of association." And on this recondite 
 point that is as far as the philosophers have been 
 able to go. 
 
 It would be easy to select other episodes in 
 these dramas as evidences of the author's poetic 
 power. But it is unnecessary. Looking upon 
 them as a whole, and comparing them with the 
 original Scandinavian legends from which they 
 were taken by the minnesingers, we are aston- 
 ished at the manner in which Wagner has mod- 
 ified them. According to the minnesingers 
 young Siegfried had a cloak, the gift of Alberich, 
 which made him invisible. In Wagner's hands 
 this becomes the tarn helmet, made of the 
 Rhine gold. It is a potent factor in the action 
 of the tetralogy, and Siegfried wrests it from 
 Fafncr with his sire's weapon, thus fulfilling a 
 part of his destiny. Again, the minnesingers 
 called Siegfried's sword Balmung, and according 
 to them it was forged for him by Wieland, the 
 Vulcan of the Teutonic gods. With Wagner 
 this sword becomes, not the giant toy of a fairy 
 tale, but a tremendous instrument in the hands
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY AND THE HUMANITY. 47 
 
 of fate. It is the sword of the hero's father and 
 the gift of VVotan himself. It is a most impor- 
 tant part of Wotan's plans that the broken 
 sword shall be welded anew and wielded by a 
 hero who has the unmixed blood of the Vol- 
 sungs, and who knows no fear. With it he 
 brings down the kingdom of the gods at a single 
 blow and carves his way to the consummation 
 of human life. 
 
 With Odin or Wotan, at Walhalla in Asgard, 
 dwelt the Valkyrior, or choosers of the slain. 
 These Wotan sent forth to the fields of battle to 
 select those who should fall and lead them to 
 Walhalla. These sisters of war, as they were 
 sometimes called, watched over their warriors, 
 and sometimes listened to their wooing. Led 
 by Skulda, the youngest of the Fates, they 
 whirled through the dust and thunder of battle, 
 foremost in the fight, with flaming swords and 
 an awful accompaniment of meteors and light- 
 ning. Balder, the second son of Wotan, was the 
 fairest of the gods, and his death is the chief 
 event in Scandinavian mythology. It was fore- 
 ordained and prophetic of the final dissolution 
 of the gods. The story of Sigurd and the Ni- 
 flunga is a separate epic in the elder Edda. 
 Wagner has made the heroine of this tale and 
 the chief of the Valkyries one and the same per-
 
 48 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 son — a pure and loving woman of god-like soul 
 and of celestial origin. Where did he get the 
 material for her? Not from the Nibelungen 
 Lied of the minnesingers, for their Briinnhilde 
 is simply the famed Queen of Isenland — a wo- 
 man of matchless courage and strength, every 
 suitor for whose hand must enter three contests 
 with her, and if vanquished suffer a cruel death. 
 No, this woman — outlined in the Edda — is made 
 flesh and blood for us by Wagner. Siegfried 
 and Balder he has moulded into one, and pro- 
 duced for us a personage more real than either 
 of the originals. 
 
 In short, a reading of the stories of the Scan- 
 dinavian bards and those of the German min- 
 strels shows conclusively that the humanity of 
 Wagner's people is his own. The northern 
 Scalds created tremendous myths. The spirit 
 of their poems is colossal. Passions and sweet- 
 ness stood side by side, and were delineated with 
 master-strokes. Lofty sentiment and heroic 
 deed were darkened by unspeakable crime and 
 black tragedy. The German bards denuded 
 these old poems of their glory and made their 
 personages small. The heroes and heroines of 
 the Sagas were enormous unrealities ; those 
 of the Nicbelungen Lied were almost preten- 
 tious nonentities. Wagner seized upon every
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY AND THE HUMANITY. 49 
 
 trait of character and every incident that was 
 most human, and made masterly use of it. It 
 is the ease with which we recognize in the people 
 of " Der Ring des Nibelungen " primeval hu- 
 man types that makes us receptive of their influ- 
 ence and movable by their greatness. 
 4
 
 III. — Some Objections to Leit-Motiven. 
 
 After several years of honest study of the 
 scores of Wagner's works, and after repeated 
 hearings of performances noble in spirit and ex- 
 ecution, the writer is convinced that the most 
 popular objection to the "music of the future" 
 is the tremendous demands it makes on the in- 
 telligence. The great public does not like to 
 think, especially about anything in the form of 
 a drama. It is an old story that the opera has 
 been regarded as a form of fashionable amuse- 
 ment, but that condition can hardly be said to 
 exist now. That view of the opera is held by a 
 minority. Even among the persons who figure 
 as members of " society " there are those who 
 take a thoughtful interest in the performance of 
 a Wagner-music drama. But they, like others, 
 are discouraged by the discovery that thought- 
 ful interest is not sufficient to enable them to 
 arrive at an intelligent appreciation of these 
 master-works of our time. They learn speedily 
 that these music-dramas require deep and con-
 
 SOME OBJECTIONS TO LEIT-MOTIVEN. 5 1 
 
 tinuous study. In fact, outside of the fields of 
 politics and sociology, the lyric creations of 
 Richard Wagner and the philosophy of Herbert 
 Spencer offer the most considerable problems in 
 the intellectual life of our period. No subject in 
 the arts of painting, sculpture, or pure literature 
 has arisen which presents so many serious artis- 
 tic questions as these music-dramas. They are 
 questions which concern not only music, but 
 which reach out into the general constitution of 
 that abstract entity known as art, for as surely 
 as certain qualities are common to all the fine 
 arts, so surely does anything which touches the 
 fundamental principles of one branch reach those 
 of another. It is not a settled fact that Wagner's 
 reforms have disturbed the general laws of art 
 upon which music rests, but they are accused of 
 having done so, and hence the scope of the dis- 
 cussion. 
 
 The leit-motif system, which is the musical 
 life-blood of the fully-developed Wagner-music 
 drama, appears to be the root of all the evil, 
 for it is this which makes the demands upon 
 public thought, and it is this which is charged 
 with having transformed the operatic score into 
 symphony with declamatory and pantomimic ac- 
 companiment. That these charges seem to be 
 well founded when one first witnesses the per-
 
 52 " DER RING DES NIBEZC/NGEN." 
 
 formance of a later Wagner drama is hard to 
 deny; and that the leit-motif system is not 
 without grave defects must be admitted by 
 every critic who is not committed to special 
 pleading of the Wagner cause. It is a pity that 
 anyone in the position of critic has ever as- 
 sumed this erroneous attitude, though it is easily 
 explicable on the ground that, in the face of ig- 
 norant and blatant opposition, the minor weak- 
 nesses of Wagner's works had to be ignored in 
 order that their stupendous excellences might be 
 preserved for the good of art. 
 
 The charge that the fully-developed Bayreuth 
 music-drama is an attempt to subsitute sym- 
 phony for opera is so foolish that it may be dis- 
 missed with few words. That certain themes 
 are repeated and sometimes subjected to signifi- 
 cant alterations of rhythm and harmony, need 
 not be denied. This is the only resemblance of 
 a Wagner score to a symphony. The working 
 out of thematic material in the free fantasia of a 
 symphony is so different in form and spirit from 
 the development to which Wagner subjects his 
 Brunnhilde and Siegfried motives that only 
 a superficial or prejudiced mind can confound 
 them. A far more important question is that 
 which arises from the fact that people cannot 
 recognize the design of the various leit-motiven
 
 SOME OBJECTIONS TO LEIT-MOTIVEN. 53 
 
 by simply attending a performance of one of the 
 dramas. The extreme Wagnentes deny that this 
 is a fact ; but one has only to consult his own ex- 
 perience to realize that it is. Where is the per- 
 son who has ever at the first hearing of " Rhein- 
 gold " been able to identify and understand all 
 the leit-motiven ? But if they are not immedi- 
 ately and unavoidably intelligible, are not these 
 leit-motiven undramatic ? That is the serious 
 question. Is a playwright wise or skilful who 
 demands of his audience previous home study of 
 the play about to be witnessed for the first time ? 
 Would we tolerate any such demand if made by 
 Bronson Howard or Mr. Pinero ? A play should 
 be, according to all accepted laws of dramatic 
 art, a thing complete in itself. It should require 
 no explanatory notes in the programme and no 
 previous acquaintance with its subject matter in 
 order to be " understanded of the people." Now, 
 the only permissible form of opera is that which 
 can be received as a dr ammo, per musica — a play 
 expressed in music. If the opera does not meet 
 the requirements of a play, it is undoubtedly not 
 a perfect art form. The reforms of Gluck and 
 Wagner were designed to remove the artificial 
 formulas of schools which sacrificed truth to 
 sensuous beauty. But if Wagner demands of us 
 that we shall study his libretto phrase by phrase
 
 54 " DER R/.VG DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 and his music measure by measure at home be- 
 fore going to hear the opera, does he not by this 
 confess to a certain grave radical weakness in his 
 system ? Some of Wagner's most eloquent and 
 thoughtful advocates take the ground that his 
 music produces high emotional results in those 
 who do not take the trouble to learn the leit-mo- 
 tiven, and the writer is prepared, by personal 
 observation and experience, to admit that this is 
 true. The intellectual gratification obtained from 
 an understanding of the motiven, say these ad- 
 vocates, is an added pleasure. But this is an 
 evasion. To listen to Wagner's music-dramas 
 without an understanding of the meaning of the 
 leit-motiven is not to justify his musical system, 
 but to ignore it. It is an endeavor to defend the 
 system by demonstrating that we can get along 
 without it. This will not do. Wagner's leit- 
 motiven have a purpose, and we must recognize 
 that purpose in order to appreciate his art form. 
 The true solution of this difficulty can be 
 reached only by widening our view of the sub- 
 ject so that the whole field of music is embraced 
 in it. The nature of music refutes the assump- 
 tion that any composition is to be heard once 
 and for all, as a play may be. Musical impres- 
 sions are fleeting; musical thoughts are elusive. 
 All music requires repetition. Does the world
 
 SOME OBJECTIONS TO LEIT-MOTIVEN. 55 
 
 listen to a Beethoven symphony once and no 
 more ? Not at all. The treasures of absolute 
 music are revealed only by frequent perform- 
 ance ; and the same tiling is true of opera. 
 "Fidelio" and "Orfeo" arc not played once and 
 then done with ; nor are they put on for a single 
 run of one hundred nights. So we must view 
 these Wagner operas in the light of this general 
 character of music. We are to hear them again 
 and again, and at last, by continual comparison of 
 the text with the musical setting, arrive at a full 
 comprehension of the composer's meaning. This 
 is the artistic possibility which Wagner contem- 
 plated. 
 
 There is still, however, a difficulty. Music can 
 arouse emotion, and, in an indefinite way, also 
 express it. Where Wagner has sinned against 
 the nature of his art is in his attempts to make 
 music express purely mental processes. There 
 are several motiven, like that of the " Compact," 
 whose meaning is entirely arbitrary. Wagner 
 has ruled that a certain combination of tones 
 shall indicate for his hearers the fact that Wotan 
 is bound by his celestial nature to stick to a bar- 
 gain. But music is not the language of bar- 
 gains, and not even so great a genius as Wagner 
 can make it so. You may learn the intended 
 meaning of this motif and accept it according to
 
 50 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 the composer's intent, but whenever you hear it 
 you will, if you have a fine feeling for music, 
 regard it as a sort of musical Volapuk, a manu- 
 factured language. It seems to the writer, then, 
 that the leit motif system, while not truly dra- 
 matic, is truly musical ; that it is a satisfactory 
 working system for operatic music, and that its 
 only serious artistic defect arises from an abuse 
 of it. 
 
 Accepting the leit motif as a defensible art 
 form, everyone must be struck with its especial 
 fitness for the musical setting of " Der Ring des 
 Nibelungen." It is in the tetralogy that the 
 present writer finds the highest justification of 
 Wagner's system. In the overwhelming revela- 
 tion of its adaptation to his purposes is the 
 strongest plea for its existence. There is no 
 question that many of those composers who 
 have risen to the distinction in the field of opera 
 would have been hampered and discouraged by 
 the rigid requirements of the leit motif system. 
 But the time has gone by when the world be- 
 lieved in the inviolability of any special form. 
 We do not demand of the orchestral composer 
 to-day that he shall write symphonies, or else be 
 classed below the man who can produce capell- 
 meister music in the established classic mold. 
 We have come to understand that every artist
 
 SOME OBJECTIONS TO LE IT-MOTIVE TV. $7 
 
 has a right to invent his own form. All that 
 we ask is that the form shall be the best that 
 can be designed for the artist's especial pur- 
 pose. 
 
 The great drama of the Nibelung's Ring is a 
 drama of development, and the leit motif system 
 is peculiarly suited to its needs. The develop- 
 ment of the Siegfried horn fanfare is one of 
 the evidences of this. It is used in the begin- 
 ning of Wagner's exposition of the character of 
 his hero to express his youth and enthusiasm. 
 It is then a bright and reckless challenge in six- 
 eight rhythm. In the " Gotterdammerung " 
 the same melody is used to express the mature 
 heroism of Siegfried. The alteration to which 
 the music is subjected is one of rhythm. The 
 motif changes from six-eight to common rhythm. 
 The effect produced is one of those which are 
 founded upon the nature of music. A six-eight 
 rhythm is light and tripping; a four - beat 
 rhythm is firm and solid. Here is a case, then, 
 in which the musical development of the motive 
 is thoroughly rational, because the physical con- 
 struction of the music is altered logically. Of 
 course, Wagner clings to his theory — the only 
 true one — that the music must express not the 
 physical attributes of the man, but his soul. 
 This is in accord with the composer's philosoph-
 
 58 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 ical speculations on the essential nature of music 
 as the language of consciousness. Viewed from 
 the standpoint of the psychologist, music is cer- 
 tainly the language of the concept and descends 
 from its loftiest purpose when it is made to ex- 
 press ideas gathered through sense-perception. 
 No thoughtful person supposes that Beethoven 
 meant to photograph a thunderstorm in " The 
 Pastoral Symphony," or that Rubinstein tried 
 in his " Ocean Symphony " to paint the appear- 
 ance of the sea under varying conditions of 
 weather. These writers sought to raise in the 
 hearer's soul emotions similar to those raised in 
 their own souls by these natural phenomena. 
 So Wagner tries to convey to the hearer the 
 emotional content of Siegfried's soul. And how 
 does he do it ? By working out the Siegfried 
 motive symphonically ? Not at all ; but by sub- 
 jecting it to a simple rhythmical change which 
 alters and develops the character of the melo- 
 dy along the same lines as Siegfried's character 
 has altered and developed — from lightness and 
 ebulliency to firmness and solidity. This is one 
 of the artistic achievements, so simple in itself, 
 so striking in its results, that convince us that 
 Wagner was a genius, and that for his purposes 
 his form was the right one. 
 
 It is not necessary to trace this process in
 
 SOME OBJECTIONS TO LEIT-MOTIVEN. 59 
 
 other motives. The unbiassed student of Wag- 
 ner will have no difficulty in discovering its em- 
 ployment in the changes to which the Rhine 
 daughters' music, the Walhalla, Brunnhilde, and 
 other motives are subjected. The changes are 
 not always rhythmical ; frequently they are 
 harmonic. In one case, as has been beautiful- 
 ly shown by Mr. Krehbiel, Wagner achieves a 
 remarkable effect by leaving the atmosphere of 
 modern music and plunging into the darkness 
 of the mediaeval style. He expresses the lack 
 of rest in the wandering of Wotan by a motive 
 which has no tonality, and which is, neverthe- 
 less, plainly a development of the Walhalla 
 theme. The fitness of this form of musical de- 
 velopment for a drama, which is in itself four 
 separate plays to be played on consecutive days, 
 is undeniable. It makes the music coherent and 
 connected, just as the story is. It establishes a 
 system of cross references which explains matters 
 to the auditor. It also is in itself an argument 
 against the dismemberment of the tetralogy. It 
 forbids, on artistic grounds, not only the concert 
 performance of excerpts, but the operatic per- 
 formance of any one drama of the series apart 
 from the rest. These things may be done on 
 the ground of expediency, but the very music it- 
 self cries out against them as sins against art.
 
 DO " DER RING DES NIB E LUNG EN" 
 
 It is beyond doubt that music which is so 
 deep in its emotional significance and which is 
 worked out so logically in its development does 
 make those severe demands upon the intellect 
 which are urged against it. But, on the other 
 hand, when the leit motif system is attempted 
 in a drama where there is no development, or the 
 development is illogical, as in Franchetti's " As- 
 rael," for instance, the leit motiven become mere 
 labels, as some prejudiced persons say Wagner's 
 are. There is no significant development to the 
 Asrael motive, because Asrael is inconsistent. 
 His motive is nothing but a fixed formula, and 
 has no more true musical meaning than those 
 unhappy combinations of sounds which Wagner 
 tries to make representative of purely intellec- 
 tual processes. Franchetti's principal motives 
 are worked to death in " Asrael." He makes a 
 ballet out of one of them. Every auditor can 
 become acquainted with them in two hearings 
 of the opera. They are simplicity itself. But 
 Wagner has some motives which no auditor can 
 learn from hearing. He must either study his 
 score at home or have recourse to handbooks, 
 only to find that Wagner has had recourse to 
 arbitrary formation, and that some of his leit 
 motiven are, as his opponents unjustly say they 
 all are, mere labels without organic connection
 
 SOME OBJECTIONS TO LEIT-MOTIVEN. 6 1 
 
 with the text. They become as algebraic letters, 
 and we hear the composer saying, " Let x equal 
 the Gods' stress." 
 
 Here, then, we find the real weakness in Wag- 
 ner's musical system. It is not that we must 
 listen to his dramas again and again with close 
 attention to the text ere we can learn the mean- 
 ing of his emotional motives, for we have seen 
 that the fundamental claim of music is to be 
 heard often, but it is because he has at times 
 striven to make music do what is not in its 
 power, and has thereby introduced into his 
 works an element of perplexity to the most 
 sympathetic and patient listener. 
 
 One point more is worth noting : the emo- 
 tionally truthful motives in Wagner's works are 
 always those that are most admirable as pure 
 music. It is not necessary to explain this state- 
 ment. Any person who wishes to put it to the 
 test should compare the compact motive with 
 the renunciation, for instance, or the Gods' 
 stress with the Love, or, in " Die Meister- 
 singer," the " Art Brotherhood," as it is called, 
 with the Longing. The brotherhood of art is 
 a delightful subject to express in music. Wag- 
 ner's leit motif for this purpose would do just 
 as well for the Brotherhood of Locomotive En- 
 gineers, and it is musically far inferior to those
 
 62 " DER RING DES NIB E LUNGE N." 
 
 melodies which do truthfully convey to us the 
 emotions of Eva, Sachs, and Walther. When 
 one is confronted with these weaknesses in Wag- 
 ner's system, one feels like adopting the com- 
 fortable position, before mentioned, of enjoying 
 the music without bothering about the leit mo- 
 tiven. But they are like the ghosts in " Mac- 
 beth : " they will not down at one's bidding.
 
 IV.— Comments and Commentators. 
 
 Wagner has the proud distinction of being 
 the one composer of our time who has given 
 rise to controversy. He has been abused with- 
 out mercy and praised without discrimination. 
 Nonsense has been written for and against him. 
 Some of his critics have found fault with him 
 for the very things which are to his credit ; others 
 have praised him for his errors. Perhaps no 
 country has won greater distinction for its in- 
 ability to view Wagner rationally than England. 
 This is, doubtless, owing to the fact that 
 Wagner's later works are not fairly known in 
 Great Britain. Nevertheless, I cannot refrain 
 from breaking lances with two English com- 
 mentators, one of whom bearded Wagner in his 
 lair. 
 
 When a man sets up a theory and undertakes 
 to make facts agree with it, he has a hard time. 
 The inductive method of reasoning is absolute 
 in its tyranny, and always crushes anyone who 
 undertakes to pierce its armor. The only per-
 
 64 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 son who has any hope of success in science is he 
 who studies facts first and formulates his theory 
 on the results obtained. Precisely the same 
 method is to be used in studying the works of 
 great masters in art. The man who begins by 
 saying, " Wagner was not a great composer," and 
 then goes hunting for evidence to prove his state- 
 ment, is bound to come to grief. He should 
 begin by studying the works of Wagner, and 
 generalizations of an unimpeachable nature will 
 come to him, if he is a thinker. As Mr. Krehbiel 
 wisely said in one of his lectures, the only way 
 to find out what Wagner means is to go to 
 Wagner himself — to study him in his scores — 
 and not to accept second-hand evidence. 
 
 Sir Arthur Sullivan has set up the theory that 
 Wagner did not know how to make a libretto, 
 that he did not select the proper kind of ma- 
 terial for his stories, and that his verse is dog- 
 gerel. This is not a new attack on the genius of 
 Bayreuth, but it is unusual. The common plan 
 is to say that Wagner's music is bad, which is a 
 hard proposition to uphold. Some of Wagner's 
 music is harsh — that is a safer and surer assertion. 
 If Sir Arthur had said some of Wagner's libret- 
 to-writing is poor, he would have taken an un- 
 assailable ground, for no one who carefully reads 
 the book of " The Flying Dutchman " can fail to
 
 COMMENTS AND COMMENTATORS. 65 
 
 perceive that some of it is very thin stuff indeed. 
 But that work was written when Wagner was 
 not yet free from the shackles of tradition in 
 opera making. However, this is the single book 
 which Sir Arthur praises, asserting that it is the 
 only one which could be successfully acted with- 
 out the music. This declaration is not worth 
 disputing. It shows a singular lack of compre- 
 hension of Wagner's purposes in aiming at an 
 indissoluble union of acting, poetry, music, and 
 painting in the art work of the future. If any 
 of the dramas of the trilogy could be taken out 
 and acted without the music, it would simply go 
 to show that the union was imperfect. 
 
 But Sir Arthur does not like his material. He 
 says : " He chose mythological and legendary 
 subjects, which have always taken an epic form, 
 for the very good reason that they are essentially 
 epic and not dramatic in character." A little 
 learning has been called a dangerous thing. Sir 
 Arthur must have a very little indeed to hazard 
 such a statement. It is not improbable that the 
 composer of " The Mikado " is aware that the 
 lyric drama of to-day originated in an attempt 
 at the resuscitation of the ancient Greek drama, 
 and that the little group of enthusiasts who met 
 at Bardi's palace in Florence, in the latter part 
 of the sixteenth century, proceeded, to the best
 
 66 " DER RING DES N/BELC/NGEN.' 1 
 
 of their knowledge and belief, along the lines 
 laid down by the Greek masters. Every ref- 
 ormation in operatic art since their day has been 
 an attempt to escape from the domination of 
 mere vocal accomplishment, and to return to the 
 true basis of the lyric drama. The real ground- 
 work is to be found in the plays of the great 
 Greek tragedians, and their selection of material 
 does not support Sir Arthur's theory. 
 
 yEschylus is generally credited with being the 
 father of Greek tragedy. Strangely enough, his 
 masterpiece was a trilogy, composed of " Aga- 
 memnon," " The Choephorae," and the " Eume- 
 nides," in which is set forth a crime — the murder 
 of Agamemnon — and its consequences, very 
 much as Wagner tells the story of the theft 
 of the Rhinegold and its dread issue. Like 
 Wagner's work, this one contains two plots — one 
 celestial and the other terrestrial — and mingles 
 gods and mortals in the action. Moreover, the 
 Greek tragedian's work is wholly concerned with 
 those mythological and legendary characters 
 who, according to Sir Arthur, are "essentially 
 epic." Furthermore, /Eschylus, like Wagner, 
 used his dramas not only for the embodiment of 
 a national legend, but also for the propagation 
 of profound moral truths. Worse than this, 
 ^Eschylus is believed to have written a tetralogy
 
 COMMENTS AND COMMENTATORS. 67 
 
 on mythical events, of which " The Seven against 
 Thebes" is supposed to be the final drama. 
 
 But yEschylus does not stand alone as an op- 
 ponent of Sir Arthur's theory. After him came 
 Euripides, his mighty successor, who has been 
 called the "virtual founder of the romantic 
 drama." His method resembles Wagner's more 
 closely than that of ./Eschylus did in this : He 
 endeavored to make his heroic personages more 
 real, more like the men and women of every-day 
 life. And he helped himself in a most liberal 
 manner to that mythological and legendary 
 matter which, according to Sullivan, is so truly 
 epic. 
 
 His " Alcestis" differed from the normal type 
 of Greek tragedy in that it was not founded on 
 one of the great legends, but on one of the smaller 
 episodes of mythology. In the " Hippolytus" 
 he made use of one of the stories relating to 
 Artemis, a genuine out-and-out goddess. In 
 " Ion " the hero is a son of Creusa and the god 
 Apollo, and one of the characters is Athena, who 
 is also an important figure in the " Suppliants." 
 The "Heracles Mainomenos" begins with the 
 return of Heracles from Hades, whither he had 
 been sent to bring back Cerberus. His " Iphi- 
 genia in Tauris," " Iphigenia in Aulis," "Ores- 
 tes," and " Bacchai " all make use of mytholog-
 
 68 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 ical or legendary material, in open defiance of Sir 
 Arthur's pretty theory. 
 
 But the moderns have broken faith with Sir 
 Arthur just as ruthlessly as the ancients; for 
 when Jacopo Peri wrote the first operas, he deli- 
 berately chose such subjects as " Daphne " and 
 " Eurydice," and Claudio Monteverde, the 
 Wagner of his time, wrote " Orfeo." And when 
 Gluck launched the first operatic reformation he 
 purposely selected Euripidean subjects, " Al- 
 ccstis," " Iphigenia in Aulis," and " Iphigenia in 
 Tauris," to which he added " Orpheus." It does 
 really seem as if no one had any consideration 
 for Sir Arthur. Even Mozart helped himself to 
 the legend of " Don Giovanni," Weber to that 
 of " Der Freischiitz," and Gounod to that of 
 " Faust," as expanded by Goethe. And even 
 Sir Arthur's own Shakespeare wrote " A Mid- 
 summer Night's Dream," of which the material 
 is excessively mythical. 
 
 All this goes to show that if you desire to cen- 
 sure a man's work you should find the real faults, 
 not set up a theory which has feet of clay. 
 However, Sir Arthur Sullivan does not stand 
 alone in his folly. Mr. Joseph Bennett can dis- 
 cover more faults in Wagner than Sir Arthur can, 
 and make far more ridiculous objections to his 
 work. In his "Letters from Bayreuth" he be-
 
 COMMENTS AND COMMENTATORS. 69 
 
 wails in good set terms Wagner's lost opportu- 
 nities, and is grieved to the heart that Verdi did 
 not compose " Die Gotterdammerung." The 
 aged Italian maestro in his ripe years would cer- 
 tainly have written much fine music for the story, 
 but it is almost impossible to conceive of the 
 German master's stupendous dramatic poem dis- 
 sociated from his own vitalizing measures. Mr. 
 Bennett's particular grievance is that Wagner 
 did not write more choruses instead of permit- 
 ting Gunther's vassals to remain silent so much 
 of the time. " If the warriors may acclaim 
 Gunther and Briinnhilde," he asks, " why are 
 they silent when Hagen kills Siegfried ? Why 
 no exclamations as the hero's body is received 
 by the King's household ? Above all, why is 
 the stage filled with a crowd of dummies during 
 the magnificent and moving last scene ? The 
 absence of a chorus here is the very wantonness 
 of whim. It excites an annoying sense of in- 
 completeness, and makes us cry, even beneath 
 the roof of Wagner's theatre, ' Oh for a Verdi ! ' " 
 Alas, poor Joseph ! How shamefully Verdi 
 has betrayed your faith ! The ardent anti-Wag- 
 nerite must have forgotten all about "A'ida" 
 when he wrote these lines. When Rhadames 
 and A'ida are dying in the vault, the temple 
 above is " filled with a crowd of dummies," and
 
 7<D " DE R RING DES NIB E LUNG EAT." 
 
 the only words uttered are a few broken expres- 
 sions of grief from the stricken Amneris. Of 
 course, poor Mr. Bennett could not have fore- 
 seen in 1876 the dreadful things Verdi was going 
 to do in "Otello," but it is a notable fact that 
 when Emelia alarms the household after Desde- 
 mona's murder, the members of the chorus ne- 
 glect their opportunities quite as shamefully as 
 Gunther's vassals. It was not Verdi that Mr. 
 Bennett had in his mind, it was Donizetti. He 
 would have cooked up a duet for Hagen and 
 Gunther over Siegfried's body, and would have 
 sent the dead hero back to the hall of the Gi- 
 bichungs to the strains of a martial chorus. And 
 then what a mad scene Briinnhilde would have 
 had over the bier ! " Spargi d'amaro " would 
 have been nowhere, and she would have had a 
 cadenza against time and a flute which would 
 have filled the air to bursting with ecstatic bra- 
 vas. And the chorus, instead of figuring as a 
 lot of dummies, would have remarked: 
 
 Oh, what a fatal event! 
 
 Dread fear covers all ! 
 
 Night, conceal the sad misfortune 
 
 With thy thick, dark veil ! 
 
 It seems strange that any thinking human be- 
 ing should write such puerile nonsense about a
 
 COMMENTS AND COMMENTATORS. J I 
 
 great dramatic scene as Mr. Joseph Bennett has 
 written about Siegfried's death. Does it not 
 strike all of us that nothing could be so impres- 
 sive as the stricken speechlessness of the grim 
 warriors who cluster in the moonlight around 
 Siegfried's body ? Could any conversation go 
 on except that of those persons who will doubt- 
 less struggle to discuss-their dinner parties dur- 
 ing the blast of the last trumpet ? What choral 
 strains could possibly be written that would not 
 be an impertinence interposed between Sieg- 
 fried's last words and that more than human mu- 
 sic, the death march ? It is, indeed, curious that 
 Mr. Bennett should have chosen for condemna- 
 tion one of the highest examples of Wagner's fit- 
 ness for the production of an immortal tragedy. 
 The same writer complains a good deal about 
 the dramatic power of " Die Gdtterdammerung." 
 He says : " Had the master employed ever so 
 freely the splendid resources that lay ready to 
 his hand, it is doubtful whether the dramatic 
 power of ' Gotterdammerung ' would not have 
 put the music in a secondary place." Remarks 
 of this sort show how admirably Mr. Bennett 
 succeeded in his brutish determination to mis- 
 understand Wagner. To all who know that it 
 was the immovable belief of the master that the 
 business of the music was to explain and illustrate
 
 72 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 the drama, and that it must consequently be in 
 the nature of things subservient, Mr. Bennett's 
 complaint is simply amusing. And we are still 
 more delighted when he proceeds to rank the 
 final drama of the Nibelung cyclus as third in 
 order of excellence, because " it presents little of 
 novelty." 
 
 He continues thus : »" According to a very 
 careful analysis by Herr von Wolzogen, there 
 are in ' Der Ring des Nibelungen ' ninety dis- 
 tinct motivi, of which thirty-five belong to 
 ' Das Rhinegold,' twenty-two to ' Die Walkure,' 
 twenty to ' Siegfried,' and only thirteen to Got- 
 terdammerung,' which thus has, with small re- 
 lief, to bear the burden of constantly repeat- 
 ing themes already heard over and over again." 
 Now here, gentle reader, you have a capital plan 
 for estimating the comparative value of Wag- 
 ner's music-dramas. The master adopted a sys- 
 tem of leit motiven, and constructed the scores 
 of his operas out of themes having certain mean- 
 ings, ergo, the work which contains the most 
 motives has the most meanings, and is therefore 
 the best. Thus we effectually demonstrate that 
 " Tristan und Isolde," which contains a very 
 :mall number of leit motiven, is one of the poor- 
 est of all the master's productions. 
 
 In the drama called "Led Astray," after Hec-
 
 COMMENTS AND COMMENTATORS. 7$ 
 
 tor has poured out a long tirade against the im- 
 morality of the times, Rodolph says : " Bravo, 
 Hector, you talk like a book! The bar regrets 
 you; the pulpit has lost an ornament. Never- 
 theless, Hector, the world will go right on doing 
 just the same." Mr. Bennett talks like a book 
 — very much like a book. Nevertheless the 
 world will go right on regarding "Die Gotter- 
 dammerung"as the mightiest of the Nibelung 
 dramas, and there are some of us, not extreme 
 Wagnerites, who will continue to regard it not 
 only as the greatest of Richard Wagner's crea- 
 tions, but also as the grandest musical drama in 
 existence, and as one of the noblest productions 
 of the human intellect. And we shall do it 
 largely because of the manner in which the leit 
 motiven belonging to " Die WalkCire " and " Sieg- 
 fried " are repeated in such episodes as the hero's 
 narration of his early life, his dying speeches, 
 and his funeral march. We shall hold to our 
 belief because of the enormous effect of the 
 slight changes made by the master in some of 
 his themes. Who can withstand the overwhelm- 
 ing power of the alteration which appears in 
 Siegfried's motive of courage, always intoned by 
 the hero on his horn ? Wagner simply changes 
 the movement of the motive from six-eighth to 
 common time, and lo! the dashing, brilliant
 
 74 " DER RING DES NIB E LUNG EM" 
 
 boldness of a reckless, enthusiastic boy becomes 
 the tremendous, irresistible heroism of a mature, 
 resolute, indomitable man. 
 
 So much for these two musical lights of Eng- 
 land. But elsewhere there are a few less dis- 
 tinguished writers who, by joining forces, con- 
 trive to keep up the old controversy about 
 Italian versus German opera. This warfare is 
 a curious thing. It is curious because the real 
 question is so often obscured. The real ques- 
 tion is obviously this : " What is opera ? " 
 Given a good working definition of opera as 
 a standard, there should be no serious difficul- 
 ty in testing each specimen by it. The result 
 would almost certainly be that the controversy, 
 as between Italian and German opera, would be 
 settled ; because we should find that some Ger- 
 man works were weak and some Italian works 
 strong. An attempt at a practical definition 
 was recently made by a New York newspaper 
 writer, who said that opera was " a setting for 
 wonderful voices and a medium for the bestowal 
 of pleasure through the agency of entrancing 
 harmonies. That's about what an opera is in- 
 tended to be." Who intended it to be that ? 
 Not the Italian enthusiasts who invented it, for 
 their views as to the nature and purpose of 
 opera are on record. The " entrancing har»
 
 COMMENTS AND COMMENTATORS. 75 
 
 monies " part of the definition may at once be 
 dismissed. The writer evidently meant melo- 
 dies, for it is a well-known fact that the advo- 
 cates of the vocal display opera (" setting for 
 wonderful voices ") are opposed to intricate and 
 changeful harmony. The composers who in- 
 tended their operas to be settings for wonderful 
 voices are not quite as important as those who 
 intended theirs to be dramas with music em- 
 ployed to express and intensify the emotions 
 indicated by the text. Here is a list of the 
 most celebrated of each class, the former in the 
 first column, the latter in the second. The list, 
 of course, is not made arbitrarily, but is justified 
 by musical history, by the internal evidence of 
 the composers' works, and by the general ver- 
 dict of the musical world : 
 
 Scarlatti (A.), 
 
 Peri, 
 
 Piccini, 
 
 Monteverde 
 
 Pergolesi, 
 
 Lulli, 
 
 Jomelli, 
 
 Rameau, 
 
 Sacchini, 
 
 Gluck, 
 
 Paisiello, 
 
 Mozart, 
 
 Cimarosa, 
 
 Cherubini, 
 
 Marcello, 
 
 Spontini, 
 
 Lotti, 
 
 Beethoven, 
 
 Caldara, 
 
 Weber, 
 
 Buononcini, 
 
 Marschner, 
 
 Galuppi, 
 
 Me"hul,
 
 76 " DER RING DES NZBELUNGEN." 
 
 Fux, Halevy, 
 
 Graun, Gounod, 
 
 Hasse, Bizet, 
 
 Handel, Wagner, 
 
 Rossini, Reyer, 
 
 Mercadante, Saint-Saens, 
 
 Pacini, Massenet, 
 
 Bellini, Lalo, 
 
 Donizetti, Rubinstein, 
 
 Meyerbeer, Boito, 
 
 Verdi (early), Ponchielli, 
 
 Thomas. Goldmark, 
 Franchetti, 
 Verdi (late). 
 
 There may easily be a difference of opinion 
 as to the place of Handel and Meyerbeer, but 
 the writer believes that he has good grounds for 
 placing them in the first class. Verdi belongs 
 to the first class by all his work up to " Aida," 
 but that opera and " Otello " certainly put him 
 in the second ; consequently he is given a place 
 in each list. The weight of the authority of 
 great musicians seems to be considerably in 
 favor of the true musical drama. Counting 
 Verdi once in each class, there are six compo- 
 sers in the first division whose operas are per- 
 formed to-day, and twenty-one in the second 
 division, of whom eleven are living. There is 
 no living composer of celebrity still producing
 
 COMMENTS AND COMMENTATORS. "J 7 
 
 operas intended to be simply a "setting for 
 wonderful voices." They are all sacrificing the 
 old-fashioned operatic formulas and fiorituri to 
 " alleged dramatic requirements." 
 
 There is nothing so absolutely unsatisfactory 
 as a contest over art, because where purposes 
 are diametrically opposed it is impossible for 
 the contending parties to understand one an- 
 other. The Wagnerite says he does not care 
 anything whatever about waltz tempi and sweet 
 melodies, which are as comprehensible to a child 
 as they are to an old man. He wants dramatic 
 truth, and if an ugly sentiment is to be uttered, 
 it must be expressed in dissonant music; for to 
 couch it in mellifluous measures would be an 
 absurdity. The anti-Wagnerite declares that 
 he goes to the opera for pleasure, and that his 
 pleasure consists in hearing beautiful tunes 
 beautifully sung. It is a curious fact — at any 
 rate, it seems to be a fact — that the bona fide 
 anti-Wagnerite never goes to a symphony or 
 chamber-music concert. If he did, he would, 
 in order to be consistent, be obliged to condemn 
 Beethoven, Schumann, Liszt, Chopin, Brahms, 
 Dvorak, Tschaikowsky, and Rubinstein for do- 
 ing the very same thing that Wagner did — 
 writing dissonant measures when it suited their 
 purpose to do so. But, as there is no blatant
 
 78 " DER RING DES NIBELC/NGEN." 
 
 opposition to these composers, we are forced to 
 the conclusion that the anti-Wagnerites do not 
 go to hear their music, or else they are incon- 
 sistent, which is, of course, inconceivable. 
 
 What is the use of opposing Wagner, if he is 
 such a wretched composer ? Why not let him 
 sink into that obscurity which is the inevita- 
 ble doom of all false artists ? Does anyone sup- 
 pose for a moment that a great metropolitan 
 public can be forced to go and spend its money 
 on a pleasure which does not please it ? The 
 spectacle of three thousand intelligent citizens 
 of New York struggling for seats or standing 
 room in the Metropolitan Opera House, four 
 times a week, to hear operas which they do not 
 like, simply because a few "Wagner maniacs," 
 as they are called, proclaim in the market 
 places that he is the greatest writer of lyric 
 dramas that ever lived, would be astounding. 
 Would any amount of shouting and gesticulat- 
 ing induce this public to conduct itself in a sim- 
 ilar manner with regard to the operas of Mich- 
 ael William Balfe? Not by any means. But, 
 on the other hand, why should a lover of the 
 mighty dramas of Wagner allow his choler to 
 rise when Italian opera is announced ? Is there 
 no balm in Gilcad ? Is there nothing good in 
 Italian opera, because it is conceived in a differ-
 
 COMMENTS AND COMMENTATORS. Jg 
 
 ent spirit and written in a different style from 
 Wagner's works ? What folly ! What puerility 
 to make such an assertion ! Italian opera has 
 one merit which endears it to this public, and 
 with good reason. It cherishes an art whose 
 loveliness never grows old and whose attractions 
 never pall. " Age cannot wither nor custom 
 stale " its " infinite variety." I mean the art of 
 beautiful singing. 
 
 Without that art the opera must surely per- 
 ish. With it the Wagnerian artist can reach 
 real greatness. What would Sucher, Malten, 
 Lehmann, and the rest be without their voices 
 and their polished vocal art ? Yet all that these 
 people know about singing Italy taught them 
 directly or indirectly. It is not necessary for 
 the writer to reiterate his often-repeated esti- 
 mate of the value of Italian methods in singing. 
 Those methods speak for themselves through 
 the medium of the marvellous voices with which 
 the Creator gifted such singers as Patti and Al- 
 bani. 
 
 There would never be any controversy be- 
 tween Wagner and Italian opera if the contest- 
 ants would simply admit the purposes of each. 
 Wagner strove to unite poetry, painting, action, 
 and music in one coherent and vital dramatic 
 art. The purpose of the music is the same as
 
 8o " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 that of the painting and the action — to illus- 
 trate and explicate the poem. This being so, it 
 is obvious that all set forms are illogical for the 
 purpose in hand, and all music which does not 
 sacrifice beauty to truth is false to the compos- 
 er's design. The purpose of the so-called Italian 
 opera is to produce — first, last, and all the time — 
 sweet melodies which can be sweetly sung. To 
 this end the dramatic poem is so constructed as 
 to admit a pleasing variety in the order of solos, 
 duets, trios, quartets, choruses, and ensembles, 
 and the orchestral portion of the work is treated 
 strictly as an accompaniment to the voices. If 
 any emotion demands a harsh and dissonant ut- 
 terance, it must be modified in such a way that 
 it can be expressed in song without interference 
 with the production of a beautiful tone. In 
 brief, the whole machinery of the opera of the 
 "Lucia," "La Traviata," and "II Trovatore" 
 school is constructed for the business of turn- 
 ing out good singing. 
 
 Now, what is the use of going over the old 
 argument that one is a true art form and the 
 other an intolerable hybrid ? Verdi has admitted 
 the truth of that argument. So have Gounod 
 and Boito and Reyer and Lalo and Franchetti 
 and Saint-Saens and Massenet, and other con- 
 temporaneous composers, who have demon-
 
 COMMENTS AND COMMENTATORS. 8 1 
 
 strated in their works their belief that the true 
 principle was proclaimed by the inventors of 
 opera when they sought for it in the Greek 
 drama. Rossini practically admitted in " Will- 
 iam Tell " that the Neapolitan idea was a mis- 
 take. Donizetti and Bellini lived in the reign 
 of the great singers, and they wrote for them. 
 If they had lived till to-day they might have 
 followed Verdi and the rest of them. 
 
 If people who love Wagner would content 
 themselves with saying, " I do not like opera 
 which is essentially undramatic," and those who 
 love the Italian writers of the old style would 
 be satisfied to say, " I like opera in which there 
 is nothing but beautiful singing," and let the 
 matter rest there, how much more pleasant it 
 would be ! " But," says someone, " the persons 
 who write in the public prints will not let the 
 matter drop. Why do not they assume the at- 
 titude which you so heartily recommend ? " 
 Simply because, dear reader, it is the critic's 
 business to seek for the true, the beautiful, and 
 the good in art. To be sure, if he becomes a 
 controversialist, he is not holding the ideal po- 
 sition of a critic. If he becomes an out and out 
 partisan, he sacrifices himself. But, on the other 
 hand, the critic must eventually arrive at some 
 conclusions. He must possess some sort ofcon- 
 6
 
 82 " DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN." 
 
 victions. He cannot forever be going about in- 
 quiring, " What is true art ? " The futility of 
 an examination which never reaches any results 
 is obvious. All that can be asked of the critic 
 is that he shall carefully and without prejudice 
 view both sides of the question before forming 
 an opinion. That, too, is all that can be asked 
 of the public. If the critic finds that a certain 
 form of art is based on false principles, but has 
 many beauties, he has no right to close his eyes 
 to its attractions. Neither has the non-profes- 
 sional critic — for every person who goes to the 
 opera is, of course, a critic in and for himself. 
 The ardent lover of Wagner has no right to say 
 that there is no merit in Italian opera. It is not 
 true. Therefore he has no right to view with 
 contempt those who prefer Italian opera to Ger- 
 man. They like good singing and they don't 
 care a rap about dramatic significance. There 
 are substantial arguments in favor of a love for 
 pure vocal technique, and the lover of Wagner, 
 if he is fair-minded, must recognize them. 
 
 If he feels that the lover of Italian opera is in 
 a benighted condition of musical taste, let him 
 calmly and sensibly endeavor to explain the 
 greatness of Wagner. If the lover of Italian 
 opera believes that his Wagnerite friend is in 
 outer darkness, where there is weeping and wail-
 
 COMMENTS AND COMMENTATORS. 83 
 
 ing and gnashing of trombones, let him calmly 
 and sensibly endeavor to explain the greatness 
 of Donizetti. Let him lecture to his Wagner- 
 ite friend on " How to listen to Bellini." But, 
 for pity's sake, let them not go at one another 
 tooth and nail, as if the divine mysteries of mu- 
 sic were to be settled by the rules of the Mar- 
 quis of Queensberry. Exhibitions of wrath over 
 these things will never convince mankind that 
 one is seeking, as Matthew Arnold puts it, to 
 " learn and propagate the best that is known 
 and thought in the world."
 
 WAGNERIANA.
 
 I.— The Book of " Parsifal.** 
 
 Mr. John P. Jackson has written an admi- 
 rable introduction to his English version of 
 Wagner's " Parsifal." In that introduction Mr. 
 Jackson has made excellent use of Professor 
 Tappert's contributions to our knowledge of the 
 master's works. It is well known that the poem 
 of " Parsifal " was completed by Wagner in the 
 summer of 1877, or about a year after the first 
 Bayreuth festival, when the Nibelung tragedy 
 was revealed in its entirety. He read it on Sep- 
 tember 1 6th before the delegates from the Ger- 
 man Wagner societies which had made his dream 
 of a Wagner theatre an actual fact. " Rev- 
 erently we sat that afternoon," says Professor 
 Tappert, " in villa Wahnfried. It was an hour 
 that can never be forgotten. When the master 
 came to the third act, just to the place where the 
 coffin with Titurel's corpse is borne into the hall 
 by the Knights of the Grail, the sun was sinking 
 behind the trees in the Hof Garden. His last 
 beams, tremblingly, like greeting spirits, came
 
 88 WAGNERTANA. 
 
 silently into the room and glorified the scene, 
 the waves of light resting like a halo around the 
 head of the composer." We can easily imagine 
 the effect of such a picture upon those who heard 
 for the first time this marvellous dramatic poem. 
 According to Edward Dannreuther, this scene 
 was foreshadowed on May 17th, when the master 
 read " Parsifal " to a circle of friends in Orme 
 Square, London. The book was published in 
 December, 1877. "But," says Mr. Jackson, 
 " the germ of the ' Parsifal ' music-drama was 
 born in Wagner's mind much earlier than 1877. 
 The first portions were the ' Abendmahl ' scene 
 and the ' Good Friday Magic' The latter is 
 thought to date from the year 1857. Professor 
 Tappert says: 'Wagner told me (in 1877) that 
 in the fifties, when in Zurich, he took possession 
 on a Good Friday of a charming new house, and 
 that, inspired by the beautiful spring weather, 
 he wrote out the sketch that very day of the 
 Good Friday music.'" From a letter of his to 
 Tichatschek (the tenor), dated Zurich, February 
 9, 1857, Professor Tappert believes that he is 
 justified in coming to the conclusion that 1857 
 is the date to be adopted. The passage in his 
 letter is quoted by Mr. Jackson, and reads : " At 
 Easter I shall take possession of a very charming 
 little villa near Zurich, with a pretty garden, in
 
 THE BOOK OF "PARSIFAL." 89 
 
 a glorious position, just like I have so long de- 
 sired. There I shall soon get settled and begin 
 work in earnest." According to Mr. Dann- 
 reuther, Wagner began to sketch the music of 
 the separate acts of the work in his sixty-fifth 
 year. The sketch of the first act was completed 
 in the spring of 1878. The greater part of the 
 second act was outlined by the middle of June 
 and finished on October nth. The sketch of 
 the third act was begun after Christmas and com- 
 pleted in April, 1879. The master began the 
 instrumentation soon afterward, and finished it 
 at Palermo, January 13, 1882. The first per- 
 formance took place at Bayreuth on July 25, 
 1882, and in July and August of that year the 
 work was given sixteen times at Bayreuth. W. 
 S. B. Mathews witnessed the production of the 
 work there in 1884. He wrote : "'Parsifal,' as 
 given here, is a revelation. The performance is 
 of such a consistently elevated character, and so 
 easily carried out in every department, as to make 
 one realize that in his whole life he has never be- 
 fore witnessed an artistic presentation of opera." 
 But " Parsifal " is no opera. It is not even a 
 lyric drama. It is what the great tragedies of 
 the Greeks were — a religious ceremony. On 
 February 13, 1883, Wagner died in Venice. No 
 man ever went before his Maker with a nobler
 
 90 WAGNERIANA. 
 
 offering than " Parsifal." In all his works Wag- 
 ner had preached the gospel of self-sacrifice. In 
 " Parsifal " he returned to that beautiful Chris- 
 tian mythology from which he had drawn his in- 
 spiration for "Tannhauser" and "Lohengrin," 
 and gave to the world a passion play beside which 
 (considering the power of music) even the sacred 
 tragedy of Oberammergau must seem feeble. 
 
 It was while collecting the materials for 
 " Tannhauser " that Wagner read, among other 
 things, the mediaeval poem, " Der Wartburg- 
 krieg," which led him to study the personal 
 character of Wolfram von Eschenbach as well as 
 to perceive the availability of his " Parzival " for 
 dramatic purposes. It is aside from our direct 
 purpose, but extremely interesting, to note here 
 the astonishing extent of the preparatory stud- 
 ies which Wagner undertook in approaching all 
 of his great works, and the fidelity with which 
 he reproduced facts whenever it was possible. 
 Wolfram von Eschenbach did actually pass the 
 year 1204 at the Court of the Landgrave Herr- 
 mann of Thuringia, at the Castle Wartburg, near 
 Eisenach, where were also (according to the 
 poem) Walter von der Vogelweide, Reimar the 
 Elder, Henry of Rispach, Henry of Ofterdingen, 
 and Klingesor von Ungerland. Wolfram figures 
 in the " Wartburgkrieg " (the Wartburg contest)
 
 THE BOOK OF "PARSIFAL." 9 1 
 
 as a legendary personage, but it is not at all im- 
 probable that he really did take part in such a 
 contest as Wagner has pictured in " Tannhauser." 
 The poet-composer, at any rate, has been so 
 truthful as to make the character of Wolfram in 
 the opera consistent with that of the real man, 
 and to make him utter sentiments which are 
 in keeping with those of Wolfram's writings. 
 Bayard Taylor says that he finds spiritual mean- 
 ing shining through the lines of " Parzival." It 
 appears to him to inculcate the doctrine that 
 " peace of soul comes only through faith and 
 obedience." This is not far from the doctrine 
 inculcated by Wagner's " Parsifal." Wolfram's 
 poem opens with an introduction in which the 
 merits of true womanhood are extolled in pref- 
 erence to mere beauty. This is the very heart 
 of the controversy in the contest of song in 
 " Tannhauser," and Wolfram takes the same 
 position there, opposing Tannhauser's rash ad- 
 vocacy of the delights of sensual love. It is not 
 strange that Wagner, whose life-work was large- 
 ly devoted to preaching the salvation of man 
 through the pure love of woman, should have 
 studied the works of Wolfram and drawn from 
 them, first " Lohengrin," and afterward the sacred 
 music-drama " Parsifal." It is a pity that we 
 know so little about Wolfram's life. That he
 
 92 WAGNERIANA. 
 
 was a Bavarian is gathered from his own state- 
 ment (Stanza 12 1, Line 7, Canto Gurnemanz, 
 " Parzival"), and that he was poor and obliged 
 to subsist after the precarious fashion of mediaeval 
 minstrels, is tolerably well proved. These and 
 the few other facts mentioned are all that we 
 know of his history ; but his nobility of character 
 is established on foundations which cannot be 
 shaken. His great poem remained unpublished 
 until 1477, when it was given to the world in 
 two volumes under the title of " Partzifal und 
 Titurel." 
 
 The story of Parsifal and his relations with 
 the Knights of the Holy Grail is one of the 
 most beautiful of the tales of chivalresque ro- 
 mance. The romance literature of the mediae- 
 val ages is divided into several cycles, of which 
 one is known as the Arthurian. The five 
 stories in this cycle are those of Merlin, Perce- 
 val, the Grail, Launcelot, and Tristan. The 
 Perceval legend, with which we are now con- 
 cerned, rests upon the Grail story, which, there- 
 fore, demands our first consideration. It is said 
 to have been introduced into Spain by the 
 Arabs, who, of course, did not endow the cup 
 with the sacred power of the Christian legend. 
 According to Wolfram, Guyot de Provins 
 (flourished 1190-95), author of a poem about
 
 THE BOOK OF "PARSIFAL:' 93 
 
 Perceval from which Wolfram translated much 
 of his own work, found an old black-letter man- 
 uscript in Arabic at Toledo. From this he 
 learned that one Flagetanis, a heathen, born be- 
 fore Christ, and celebrated for his knowledge of 
 the dark arts, had read in the stars that there 
 would appear a thing called the Gral, and that 
 whosoever should be called to its service would 
 be blessed. Guyot promptly went into exten- 
 sive researches for the purpose of ascertaining 
 whether anyone had ever been found worthy 
 of this service, and, as the house of Anjou was 
 in power, Guyot, after the manner of flattering 
 troubadours, proceeded to discover that in re- 
 mote times the Gral had been intrusted to the 
 keeping of one Titurel, a fabulous king of the 
 Anjou dynasty. It is doubtful whether Guyot 
 ever saw the black-letter manuscript except 
 with his mind's eye. Simrock, who translated 
 Wolfram's poem into modern German, thinks 
 that the Gral legend is of Provencal origin. 
 He quotes in evidence Dietz's " Etymologisches 
 Worterbuch der Romanischen Sprachen " 
 (1855), which says that "even now in Southern 
 France 'grazal,' 'grazau,' ' grial,' ' grau,' are 
 used for various kinds of vessels." Perplexity 
 has prevailed over all attempts at showing the 
 true meaning of the word " grail ; " but in view
 
 94 WA GNERIA NA . 
 
 of the tenacity of archaic words among provin- 
 cial people, Simrock's evidence appears to the 
 writer to be excellent, especially when coupled 
 with the fact that in that Provencal version of 
 the story on which Guyot's poem is undoubt- 
 edly founded, and which therefore antedates 
 Wolfram's, the grail is a cup. 
 
 According to Wolfram, sixty thousand angels 
 who wished to drive God out of heaven made 
 a crown for Lucifer. When the archangel Mi- 
 chael dashed it from his head a stone fell out, 
 and this became the Grail. Robert de Borron, 
 a trouvere, born near Meaux, wrote (about 
 1170-80) the Provencal version which has been 
 referred to. It was called " Joseph of Arima- 
 thea," or "The History of the Holy Grail," and 
 in it Perceval (Wagner's Parsifal) was undoubt- 
 edly mentioned. Now, how did this hero of a 
 French romance come to be that of one of the 
 British Arthurian legends ? And here we are 
 confronted with evidence that seems to prove 
 Perceval to have been of British origin, for one 
 writer derives his name from " perchen," a root 
 signifying possession, and " mail" (initially in- 
 flected "vail"), a cup, and surmises that the 
 earliest form of the name was Percheuval, 
 meaning cup-holder or grail-keeper. Whether 
 this be the true explanation of the name or not,
 
 THE BOOK OF "PARSIFAL." 95 
 
 it strikes us as being far more acceptable than 
 that which Wagner made for the purpose of his 
 drama, deriving the name from Arabic " Fal- 
 parsi," foolish pure one. 
 
 The exploits of Arthur were compiled by 
 Geoffrey of Monmouth. He died in 1 154, the 
 year in which Henry II. ascended the throne. 
 Henry was of the house of Anjou, and united 
 under his sceptre the crowns of England, Nor- 
 mandy, Anjou, and a great part of Southern 
 France. In his reign (1154-89) flourished Wal- 
 ter Map, an Archdeacon of Oxford. His chief 
 work, according to Professor Morley, consisted 
 in introducing the Holy Grail into the ro- 
 mances which existed before his time, and mak- 
 ing it the pivot around which they all revolved. 
 And here, as Professor Dippold notes in his 
 " Great Epics of Mediaeval Germany," we have 
 an explanation of the manner in which the 
 French and English versions of Perceval and 
 the Grail legend became intermingled. The 
 unification of England and parts of France un- 
 der one monarch was directly favorable to such 
 a result. It accounts for the fact, too, that al- 
 most simultaneously with Robert de Borron, as 
 far as we know now, Chretien de Troyes wrote 
 a " Conte de Graal." His poem does not give 
 a complete account of the adventures of Perce-
 
 g6 WAGXERIANA. 
 
 val, and Wolfram, who mentions him, accuses 
 him of having incorrectly told the sacred story. 
 The Grail romance, as written by Borron, 
 does not mention the stone from Lucifer's 
 crown, which afterward became the sacred cup 
 used by Christ at the Last Supper. According 
 to tradition, Pilate permitted Joseph of Arima- 
 thea to take the body of Jesus down from the 
 cross, and gave him " son vaisseul," the sacred 
 cup, in which Joseph piously collected the Sav- 
 iour's blood, and the lance with which the 
 Master's side was pierced. Joseph and his 
 brother-in-law Bron (subsequently dubbed " le 
 roi pecheur ") went westward and the Grail was 
 transferred to the keeping of Bron, who became 
 the head of the line of Grail-warders. Borron, 
 the reader will note, did not discover any black- 
 letter manuscript with evidence that his sover- 
 eign's ancestors were the warders. Bron re- 
 mains on the Continent, while Alan, his son, 
 settles in Britain, where he becomes the father 
 of Perceval. Bron has kept the Grail and all 
 knowledge pertaining to it profoundly secret 
 from everyone save Alan. Perceval is to be the 
 third of the race to see the Grail, but after pass- 
 ing through a perilous quest. In the meantime 
 Perceval has become a knight of Arthur's round 
 table, and starts on his journey. After various
 
 THE BOOK OF "PARSIFAL:' 9/ 
 
 adventures he sees his grandfather, the Grail, 
 and the holy spear, without knowing in whose 
 presence he is, or making any inquiries. Here 
 we have the origin of the idea of Parsifal's be- 
 ing a guileless fool. In a second attempt the 
 knight is more successful. Bron reveals him- 
 self, explains the mysteries, and tells the pre- 
 cious truths which Joseph had ordered should 
 be told only to the third of his lineage. Bron 
 dies and Perceval becomes keeper of the Grail. 
 In this simple story, which is, of course, told 
 with a great elaboration of detail, are contained 
 the elements of the romance of Wolfram von 
 Eschenbach. There is a version of the tale in 
 the Welsh Mabinogion, which is thought by 
 some to be the primitive source of the Parsifal 
 legend. This story of " Peredur the Brave Son 
 of Evrawe " is found in the " Red Book of 
 Hergest," of which a translation is preserved in 
 the library of Jesus College, Oxford. Professor 
 Dippold gives a full review of this old epic in 
 his volume previously mentioned, and wisely 
 argues that if it were the primitive source of the 
 story it would be a much simpler version. It 
 is a long and complicated tale, and contains 
 abundant internal evidence that it has been sub- 
 jected to that accretive process through which 
 all legends pass with the advance of time. 
 
 7
 
 98 WAGNER J ANA. 
 
 In Wolfram's epic Parzival is the son of 
 Gamuret and Herzoloide. Gam u ret is slain in 
 a tournament, and Herzoloide, fearing that her 
 son may meet with a similar fate, brings him up 
 in the forest of Soltane, in utter ignorance of 
 chivalry. But the youth one day sees three 
 knights, whom he takes for angels. They tell 
 him that if he wishes to become a hero of chiv- 
 alry he must go to King Arthur's Court. Her- 
 zoloide, sore at heart, is forced to yield to her 
 son's entreaties. Before letting him depart, 
 however, she dresses him in the costume of a 
 fool. After some stirring adventures he reaches 
 Arthur's Court, where his manly beauty com- 
 mands admiration in spite of his strange attire. 
 The youth becomes a knight and does some 
 brave deeds, after which he comes to the castle 
 of an old warrior named Gurnemanz, who gives 
 him much instruction. Parzival goes forward 
 again and eventually arrives at the castle of the 
 Grail. Here occurs a scene very similar to the 
 first scene in the castle in Wagner's drama. 
 The sacred lance, dripping with blood, is car- 
 ried around the hall, and Urepanse de Joie, the 
 purest of women, enters, bearing the Holy 
 Grail. The sacred stone is placed in front of 
 the lord of the castle, whose face shows that he 
 is suffering great agony, and the feast of the
 
 THE BOOK OF "PARSIFAL." 99 
 
 Grail takes place. Parzival asks no questions 
 and learns nothing. Before departing he sees 
 in an adjoining room a very aged man (Titurel) 
 reposing on a bed. As he is leaving the castle 
 the next morning he is scolded by a knight for 
 not asking the question on which depends the 
 recovery of the sick lord of the Grail. He after- 
 ward learns where it is that he has been. 
 
 He returns to the Court of King Arthur and 
 is admitted to the fellowship of the Round 
 Table. At a feast there appears a woman called 
 Condrie la Sorciere, of dread appearance, the 
 terrible messenger of the Holy Grail, who over- 
 whelms Parzival with abuse because he did not 
 ask the question, and says to King Arthur: 
 
 The glory of the Table Round, 
 Its power, far and wide renowned, 
 By Percival has been impaired, 
 Since he its fellowship has shared. 
 
 At the same time Condrie summons the 
 Knights of the Round Table to set free the 
 maidens imprisoned in the magic Chateau Mer- 
 veilleux. Parzival renounces the Round Table, 
 believing himself unworthy, and departs in 
 quest of the Holy Grail. He falls in with a 
 hermit named Trevrecent, who tells him that 
 every Good Friday a dove descends from heaven
 
 I CO WAGNERIANA. 
 
 and places a wafer on the Holy Grail, " by 
 which the latter receives the power of giving 
 eternal life, and providing its servants with all 
 kinds of meat and drink." Then the hermit 
 goes on to tell him that " Amfortas, the present 
 King of the Holy Grail, having yielded to the 
 allurement of forbidden love, had been severely 
 punished for his offence. In a combat with a 
 pagan he was wounded by a poisoned lance, 
 and since that time had been suffering intensely 
 and no one could cure him, while, on the other 
 hand, the sight of the Holy Grail prevented him 
 from dying. At last there appeared, the hermit 
 continues, a prophecy written on the Holy 
 Grail, saying that whenever a knight should 
 come and ask for the cause of the king's suffer- 
 ings, without being reminded of it, the king 
 would recover and his crown devolve on that 
 knight." Thus Parzival learns of his error. 
 He repents, and Trevrecent gives him absolu- 
 tion. 
 
 Much of the poem is now taken up with the 
 struggles between the good knights and the 
 powers of darkness, one of whose chief instru- 
 ments is the beautiful woman Orgueilleuse. She 
 tempts Gawain, but he conquers, and frees the 
 maidens imprisoned by the magician Klingschor 
 in the Chateau Merveilleux. Parzival, in the
 
 THE BOOK OF "PARSIFAL." IOI 
 
 meantime, is engaged in other struggles, after 
 which he rides to Mont Salvage, prays before 
 the Holy Grail, and asks the suffering king the 
 all-important question. Amfortas recovers and 
 the crown is given to Parzival. And now we 
 have reviewed the entire material from which 
 Wagner made his marvellous music-drama. 
 
 Parsifal is a guileless fool because he was 
 brought up in ignorance of the world by his 
 mother, Heart of Sorrows. He, too, sees three 
 knights in the forest and fares forth after them. 
 But how Wagner has transformed all the rest of 
 his material ! The sacred spear is once more, as 
 it was in Chretien's poem, the lance which 
 wounded Amfortas and which alone can cure 
 him by its touch, but it is in the power of Kling- 
 sor, the magician. Condrie and Orgueilleuse 
 are moulded into one under the name of Kundry, 
 and it is Parsifal who withstands the temptation 
 instead of Gawain. He recovers the sacred 
 spear, and, by making with it the sign of the 
 cross, destroys the enchantment of the Chateau 
 Merveilleux. Enlightened by pity, he returns 
 after a long and weary search to the Graalburg 
 and heals the sufferer's wound. This enlighten- 
 ment by pity is a purely Wagnerian touch, for 
 pity is the ethical principle of Wagner's philoso- 
 pher, Arthur Schopenhauer. It was Hanslick
 
 102 IV A GNERIA NA . 
 
 who first called attention to this beautiful em- 
 ployment of Schopenhauer's idea. It is unneces- 
 sary to speak at length of the sublime style in 
 which Wagner has treated the Grail supper and 
 the Good Friday spell, which are but scantily 
 outlined in the original. Nor is it necessary to 
 expatiate qn the manner in which, after trans- 
 ferring Gawain's temptation to Parsifal, he has 
 expanded and ennobled the scene. These dra- 
 matic pictures speak for themselves. How much, 
 too, has the poet composer deepened the char- 
 acter of Kundry by slightly changing an old 
 legend, according to which she was the daughter 
 of Herodias, cursed for having laughed at the 
 head of John the Baptist on a charger. Wagner 
 makes her a woman who laughed at Christ bear- 
 ing the cross. Thenceforward, smitten by His 
 glance, she is cursed with laughter, and wanders 
 through the world in search of her Redeemer. 
 After Parsifal has conquered Klingsor and dis- 
 enchanted his castle, Kundry, who has hitherto 
 known a divided service, seeks to become a vas- 
 sal of the Grail. On meeting Parsifal again, 
 this laughter-cursed woman weeps, and straight- 
 way he baptizes her and she is redeemed. Wol- 
 zogen points out that the union in Kundry's nat- 
 ure of hostile and helpful traits has its origin in 
 the Germanic Walkiire myths, and that Wagner
 
 THE BOOK OF "PARSIFAL." 103 
 
 has preserved it for dramatic purposes. The re- 
 sult is a picture of emotional struggle such as 
 cannot be surpassed in the entire literature of 
 the stage. Her evil master, Klingsor, is the 
 " nameless enemy of the Grail," the chief of the 
 powers of darkness. He has been confounded 
 with Klingesor von Ungerland, the minnesinger. 
 That this is a mistake is shown by the fact that 
 the latter was a contemporary of Wolfram and 
 contended against him in song at the Wartburg 
 in 1204. The characters of Trevrecent, the holy 
 hermit, and Gurnemanz, the aged servitor of the 
 Grail and instructor in chivalry, are effectively 
 moulded into one by Wagner under the name of 
 the second. 
 
 Amfortas is said to have a double symbolism. 
 He is the personification of that suffering through 
 sin which has penetrated even the sacred com- 
 munity of the Knights of the Grail. All the 
 commentators say that he also typifies the suf- 
 ferings of Christ. Perhaps this was Wagner's 
 intention, but to the writer's mind Amfortas 
 more beautifully symbolizes the misery brought 
 upon mankind through yielding to the lusts of 
 the flesh, for it is Parsifal who represents the 
 Redeemer throughout the drama. He repre- 
 sents Him when he is anointed by Gurnemanz, 
 when his feet are washed by the repentant Kun-
 
 1 04 WA GNERIA NA . 
 
 dry, and when he baptizes her in that sublime 
 scene which only a God-gifted genius could have 
 dared to place upon the modern stage. But 
 more than all, He surely is the Redeemer when 
 He touches Amfortas with the holy spear and 
 bids him 
 
 Be whole, forgiven, and absolved. 
 
 After quoting Voltaire's lament that the em- 
 pire of reason was driving " the airy reign of 
 fancy far away from the earth," Lord Wood- 
 houselee said : " It will require a genius of very 
 remarkable order ever to revive among the pol- 
 ished nations of Europe a fervid taste for the ro- 
 mance of literature." Lord Woodhouselee died 
 in the year in which Wagner was born. He could 
 not foresee the wonderful use to which Wagner 
 was to put the forgotten lays of Robert de Bor- 
 ron, Chretien de Troyes, and Wolfram von Es- 
 chenbach. Johannes Scherr calls Wolfram's 
 " Parzival " the first great work of German 
 idealism, and Vilmar classes it as a psychological 
 epic by the side of Goethe's " Faust." If these 
 estimates are just, where are we to place " Parsi- 
 fal," the inspired dramatic " Te Deum " of Rich- 
 ard Warner ?
 
 II. — A Study in "Tristan." 
 
 After a very impressive performance of 
 Wagner's " Tristan and Isolde," as the curtain 
 was slowly descending before the dead bodies 
 of the Princess, her knightly lover, and the 
 faithful esquire, a young lady, well clad, and 
 bearing evidence in her face of having been 
 reared within the confines of civilization, arose 
 to depart, saying : " Isn't it silly ! " 
 
 If she had asserted that it was tiresome, one 
 might have set her down as of the number who 
 prefer the sprightly fancies of Charles H. Hoyt to 
 the masterful creations of William Shakespeare, 
 and, while admitting the possibility of a basis for 
 her judgment, have silently condoled with her 
 lack of aspiration. If she had declared that it 
 was immoral, one might have agreed with her 
 very heartily, and taken the comfortable ground 
 so judiciously staked out and claimed by learned 
 commentators, that we are not under the neces- 
 sity of discussing the morals of a tragedy in 
 order to estimate its value as an art work.
 
 106 WAGNERIANA. 
 
 But to hold that " Tristan and Isolde," or its 
 fateful termination, is "silly," is assuming a 
 position which is tolerable to neither gods nor 
 men. The most adroit and well-equipped op- 
 ponent of Wagner's ideas could not demon- 
 strate that proposition without resorting to that 
 impregnable logic which is doubtless the famil- 
 iar weapon of the proponent, and which sums 
 up the be-all and the end-all in one word — 
 " because." 
 
 Fortunately, the value of " Tristan and 
 Isolde," literary, dramatic, tragic, musical, 
 moral or immoral, is not a matter for such easy 
 decision. The extreme Wagnerites, whose self- 
 contentment is enviable, have already decided 
 that this is Wagner's greatest work, and that it 
 must live even if the others should chance to 
 perish. The Italianissimi believe in their souls 
 — if they can ever find them without the aid of 
 a microscope — that this is Wagner's most fiend- 
 ish invention, and that it, sooner than anything 
 else he wrote, must give way to a restoration to 
 the musical throne of those royal tramps, " Sem- 
 iramide " and " Lucrezia Borgia." To those not 
 interested in the discussion of dramatico-musi- 
 cal art the heat of partisanship so constantly 
 displayed must be somewhat tiresome as well 
 as surprising. Thoughtful persons will wonder
 
 A STUDY IN "TRISTAN." IOJ 
 
 why music lovers cannot seek for that which is 
 true, beautiful, and good in their art without wax- 
 ing angry in the search ; and those of less con- 
 siderate mood will inevitably quote the familiar 
 lines written for such occasions : 
 
 Strange all this difference should be 
 'Twixt tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee. 
 
 It is not my purpose at present to discuss 
 " Tristan and Isolde " in its entirety. This tre- 
 mendous tragedy would furnish material for 
 a volume, for it would be difficult to find an 
 art work produced by a master genius in such a 
 lofty and continued state of enthusiasm, devo- 
 tion, and self-abandonment. The life-blood of 
 Richard Wagner's genius was called upon to 
 shed its brightest drops for this achievement. 
 The man made unparalleled demands upon him- 
 self and met them with unsurpassed efforts. 
 He threw aside completely and forever every 
 prop and stay of tradition, and launched him- 
 self upon the fathomless sea of his own origi- 
 nality, caring not whether he swam or sank, but 
 ready to follow the needle of his theoretic com- 
 pass toward the new country to which he be- 
 lieved it pointed. He tells us that in the com- 
 position of this work he went far beyond his 
 theories: but after all he went only whither they
 
 108 WAGNER1ANA. 
 
 led him. It is given to very few men to see the 
 ultimate, logical outcome of a theory, whether 
 it be of medicine, of art, or of conduct. It is 
 safe to say that Richard Wagner, toiling over 
 the score of " Lohengrin," never had a perfect 
 vision of the "Tristan " that was to be. And I 
 may be forgiven for indulging in the belief that 
 Wagner, penning the inspired pages of " Die 
 Gotterdammerung," made some allowance for 
 the variation of that theoretic compass which in 
 " Tristan " carried him out of the true course. 
 
 The dramatic weakness of " Tristan and 
 Isolde" is to be found in its second act. Ac- 
 cording to Quintilian, it was the custom of the 
 Greek and Roman masters of oratory to begin 
 with an exordium, then advance their argu- 
 ments with the weakest in the middle, and close 
 with a forcible peroration. " Tristan and 
 Isolde " is built on a plan resembling this, for 
 its weakest dramatic argument is in the middle 
 — the second act. But the purposes of the ora- 
 tor and of the dramatist are so dissimilar that 
 the plans and forms of the one will not fill the 
 requirements of the other. A successful trage- 
 dy begins with Fate pointing her inexorable 
 finger at an inevitable doom, and thencefor- 
 ward all incidents in the drama hurry the hero 
 and heroine toward the catastrophe. At the
 
 A STUDY IN "TRISTAN." IO9 
 
 first glance it seems as if there were no tragedy 
 which could answer this demand with more 
 startling completeness than " Tristan and 
 Isolde." So far as its incidents are concerned 
 this is true. But there must be no turning 
 aside from the onward movement of the events, 
 no consideration of secondary matters ; and 
 this requirement is not met in " Tristan and 
 Isolde." 
 
 Mr. Krehbiel, who is one of the discriminating 
 lovers of the great German master, has pointed 
 out the defect of the second act of this tragedy. 
 He has said that the long passages of word-play 
 and metaphysical hair-splitting (these are not his 
 words) about night and day, and love and obliv- 
 ion, are poor dramatic material, and that half 
 an hour of this sort of thing is too much. This 
 is undeniably true. But the critic might have 
 gone further and said, that Wagner turned 
 aside from the straightforward development of 
 his plot to put into the mouths of his leading 
 personages philosophical utterances whose un- 
 derlying ideas are not essential elements of 
 the passion called love. Mr. Krehbiel has said 
 that the poet-composer here endeavored to lay 
 bare to us the workings of the hearts of his 
 characters. But speculations in pessimistic 
 philosophy, while they may be in touch with
 
 IIO WAGNERIANA. 
 
 the spirit of gloom which pervades a tragedy, 
 are not likely to be the accompaniments of a 
 love scene, except in a state of cultivated civil- 
 ization so artificial as to be unimaginable any- 
 where outside of Boston or the famous Con- 
 cord School. Beyond doubt Swinburne made 
 his Iseult reach the kernel of the situation 
 when she checked Tristan's scholastic wooing 
 with the lines quoted by Mr. Krehbiel : 
 
 I have heard men sing of love a simpler way 
 Than these wrought riddles made of night and day. 
 
 In an article published in Scribner's Maga- 
 zine, W. F. Apthorp undertook to show the 
 metaphysical influences which governed Wag- 
 ner in his development of the scheme of a mu- 
 sic-drama to be called " Siegfried's Tod,'' but 
 which finally became the great Trilogy. These 
 influences were found in the pessimistic philos- 
 ophy of Arthur Schopenhauer, and are those 
 which operated upon Wagner's mind in the con- 
 struction of " Tristan and Isolde." Schopen- 
 hauer's ethics demand sympathy for suffering, 
 but above all else a mortification through ascet- 
 icism of the will to live. Our world, according 
 to this philosopher, is the very worst kind of a 
 world, and the oblivious night of non-existence
 
 A STUDY IN " TRISTAN." Ill 
 
 is far preferable. Sympathy softens suffering; 
 asceticism destroys it by annihilating the will 
 to live. This is a complete negation of the 
 sensuous nature of man, and bears a strong re- 
 semblance to the Buddhistic doctrine of Nir- 
 vana — the final state of saints made pure by 
 asceticism, and translated into celestial uncon- 
 sciousness. The negation of the sensuous nat- 
 ure of man for some reason does not appear 
 to be successfully accomplished by Tristan or 
 Isolde, except in the latters death, which, like 
 the magnificent suicide of Brunnhilde, takes 
 place when she has nothing more to live for. 
 
 This pessimistic philosophy, dragged into the 
 love scene by the neck as it is, will not do Wag- 
 ner's bidding. For hearken to the prayer of 
 the lovers after their long-drawn discussion of 
 the evils of day and glories of night : 
 
 O sink' hernieder 
 Nacht der Liebe ; 
 gieb vergessen 
 dass ich lebe. 
 
 Which means, " Oh, sink down hither, night of 
 love, and grant me to forget that I live." If 
 anyone can reconcile a wish to forget that he is 
 alive with the presence in his soul of a tumult- 
 uous passion of love, stronger than honor, duty,
 
 112 WAGNERIANA. 
 
 and friendship, let him do so. It is only the 
 overwhelming sense of guilt, the unutterable re- 
 morse following such love that can bring about 
 a full and perfect negation of the will to live. 
 The difficulty is that Arthur Schopenhauer's 
 philosophy, as set forth in his principal book, 
 " Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung," is a sub- 
 jective idealism, beginning with the proposition 
 "the world is my notion," and proceeding 
 thence to the construction of a system tolerat- 
 ing no realism, not even that of a man's own 
 body, which it regards as nothing but the will 
 objectified — the will become notion or represen- 
 tation. The absolute incompatibility of such a 
 system of philosophy with a love like that of 
 Tristan and Mark's queen is not hard to com- 
 prehend. 
 
 Nor is it difficult to discern that feature of 
 Schopenhauer's philosophy which gave the 
 whole an especial importance and favor in 
 Wagner's esteem. In Book III. of the work 
 above mentioned the metaphysician sets forth 
 a theory of art. Shorn of its philosophical ter- 
 minology, and presented as plainly as possible, 
 it is this : When the human mind rises from the 
 study of the location, period, causes, and ten- 
 dencies of things to the undivided examination 
 of their essence, and when, further, this consid-
 
 A STUD Y W " TRISTAN'. " 1 1 3 
 
 eration takes place, not through the medium of 
 abstract thought, but in calm contemplation of 
 the immediately present natural object, then 
 the mind is brought face to face with eternal 
 Ideas. Art, the work of genius, repeats these 
 eternal Ideas, which are the essential and per- 
 manent things in the phenomena of the world. 
 In other words, art endeavors to exhibit to us 
 the eternal essence of things by means of proto- 
 types. And here we come upon the one feature 
 of Schopenhauer's system which Wagner suc- 
 cessfully used. His greatest characters stand 
 for the universal, primeval, and eternal essence 
 of manhood and womanhood, uncultivated, un- 
 civilized, unhampered. It is this which takes 
 hold upon our hearts, which thrills and renews 
 us, which fills us full to the lips with the enthu- 
 siasm of deathless youth. 
 
 And it is because Tristan and Isolde are two 
 fundamental universal types, representing to us 
 the unartificial man and woman, acting under 
 the influence of a purely natural and unrestrained 
 passion, that we are vexed and disappointed at 
 their long-winded word-splitting. You will find 
 no such blunder in the great love-duet of Sieg- 
 mund and Sieglinde, in " Die Walkure." No 
 sooner has Sieglinde told the story of the sword 
 in the tree, and expressed her longing for the 
 8
 
 114 IV A GNERIA NA . 
 
 defender who should draw it forth, than Sieg- 
 mund snatches her to his bosom and cries : 
 
 He holds thee fast, 
 
 That friend for whom 
 Were weapon and wife appointed ! 
 
 Deep in my bosom 
 
 Burns brightly the oath 
 That binds me forever to thee. 
 
 After he has continued in a similar strain for 
 a few lines the curtain falls, the moonlight 
 streams into the hall, Siegmund leads Sieglinde 
 to a seat, and sings to her that most marvellous 
 of all love's lullabies, beginning : 
 
 Winter storms have waned 
 'Fore the storms of May ; 
 In wondrous splendor 
 Wakens the spring. 
 
 No poet that ever lived sang a love-song with 
 more unerring instinct. Again, in " Siegfried," 
 when the young hero comes at last to the fire- 
 girt Valkyr's rock-hewn bed-chamber, he dallies 
 with no philosophical distinctions, but speaks 
 out straight and true like a man : 
 
 On rapturous lips 
 My eyes look for pasture ; 
 With fathomless thirst 
 My mouth is on fire.
 
 A STUDY IN "TRISTAN." 1 1 5 
 
 Not Swinburne, nor Baudelaire, nor Francois 
 Villon, nor all the " sad, bad, mad, glad " broth- 
 ers who have made love their life study, could 
 have written with more certain note. It is, 
 then, because these characters just named do 
 not smother love in philosophy, but treat it as 
 a plain, unadulterated condition of the heart, 
 which has always persistently refused to be 
 guided or influenced by reason, that they seem 
 to us to come nearer to being those funda- 
 mental types for which Wagner wisely sought. 
 When you get right down to the bottom of the 
 matter, the philosophizing of Tristan and his 
 lady love is almost as absurd as King Mark's 
 sermonizing after the discovery of their guilt. 
 
 The late John McCullough is credited with 
 saying that Hamlet was the one part in which 
 any good actor could make a hit if he would 
 only attend to the stage " business " and let the 
 metaphysics alone. Love is a good deal like 
 Hamlet. The metaphysics may be left for the 
 reflections of one's hours of solitude. In active 
 practice the " business " must absorb one's entire 
 attention.
 
 III.— The Endurance of Wagner's Works. 
 
 It is frequently asserted by those who are not 
 in accord with Wagner's ideas of dramatic music 
 that his works are simply sensations of the day, 
 and that after a time this temporary craze will 
 pass by and the world will return to its old love 
 of Neapolitan opera. I am not prepared to as- 
 sert that the world will not tire of Wagner. The 
 constant endeavor of blind partisans to convince 
 music-lovers that he is the only composer worth 
 hearing, and that Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven 
 are antiquated and uninteresting, is enough to 
 make the world turn against the Bayreuth ge- 
 nius. But it seems to me that there is room 
 enough in the affection of the human race for all 
 that is good in music, and while I fail to see any 
 disposition to forget Wagner's mighty predeces- 
 sors, I am equally unable to perceive any evi- 
 dence that the world regards his works as a fancy 
 of the moment. They hold their possession of 
 the stage very firmly and are being performed in 
 more places now than ever before. As a proof
 
 ENDURANCE OF WAGNER'S WORKS. \\J 
 
 that Wagner shows no signs of waning in public 
 estimation I think the chronological argument 
 is a good one. It is a common mistake to un- 
 derestimate Wagner's early works. That they 
 are really valuable creations may be demonstrated 
 in many ways, but perhaps the mere fact of en- 
 durance will strike the average thinker as forci- 
 bly as any argument. It is a common practice 
 to say that Mozart's " Don Giovanni " estab- 
 lishes its claim on immortality by the firm hold 
 it retains on public affection in spite of changes 
 in taste and the many other changes wrought, 
 as Carlyle has it, " not by time, but in time." 
 Shakespeare's claim is often put upon the same 
 ground. Well, it is four years more than a cen- 
 tury since " Don Giovanni" was first heard, and 
 that is a very long life for an opera. 
 
 How long has " Rienzi " held the stage ? The 
 latter end of the present year will witness the 
 forty -ninth anniversary of its production in 
 Dresden, under Wagner's own direction, in 1842. 
 
 But with most people " Rienzi " does not 
 count, because it is not genuine Wagner music. 
 It was written before his regeneration. Then 
 let us peep at the " Flying Dutchman," in which 
 the Wagner of the future is so clearly foreshad- 
 owed in leit motives, overture form, declama- 
 tion, instrumentation, and distribution of scenic
 
 1 1 8 WA G NEK I A NA . 
 
 music. This romantic opera, as its maker called 
 it, was produced at the Royal Opera in Dresden 
 on January 1 1, 1843, with Wechter as the Dutch- 
 man and Mme. Schroder-Devrient as Senta. It 
 has, therefore, held the stage for forty-eight 
 years, and its hold appears to be quite as firm 
 now as at any time in the course of its existence. 
 
 Let us advance now to " Tannhauser," which 
 is still more Wagnerian. This work was brought 
 out at the Royal Opera in Dresden on Octo- 
 ber 20, 1845, and has therefore held the stage 
 forty-six years with constantly widening popu- 
 larity. It is to-day one of the standard operas 
 in the repertoire of the best opera-houses, and, 
 with a good cast, is always sure of a large audi- 
 ence. And next we come to " Lohengrin," which 
 may be regarded as fairly if not fully illustrating 
 Wagner's dramatic principles. It was produced 
 at Weimar, August 28, 1850, under the direction 
 of Franz Liszt, with Beck as Lohengrin, Milde 
 as Telramund, Hofer as the King, Frau Agathe 
 as Elsa, and Frau Fastinger as Ortrud. Its popu- 
 larity is very wide, and it is constantly growing. 
 
 Verdi's "Nabuco" was produced in 1842, 
 Mendelssohn's " Elijah " in 1846, Verdi's " Rigo- 
 letto" in 185 1, and Gounod's "Faust" in 1859. 
 " Nabuco " is dead to the world. " Rienzi " has 
 held the stage. Mendelssohn's " Elijah " is known
 
 ENDURANCE OF WAGNER'S WORKS. 1 19 
 
 throughout the English and German-speaking 
 parts of the earth. Yet the " Flying Dutchman " 
 is three years older and " Tannhauser" one year. 
 No opera is better known and more justly ad- 
 mired than Gounod's " Faust," which contains 
 some of the most faithful dramatic music to be 
 found outside of Wagner ; yet " Rienzi " is sev- 
 enteen years older, the " Flying Dutchman " 
 sixteen, "Tannhauser" fourteen, and "Lohen- 
 grin" nine. And the world hears at least two 
 of these works almost, if not quite, as often as it 
 hears " Faust," one of the most popular operas 
 ever written. 
 
 As for Wagner's later works, those in which 
 his theories are more fully exemplified, it can be 
 said that they have held the stage a very respecta- 
 ble time in spite of constant vociferations on the 
 part of their opponents that they must soon go 
 to the grave. And to-day they are beginning to 
 carry the war into Africa. " Die Meistersinger " 
 has planted itself in the Italian camp beside 
 " Rienzi," the " Flying Dutchman," " Tann- 
 hauser," and " Lohengrin," and there is — O shade 
 of Chorley ! — talk of " Tristan und Isolde." 
 
 This last-named drama, the extreme illustra- 
 tion of Wagner's beliefs, has held the stage over 
 a quarter of a century, having been produced in 
 Munich, under the direction of Dr. von Bulow,
 
 120 WAGNERIANA. 
 
 on June 10, 1865, with the following cast : Tris- 
 tan, Ludwig Schnorr von Carolsfeld ; Kurvenal, 
 Mitterwurzer ; King Mark, Zottmayer; Isolde, 
 Mme. Schnorr von Carolsfeld; Brangane, Mile. 
 Deinet. "Die Meistersinger" has been before 
 the public with increasing favor since June 21, 
 1868, when it was brought out at Munich under 
 Von Biilow. And as for the Nibelung tetral- 
 ogy, the crowning glory of the lyric stage, that 
 operatic thing which makes the anti-Wagnerites 
 shudder, even that has clung to existence for 
 fifteen years, and is growing stronger and more 
 healthy every year. 
 
 The number of operas older than Wagner's 
 early works and still performed is surprisingly 
 small when one comes to think of it, and the 
 number preserving a wide popularity is smaller 
 still. Without taking the trouble to count them, 
 one may hazard the guess that there are not 
 more than twenty-five, and of these several, like 
 " Lucia," " Semiramide," and " Norma," are only 
 given in serious artistic communities for the pur- 
 pose of exploiting the special abilities of some 
 great vocalist. It seems fair to expect, then, as 
 Wagner's earlier works have kept their hold so 
 firmly, that his later ones will not fail to do so. 
 Let us remember that this very " Lohengrin," 
 which is so melodious and so popular, was writ-
 
 ENDURANCE OF WAGNER'S WORKS. 121 
 
 ten at a time when Wagner's mind was full of 
 his theories, for " Opera and Drama," as Mr. 
 Matthews cleverly notes in one of his books, 
 was published in 185 1, and the two works " may 
 well enough be accepted as mutually explana- 
 tory." 
 
 This point is worthy of note, because it is not 
 an uncommon mistake for lovers of the great 
 master to suppose that his earlier works do not 
 illustrate his ideas. Even in " Rienzi " the in- 
 dividuality of the man may be discovered. It 
 is well known that this work was written partly 
 at Meyerbeer, whose influence Wagner hoped 
 would secure a performance of it at the Paris 
 Grand Opera. As Mr. Matthews justly says, 
 Wagner might have met with more success if he 
 had not alarmed Meyerbeer with a prospect of 
 successful rivalry. In this very work, written 
 for the purpose of gaining an entrance where 
 Meyerbeer and Rossini were the rulers, the in- 
 dividuality of Wagner is at times apparent. Mr. 
 Matthews has already mentioned the evidences 
 of it, and we quote his words: "The recitative 
 is largely arioso, there are long passages of solil- 
 oquy or speech-making, and the harmony has 
 that mysterious coherence peculiar to Wagner's 
 manner of associating chords. Italian as it is, 
 ' Rienzi ' could only have been written by
 
 122 IV A GNERJA NA . 
 
 Wagner, and by him only at a time when, as 
 yet, he was feeling after the style which later he 
 completely attained." 
 
 In " The Flying Dutchman," however, Wag- 
 ner had done with Italianism forever. There is 
 not a solitary measure in the work that reminds 
 one of the Italian stage. Even the brisk little 
 march at the end of the first act is German. In 
 this work the future Wagner is promised. We 
 meet with the powerful declamatory arioso style, 
 the intimate association of musical phrases with 
 the ideas of the drama, the coherent and well- 
 fashioned book, the mythical personages, the 
 marvellous instrumentation — in short, the entire 
 apparatus of " Der Ring des Nibelungen " is 
 here in embryo, and in the music-dramas which 
 were written after it an observant person can 
 very easily trace the development of Wagner's 
 ideas.
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC.
 
 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 I.— Laying the Foundations. 
 
 If any music lover desires to take up one of 
 the most fascinating departments of the history 
 of the art, let him enter upon the study of the 
 evolution of piano music. He will find some 
 difficulty in the lack of good works treating of 
 the early writers. The best, however, is Weitz- 
 mann's " Geschichte des Clavierspiels und der 
 Clavierliteratur." Why it has not been trans- 
 lated I am unable to say. It certainly ought to 
 be. The facts in the following story of the be- 
 ginnings of piano music as far as Paradies are 
 given wholly on Weitzmann's authority, except 
 where otherwise stated. 
 
 In the early part of the fifteenth century 
 flourished the celebrated organists of the Church 
 of San Marco at Venice, and thither went great 
 numbers of students and famous musicians from
 
 126 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 all parts of Europe. As far back as 1364 we find 
 that Francesco Landini, a blind poet and or- 
 ganist, was in high repute. But the first great 
 light of this Venetian school was Adrian Willaert, 
 born in 1480 at Bruges. It appears, according 
 to Weitzmann, that he did not escape the fate 
 of modern pianists. He had to teach young 
 ladies who wished to learn the fashionable in- 
 strument of the time, the monochord. In 1529 
 Elena, daughter of the poet Pietro Bimbo, wrote 
 to her father for permission to learn to play. 
 His reply is happily preserved. He says : 
 
 " As regards your request to be permitted to learn to 
 play the monochord, I reply that because of your tender 
 age it is impossible for you to know that such playing is 
 fit only for vain and frivolous women. I, however, de- 
 sire that you shall be the most amiable and the purest 
 girl on earth. Moreover, it would give you little pleas- 
 ure or fame to play ill ; but, in order to play well, you 
 would have to spend from ten to twelve years in prac- 
 tice without having time for anything else. Now, con- 
 sider whether this would be worth while. If your young 
 friends desire you to learn to play in order to give them 
 pleasure, say that you do not wish to make yourself 
 ridiculous before them, and be content with your scien- 
 tific studies and your fancy-work." 
 
 To Willaert is due the first movement of music 
 toward freedom from the old ecclesiastical modes,
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS. \2"J 
 
 and his pupil, Cypriano di Rore, went far for- 
 ward in the study of chromatic music, publish- 
 ing in 1544 his "Chromatic Madrigals." Wil- 
 laert's fantasias and ricercari are for the most 
 part founded on original themes. In his strict- 
 ly contrapuntal music, however, he follows the 
 custom of his predecessors and uses the canti 
 fermi of the church. In his treatment he em- 
 ploys the dominant, sub-dominant, and octave, 
 and makes much use of imitation. Willaert's 
 successors, previously mentioned, all followed 
 his free style, and to their united labors we owe 
 the gradual liberation of instrumental music from 
 the vocal-ecclesiastical style. The first instru- 
 mental form to be clearly established was the 
 toccata, which, with its quick passages, was de- 
 signed for the speedily vanishing tones of the 
 clavichord. The first of these compositions to 
 be printed were those of Claudio Merulo, a 
 Venetian organist, published at Rome in 1598, 
 under the title of " Toccate d' Intavolature 
 d' Organo." The title, of course, implies that 
 they were designed especially for the organ. At 
 that time there was no distinct clavichord style, 
 however, and compositions for the organ and 
 piano of the period were pretty much alike in 
 treatment. 
 
 In Merulo's toccatas we find some connection
 
 128 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 between the figured passages, and there is good 
 contrast between the melodic portions and the 
 passage work. Dr. Philip Spitta, in his great 
 " Life of Bach," says that Merulo found in the 
 toccata " a kind of composition in which he en- 
 deavored to give full play to the wealth of tone 
 possessed by the organ by alternating combina- 
 tions of brilliant running passages with sostenuto 
 sequences of harmonies." The canzona and 
 sonata (of that period) were developed by Andrea 
 and Giovanni Gabrielli. In their works the 
 melody became more important. In Giovanni's 
 canzone we meet with interesting forms, with es- 
 sentially melodic subjects always forming their 
 foundations, and with subject and counter-sub- 
 ject regularly alternating. The fugue, which has 
 become so important a study, was originally an 
 imitation of the voices in vocal music. Zarlino 
 christened it canon because it followed a canon, 
 or fixed law. The entrance into music of the 
 folk-song at the time of the Renaissance caused 
 a richer development of these old studies. The 
 instrumental writers began to take up the dance 
 forms of the people and to write courantes, 
 chaconnes, galliards, etc. These compositions 
 were received with favor. Subsequently the 
 giga was added, and a set of these dances was 
 called a suite or partita.
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS. 1 29 
 
 At first, instrumental music was simply a 
 doubling of voice parts for the purpose of ac- 
 companiment. Then compositions were written 
 to be played or sung. Consequently we find 
 that in 1547 came the first publication, that of 
 Jacob Buus's " Ricercari da cantare e sonare." 
 Two years later Willaert's fantasies for three 
 voices (vocal or instrumental) were printed, and 
 in 155 1 was issued the " Intabulatura nova di 
 varie sorte di balli da sonare per Arpichordo, 
 Clavicembalo, Spinetti e Manachordi," by vari- 
 ous authors. The upper voice of the dances in 
 this collection is supported by a simple harmony 
 in chords. In later works the accompaniment 
 is worked out in a much more interesting man- 
 ner. These dances, too, were written in the 
 church modes, and have a very dry and eccle- 
 siastical air about them, as if they belonged to 
 some ancient religious ritual, which, indeed, all 
 dances originally did. 
 
 It was in Venice that the first systematic 
 organ and piano method appeared. It was 
 written by Girolamo di Ruta and was called 
 " Prima parte del Transilvano, dialogo sopra 
 il vero moro di sonar' organo ed instrumenti 
 da penna " (1593). The second part appeared 
 in 1609. "Transilvano" refers to the Prince 
 to whom it was dedicated. Di Ruta's work 
 9
 
 130 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 teaches the keyboard, shows the position of the 
 hand and use of the fingers, explains the score, 
 and illustrates the necessity of his rules by toc- 
 catas original and selected. In the second part 
 he tells how to write a song, gives suggestions 
 for improvising, with examples, treats of the 
 church tones and the accompaniment of cho- 
 rals, and gives some suggestions about singing. 
 Weitzmann, however, gets a good deal better 
 information about fingering as it existed at that 
 time, and for a century later, from a book which 
 was published at Bologna in 1656, and reached 
 its fifth edition at Antwerp in 1690. It was 
 written by Lorenzo Penna, organist, and its title 
 is " Li Primi Albori Musicali." In it he lays 
 down the following rules : 
 
 In ascending, the fingers of the right hand 
 move one after the other — first the middle, then 
 the ring finger, again the middle, and so on in 
 alternation. Care must be taken that the fingers 
 do not strike against one another. In descend- 
 ing, the middle, followed by the index finger, is 
 used. The left hand simply reverses this pro- 
 cess. The rule for the position of the hands is 
 that they shall never lie lower than the fingers, 
 but shall be held high, with the fingers stretched 
 out. 
 
 In the following century, which brings us
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS. 
 
 131 
 
 into the days of Handel and Bach, the fingering 
 is no more rational. There is an old work by J. 
 F. B. Caspar Majers, published at Nuremberg 
 in 1 74 1, and quoted approvingly by Matheson. 
 He gives the names of the white keys as c, d, e, 
 f, g, a, and so on through four octaves. He 
 gives the names of the black keys also. In giv- 
 ing his rules for fingering he numbers the thumb 
 o, the index finger 1, the middle finger 2, and so 
 to the end. This is notable as being similar to 
 the system employed in this country, where the 
 thumb is marked x and the index finger 1. In 
 Germany it is the rule to mark the thumb 1, the 
 index finger 2, etc. Majers's rules for fingering 
 are as follows : 
 
 Left 
 hand 
 you 
 take 
 
 Right 
 hand 
 you 
 take 
 
 '2ds ascending 
 2ds descending 
 3ds and 4ths 
 5ths and 6ths 
 7ths and 8ths 
 
 '2ds ascending 
 2ds descending 
 - 3ds and 4ths 
 5ths and 6ths 
 7ths and 8ths J 
 
 with 
 the 
 
 with 
 the 
 
 index and thumb, 
 middle and ring, 
 ring and index, 
 ring and thumb, 
 little and thumb, 
 middle and ring, 
 middle and index, 
 ring and index, 
 index and little, 
 little and thumb. 
 
 A little experimenting will show you how 
 different these rules are from those of to-day.
 
 132 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 The first rational rules are those published 
 by Emanuel Bach, at Berlin, in 1753; but 
 the great Sebastian Bach's fingering was not 
 bound by such absurd laws as those of Ma- 
 jers's. 
 
 It is worth while to go back a little in order 
 to study the development of the harpsichord 
 style in Rome, where we first meet with the 
 works of Girolamo Frescobaldi (1 591 -1640). 
 He was a great organist, and in all of his com- 
 positions we find fugal writing, but his ricercari 
 show development of a fixed subject, while his 
 canzone contain bits of choral - like melody. 
 The principal melody of the canzona is always 
 recognizable. Again, his capriccii differ mate- 
 rially from those of his predecessors. The ca- 
 priccio before his time consisted of a movement 
 in common time in which different themes were 
 developed, followed by a second movement in 
 triple time, shorter and in the dance style. A 
 new movement of fugal character acted as coda 
 to the entire composition. The capriccii of 
 Frescobaldi are always based on a peculiar prel- 
 ude, containing some striking suggestions, and 
 here the composer especially distinguishes him- 
 self by the wealth of his inventive power and 
 by his treatment. 
 
 In his "Capriccio di Durezze" are examples
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS. 1 33 
 
 of intentional harshness of harmony. In his 
 " Capriccio Chromatico con Ligaturi al Contra- 
 rio " there are passages of chromatic nature with 
 ascending resolutions, a piece of daring new at 
 that time. His contemporaries always used 
 the church scales ; but he made attempts tow- 
 ard approaching our present keys by use of the 
 leading tone. He was also the first who tried 
 to write music that could be easily read. He 
 published in 1615, at Rome, " Toccate e partite 
 d' intabulatura di cembalo." In this the notes 
 for the right hand were written on six, and 
 those for the left on eight lines. 
 
 Bernardo Pasquini, born 1637, died 17 10, was 
 one of the great lights of the Roman school in 
 the latter half of the seventeenth century. In 
 the few of his compositions which have been 
 printed there is shown a tendency to leave the 
 former strict style and to adopt a manner clearer 
 than that of Frescobaldi. His toccatas are no 
 longer contrapuntally written for four voices. 
 We occasionally find arpeggios in the full chord, 
 and sometimes an attempt to disguise and pro- 
 long the short tones of the clavichord by a sus- 
 tained trill. He writes flowing passages for both 
 hands, and in his fugues, which are formed 
 strictly according to rule, we find in the second 
 part some of the livelier passages of the first
 
 134 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 introduced for the purpose of bringing the com- 
 position to an end. 
 
 This brings us to that point in the growth of 
 the Italian school from which the development 
 of the classical forms of piano music are dis- 
 tinctly traceable. We have seen that the ten- 
 dency of the school has been, first, to escape 
 from the fetters of the ecclesiastical modes and 
 to acquire the wealth of chromatics ; second, to 
 throw off the shackles of contrapuntal rules and 
 compose with freedom of style ; third, to aban- 
 don writing for four voices and to compose a 
 melody with subordinate yet independent ac- 
 companiment ; fourth, to employ contrasted 
 movements, and fifth, to establish the difference 
 between the technique of the organ and that of 
 the clavichord and harpsichord. The man who 
 completely established the tendencies of the 
 Italian school and fully achieved what his prede- 
 cessors had attempted was Domenico Scarlatti 
 (1683-1757). 
 
 Attempts had been made previous to his day 
 to establish equal temperament, rendering it 
 possible to play in all the modern keys. This 
 end was attained by Scarlatti's contemporaries, 
 Bach and Rameau. At the same time the in- 
 fluence of the Neapolitan school of opera com- 
 posers, founded by Alessandro Scarlatti, father
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS. 1 35 
 
 of Domenico, was the ruling power in Italian 
 music, and the chief merit of this school was 
 the fluency of its melody. What could be more 
 natural than Domenico's endeavor to transfer 
 this melody to the instrument of which he was 
 master, and to enrich it with all those technical 
 embellishments in which he was an expert ? 
 This, then, is what Domenico Scarlatti accom- 
 plished. He settled for all time the dominance 
 of homophonic music over polyphonic in com- 
 positions for the piano. Langhans says perti- 
 nently, in his " History of Music," that Scarlatti 
 did not realize the significance of the sonata, but 
 commended his compositions of this class to the 
 indulgence of the public, with the remark that 
 " in them not deep design would be found, but 
 the ingenious pleasantry of art." " In fact," 
 continues Langhans, " he makes more account 
 of technics than of intellectual contents ; yet by 
 his application of the principle of tripartition, 
 prescriptive for the modern sonata, and by a 
 number of effective innovations of a technical 
 kind, such as running passages in thirds and 
 sixths, the quick stroke of one and the same key 
 with different fingers, broken chords in contrary 
 motion for both hands, etc., he leads us directly 
 into the modern age." These things were neuf 
 and original.
 
 I $6 THE EVOLUTION 1 OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 We must return to the indefatigable Weitz- 
 mann to get a more detailed account of this 
 man's work. The exhaustive German histo- 
 rian says that Scarlatti's compositions maintain 
 throughout a characteristic principal motive, 
 sustained by a well-elaborated bass. The first 
 movement of the real sonata form is outlined in 
 them. There are two parts, each of which is re- 
 peated. The first contains the exposition of the 
 thematic material of the composition. It begins 
 with the principal theme in the chief key, moves 
 to a related key in the following passage, and 
 closes with a cadence in the second key. If the 
 first part is in a major key, the dominant is used 
 for the modulatory passage by which the second 
 part is reached ; if it is in a minor key, then 
 the relative major or dominant minor is used. 
 The second part then develops the material of 
 the first, and modulates back to the fundamental 
 key, takes up the beginning of the composition, 
 or sometimes a later passage in the exposition, 
 repeats the motive of the first part in the origi- 
 nal key, and closes generally with a cadence like 
 that of the first part. An important peculiarity 
 of Scarlatti's form, foreshadowing that of much 
 later writers, is that frequently in the modula- 
 tory portion of the first part he introduces a new 
 thought, or second subject, essentially different
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS. 1 37 
 
 from the first. Add to all these novelties in 
 treatment the fact that he was original, and even 
 daring, in his modulations and rhythms, and you 
 have a general view of the importance of Do- 
 menico Scarlatti. 
 
 There are three more composers of the Italian 
 school who may as well be mentioned here, be- 
 cause they bring us into direct connection with 
 our own times. The first of these is Francesco 
 Durante (1684-1755). He wrote studies in the 
 free style, consisting of flowing passages and 
 broken chords, sometimes for two, sometimes 
 for three, and even four, voices or parts, follow- 
 ing by a sort of divertimento for two voices, in 
 the same key, less laboriously worked out. 
 
 The second is Domenico Alberti (about 17 17 
 to about 1740). His compositions consisted of a 
 long allegro in two parts, in the sonata form al- 
 ready suggested, followed by another movement, 
 sometimes long and sometimes short, in the 
 same key. Alberti did not treat his accompa- 
 niment contrapuntally, but invented the well- 
 known Alberti bass. This was much easier 
 than the older basses, and the abuse of it did 
 much to retard the development of the left 
 hand. Pietro Domenico Paradies (1710-1792) 
 wrote twelve " Sonate di Gravicembalo." His 
 works are musically and technically far more val-
 
 138 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 uable than those of Alberti. They consist of 
 two movements in the same key, but differing 
 in tempo. The first movement is the longer. 
 It is in two parts, the first of which regularly 
 closes in the dominant of the chief key. It is 
 either an allegro followed by a shorter move- 
 ment vivace, or it is an aria. Sometimes he be- 
 gins with an andante, followed by a minuette 
 or a giga. This composer's works were studied 
 by the celebrated Muzio Clementi. This mas- 
 ter taught John Field, one of whose pupils was 
 Alexander Villoing, the teacher of Anton Ru- 
 binstein. 
 
 It is necessary now to go back in order to 
 note the rise of the English, French, and Ger- 
 man schools. The English school of harpsi- 
 chord players and writers was very important 
 while it lasted, but it exerted no great or lasting 
 influence on the progress of art. The German 
 school, on the other hand, developed steadily 
 along a well-defined path, giving to the world 
 the works of Handel, Sebastian and Emanuel 
 Bach, who clearly defined the sonata form, 
 Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, after whom 
 came the modern romantic school. It seems 
 most convenient to dismiss the English school 
 before showing how the Germans, having learned 
 the arts of composition and performance of
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS. 1 39 
 
 clavichord music from the Italians, proceeded 
 to advance in their own characteristic way. The 
 French school, which is of more importance than 
 the English, will also be considered. 
 
 It appears that in 1550 there were in the ser- 
 vice of Edward VI., in addition to singers, play- 
 ers of the lute, harp, flute, and rebek, trumpet- 
 ers, and drummers, three active virginal players, 
 and in 1575 Thomas Tallis and his famous 
 pupil, William Byrd, were organists to Queen 
 Elizabeth. There had been virginal playing in 
 England long before this, however. Even 
 Henry VIII. was a player, and a composer as 
 well, as may be seen by his " Pavane," tran- 
 scribed by J. Stafford Smith from the Arundel 
 collection, and printed in the " Musica Antiqua." 
 This royal composition was much like the Ve- 
 netian dances of the book of 1 5 5 1 , and the de- 
 velopment of virginal music in England seems 
 to have been similar to that of spinnet music in 
 Italy up to a certain point. In " Queen Eliz- 
 abeth's Virginal Book " are to be found speci- 
 mens of the writing of Tallis, Byrd, and their 
 contemporaries, Giles, Farnaby, Dr. Bull, and 
 others. Among these compositions we find 
 fantasias, which consisted of different motives 
 following one another in imitation and fugal 
 style, pavanes, galliards, and variations on folk
 
 140 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 melodies. The first collection of virginal mu- 
 sic published in England was that known as 
 the " Parthenia," which appeared in 1611. The 
 music was written by Byrd, Bull, Orlando Gib- 
 bons, and others. It consisted of twenty-one 
 pieces, printed on six-line staves. These pieces 
 were preludes, pavanes, galliards, one fantasia 
 in four parts, and the " Queen's Command," 
 by Gibbons, which was an air and variations. 
 These Englishmen were great players and com- 
 posers in their time, but they accomplished lit- 
 tle or nothing in the development of our extant 
 form and technique. It is safe to say that the 
 achievements of the French school deserve 
 more careful consideration, though, as we shall 
 presently see, the development of piano music 
 and piano playing passed from Italy to Ger- 
 many in the first half of the eighteenth century, 
 and was continued by the great Teutonic mas- 
 ters down to our time. 
 
 The first great light of the French clavecin 
 school was Francois Couperin, the second of the 
 name, born 1668, died 1733. He was a con- 
 temporary of Jean Philippe Rameau (1683- 
 1764), who was not only a great operatic com- 
 poser, but also a celebrated theorist. His 
 " Trait 6 d'Harmonie," published in 1722, con- 
 tains rules which form the basis of our present
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS. 141 
 
 harmony. " Moreover, Rameau brought to per- 
 fection equal temperament, which we saw Zar- 
 lino beginning to study in Venice a century 
 and a half earlier. He divided the octave into 
 twelve equal half steps, thus removing the im- 
 pediments offered to the progress of instrumen- 
 tal music by instruments with a fixed tuning. 
 Bach had already brought equal temperament 
 into use in 1722, but it was only after the pub- 
 lication in 1737 of Rameau's ' Generation Har- 
 monique ' that scientists accepted this system 
 of tuning as the essential basis of music" 
 (" Story of Music," page 45). Couperin lived 
 hardly long enough to reap the benefits of Ra- 
 meau's achievements, but his immediate suc- 
 cessors showed the influence of the new theory. 
 Couperin published four volumes of " Pieces de 
 Clavecin." They were approved by Sebastian 
 Bach, who advised his pupils to study them. 
 He also published a notable technical work en- 
 titled " L'Art de toucher le Clavecin, y compris 
 huit Preludes." 
 
 His compositions were mostly suites, but the 
 form was very uncertain. Full harmony is rarely 
 found in Couperin's clavier movements. They 
 are usually contrapuntal, but the upper voice 
 carries the principal melody. His works contain 
 curious rhythmical oddities, which give them a
 
 142 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 stiff, old-fashioned, angular movement. His 
 suites are a sort of refined ballet music, and the 
 movements are often distinguished by theatrical 
 titles, such as " La Majesteuse," " La Prude," 
 " La Flattesse." The uncertainty of the form of 
 his suites is seen in the loose distribution of the 
 movements. For instance, one suite, the fifth 
 (A major), consists of an allemande, two cou- 
 rantes, a sarabande, a gigue, and six rondos, in- 
 termingled with numbers in free style. Dr. 
 Spitta says (" Life of Bach," vol. ii., page 86) : 
 " In spite of this he never entirely quits the 
 ground of the suite, for he keeps to the same key 
 throughout, even when he does not begin with 
 the usual pieces. But it is clear that he never 
 felt the necessity of welding together the various 
 constituent parts to one perfect whole of many 
 members." The chief significance of Couperin's 
 suites for us lies in the fact that the great Bach 
 studied them and imitated them. This accounts 
 for some of the peculiarities of his compositions 
 in this line. Couperin also wrote an allemande 
 for two claviers, which may have had some in- 
 fluence in producing Bach's double concerti. It 
 may as well be added here that Bach wiped out 
 the uncertainties of form in the suite, and in this, 
 as in other departments, established the model 
 for future composers. Louis Marchand (1669-
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS. 1 43 
 
 1732) and his successor, Louis Claude Daquin, 
 were the other lights of the French school. 
 Rameau, before mentioned, published several 
 collections of compositions for the clavier, the 
 last of which, issued in Paris in 1741, was " Trois 
 concertos pour clavecin, violon et basse de viole." 
 As this was published after the time when the 
 development of piano music had fairly passed 
 over into Germany, it needs but to be mentioned. 
 There is an excellent edition by no less a master 
 than Johannes Brahms of some of Couperin's 
 compositions, and other works of the French 
 school can be found in E. Pauer's " Alte Clavier- 
 musik" and Weitzmann's " Geschichte des Cla- 
 vierspiels." 
 
 Let us now turn to an examination of the be- 
 ginning of the great German school. The early 
 masters of this school studied under the Italian 
 composers. It is not necessary to enter into this 
 matter in detail, but for the benefit of those who 
 would like a more extended account than will be 
 given here, it may be said that material is to be 
 found in Naumann's " History of Music," vol. 
 i., page 612 et seq. ; Weitzmann's "Geschichte 
 des Clavierspiels," page 34 et seq., and in vari< 
 ous parts of Spitta's " Life of Bach," which must 
 be discovered by searching the index. The 
 first of the Germans who studied under Italian
 
 144 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 masters was Gallus (1550-91). He is supposed 
 to have been a pupil of Andrea Gabrielli. Ja- 
 cob Meiland (1542-77), Adam Gumpeltzhaimer 
 (1560-?), Christian Erbach (1 560-1628), Hans 
 Leo Hassler (1 564-161 2), and Gregor Aichinger 
 (1 565-1621) all studied under Venetian masters 
 and wrote in the Venetian style for organ and 
 harpsichord. Meiland, for instance, wrote what 
 Naumann calls " song- dances," which were gal- 
 liards, pavanes, etc., da cantare e sonare. Hass- 
 ler was probably the most talented composer of 
 all these, but his best works were canzonets 
 and madrigals for voices, and they became wide- 
 ly popular. Many Germans studied in Rome, 
 whither they were drawn by the fame of Caris- 
 simi and Frescobaldi, and it is among the pupils 
 of the latter that we find two of the important 
 predecessors of Bach. These were Johann Kas- 
 per von Kerl (1625-90) and Johann Jacob Fro- 
 berger (1610-67). It is not definitely proved 
 that Kerl studied under Frescobaldi, but his 
 eminence as an organist, together with the fact 
 that he studied in Rome and the internal evi- 
 dence of his works, makes it a safe inference 
 that he did so. Froberger, we know, went to 
 Rome on purpose to study under Frescobaldi. 
 
 Froberger excelled as both organist and cem- 
 balist. His writings display the finely developed
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS. 145 
 
 contrapuntal and fugal style of his master, and 
 also a tendency to an excessive use of those spe- 
 cial kinds of ornamentation adapted to keyed 
 instruments. These ornaments, called agree- 
 ments, such as the " tremblement simple " (trill), 
 " autre cadence," " pince," " chute et pinc6," 
 " coul6," " tierce coulee," etc., were cultivated 
 by the French, and Froberger is supposed to 
 have learned them while visiting Paris. He re- 
 jected the six- and eight-line staves and wrote on 
 a five-line staff as we do now, using indifferently 
 the C, F, or G clef. Two important works of 
 his were published at Mayence. The first was 
 called " Diverse curiose rarissime partite di toc- 
 cate, ricercate, capricci e fantaisie per gli amatori 
 di cembali, organi ed instromenti." The second, 
 a larger work (1714), was called : " Diverse in- 
 gegniosissime, rarissime, e non mai piu viste 
 curiose partite di toccate, canzone, ricercate, ale- 
 mande, correnti, sarabande e gigue di cembali, 
 organi e instrumenti." There is much charming 
 melody in these works, and Sebastian Bach es- 
 teemed them so highly that he wrote a prelude 
 and fugue in E flat on the Froberger model. 
 Dr. Spitta says that Froberger's toccatas " con- 
 tributed to the formation of the North German 
 fugue form, consisting of several sections." He 
 further says that " with regard to free organ com
 
 146 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 position Froberger stands about half-way be- 
 tween the northern and southern masters." This 
 is less interesting to us than the fact that Fro- 
 berger was one of the earliest composers of pro- 
 gramme music. Dr. Spitta, in searching for the 
 model after which Bach built his " Capriccio 
 sopra la lontananza del suo fratello dilettissimo," 
 mentions Kuhnau's six sonatas on biblical nar- 
 ratives and says they did not stand alone. He 
 quotes Matheson, who declared that Froberger 
 could tell whole histories on the clavier, "giving 
 a representation of the persons present and tak- 
 ing part in it, with all their natural characters." 
 Matheson says, moreover, that he possessed a 
 suite by this composer " in which the passage 
 across the Rhine of Count von Thurn, and the 
 danger he was exposed to from the river, is most 
 clearly set before our eyes and ears in twenty- 
 six little pieces." Of course these attempts at 
 characterization were imitations of the efforts of 
 Couperin. The force of their delineation must 
 have been much greater than that of any pro- 
 gramme music of our time, if Matheson speaks 
 truly. But Matheson had an active imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 George Muffat ( - l 7®4) and Heinrich 
 
 Franz von Biber (1648- 1705) must be men- 
 tioned, because the former, in his "Apparatus
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS. 1 47 
 
 Musico - Organisticus," published at Augsburg 
 in 1695, proved himself to be a greater master 
 of bravura writing for keyed instruments than 
 either Frescobaldi or Merulo, and because Von 
 Biber, though a violinist, contributed greatly to 
 the development of the sonata form. His writ- 
 ings in this department show a well-considered 
 contrast in rhythm and tempo, but there is none 
 of that regulated distribution of keys which is 
 deemed indispensable to the modern sonata. • 
 The immediate predecessors of Bach were 
 organists of great ability and renown. They 
 can be traced in a direct line from Jan Pieters 
 Sweelinck (1 540-1621), a celebrated master of 
 the Netherlands school. Among the most not- 
 ed of them were Samuel Scheidt (1 587-1684), 
 Heinrich Scheidemann (1600- 1694), John Adam 
 Reincke (1623 -1722), Dietrich Buxtehude 
 ( 1635-1707), and Johann Kuhnau (1667-1722). 
 The three last, as the dates show, were contem- 
 poraries of Bach, though older men, and exer- 
 cised marked influence on his development. He 
 was acquainted with all three personally, and 
 made long journeys in order to hear Reincke 
 and Buxtehude play the organ. Reincke was 
 an organist pure and simple, but Buxtehude was 
 also a fine player on the clavier and composed 
 some good music for the instrument. He ex-
 
 143 THE EVOLUTION- OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 celled in the free style of writing, and his works 
 are imbued with deep poetical feeling. 
 
 Kuhnau is more important for our considera- 
 tion, because he advanced the development of 
 the sonata form in Germany. Some writers 
 have held that he was the inventor of the sonata 
 form in many parts, but it is more truthful to 
 say that he introduced it in his own country. 
 His first sonata is in three parts, and is found in 
 his work bearing this curious title : " The other 
 part of clavier exercise ; that is, seven parts from 
 re, mi, fa, or tertia minor tone, in addition to a 
 sonata in B ; written for the special delectation 
 of lovers of music." Kuhnau's sonatas do not 
 disclose a form growing out of the use of two or 
 more themes or subjects. They are monothe- 
 matic and consist of either fugato movements or 
 parts in the style of a suite. 
 
 This brings us down to music which still 
 figures in piano recitals. The growth of piano 
 music from this time is in one of its aspects the 
 development of the sonata form, of which the 
 history has been written in many places and is 
 familiar to most lovers of music. But there is 
 another aspect of the evolution of piano music, 
 which to my mind is quite as important as the 
 development of the form. This is the develop- 
 ment of the technique of the instrument, in-
 
 LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS. 149 
 
 fluenced as it was by the musical tendencies of 
 the successive periods of musical history and 
 showing a singular but unmistakable reaction 
 upon them. Let us, then, review briefly the 
 condition of music before Bach established his 
 technique.
 
 II.— Development of the Technique. 
 
 In the history of instrumental music there 
 are three great periods, not divided by distinct 
 lines, but gradually passing one into the other, 
 and overlapping. These three periods are the 
 Polyphonic, the Classic, and the Romantic. In 
 the early history of music the musical scholars 
 were all churchmen, and musical learning was 
 all expended upon church music. Musical 
 scholarship devoted all its energies to the pro- 
 duction of great works in counterpoint, till after 
 a time the masses of the church became unin- 
 telligible. The Lutheran chorale, the broad 
 hymn tune for congregational worship, which 
 came into prominence in the Reformation, con- 
 vinced the fathers of the Roman Church that a 
 simple style was necessary, and they took meas- 
 ures which led to its adoption. About the same 
 time a band of Florentine enthusiasts, in seek- 
 ing to resuscitate the dramatic recitation of the 
 Greek drama, gave to the world the modern 
 opera, and introduced a still simpler and more
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIQUE. 1 5 1 
 
 beautiful vocal style than had hitherto been 
 known. 
 
 Before these changes took place instrumental 
 music was nothing but an echo of vocal music. 
 The instruments simply played the voice parts 
 of compositions written for singers. The mono- 
 chord, the piano of the time, was used for the 
 home practice of organists, and its style was 
 borrowed from the organ, which spoke only the 
 contrapuntal accents of the Church. When vo- 
 cal music assumed a simpler style, instrumental 
 music went on elaborating contrapuntal devices, 
 and this contrapuntal, or polyphonic, instru- 
 mental style reached its perfection in the hands 
 of Bach. In contrapuntal playing, in the simul- 
 taneous delivery of several melodies, Bach re- 
 mains the model in the history of music. He 
 brought the old style of performance to the 
 highest grade of finish ; but he was also instru- 
 mental in overthrowing it, for it was during his 
 time that the cantabile style of monophonic 
 playing began to supersede the old fugal man- 
 ner. The music of Bach's day gives abundant 
 evidence of being in a state of transition from 
 one period to the other. All through Handel's 
 " Messiah," for instance, you will find passages 
 built on scales, like those of Bach's successors, 
 mingled with passages in the fugal style. If
 
 152 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 the reader will examine the tenor air, " Every 
 Valley," he will at once perceive the meaning 
 of my assertion. 
 
 Now what causes led to the transition from 
 the polyphonic, fugal style to the cantabile of 
 Emanuel Bach and Mozart ? The first was 
 the operatic aria. The aria da capo made its 
 appearance in Cavalli's " Giasone," which was 
 produced in 1649, anc ^ was afterward made 
 popular all over Europe by Alessandro Scar- 
 latti. The aria da capo was a simple song 
 form, consisting of a melody, a second melody, 
 and a return to the first. Its perspicuity and 
 symmetry pleased the public, and composers 
 for the clavier felt that it had emotional possi- 
 bilities not found in the fugal style. Evidence 
 of its immediate influence is found in the clavi- 
 chord works, already mentioned, of Bernardo 
 Pasquini (1637-17 10), who aimed at a more 
 flowing and vocal style than that of his prede- 
 cessors. The second cause was the complete 
 establishment by Domenico Scarlatti (1683— 
 1757) of the difference between the technique 
 of the organ and that of the piano, as described 
 in the previous chapter. And the third cause 
 was the immense reforms in fingering intro- 
 duced by Johann Sebastian Bach. He was 
 the Moses who led music out of the ecclesias-
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIQUE. 1 53 
 
 tical wilderness. If you wish to understand 
 that new testament of which Beethoven was 
 the John and Wagner the Paul, you must go 
 back to the old testament and study Bach and 
 the prophets. 
 
 Previous to the time of Johann Sebastian 
 Bach the technique of the clavier was simply 
 obstructive to the progress of playing. It was 
 based upon illogical and arbitrary rules, which 
 had no foundation in the anatomical structure 
 of the hand. The old rules required the player 
 to use his fingers in ways contrary to the laws 
 of nature. To be sure, one can train his muscles 
 and ligaments to do abnormal things, as you 
 may learn from the performance of any acrobat ; 
 but playing a piano should not be the feat of a 
 contortionist. The rules set forth by Caspar 
 Majers in 1741 commanded the pianist to play 
 ascending seconds in the right hand with the 
 middle and ring fingers ; thirds and fourths with 
 the middle and index ; fifths and sixths with 
 the index and little; sevenths and eighths with 
 the little and thumb. 
 
 It is easy to perceive that such rules as these, 
 which, according to their date, were extant in 
 Bach's day, precluded the possibility of great 
 fluency and rapidity. A smooth legato style 
 could be obtained only at a moderate tempo.
 
 154 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 Any attempt at rapidity would have been de« 
 structive of smoothness and would have resulted 
 in an uneven distribution of dynamic power and 
 a consequent disturbance of the symmetry of the 
 phrasing. The impulse which caused pianists 
 to break the shackles of these old rules was un- 
 doubtedly the growing influence of romanticism 
 in music. In the old polyphonic, ecclesiastical 
 style of composition for the clavier, when pieces 
 written for that instrument resembled in form 
 and content the organ fugues or contrapuntal 
 anthems of the Church, the player was compelled 
 to cultivate a technique which would enable 
 him to enunciate with his fingers the three or 
 four voice parts in which these contrapuntal 
 compositions were always written. D. Scarlatti 
 established the monophonic or single-voiced 
 style of composition. In plain words, he wrote 
 airs, composed of progressions of single notes, 
 for the right hand with accompaniments for the 
 left. His style of writing was learned by the 
 Germans, and Sebastian Bach, whose genius 
 exalted and moulded anew the entire formal ma- 
 terial of music as known in his day, effected in 
 some of his works, such as the " Chromatic Fan- 
 tasia and Fugue," an astounding combination of 
 the old and new styles. There are passages in 
 the composition named which lean far forward
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIQUE. 1 55 
 
 into the present and resemble in style and spirit 
 some of the devices of Liszt. 
 
 In order to perform the new kind of music 
 Sebastian Bach was compelled to throw over 
 the stupid and illogical technique of his pre- 
 decessors. His son, Emanuel Bach, who was 
 not a great composer, but whose comprehension 
 and revelation of the genius of the clavier en- 
 title him to an honorable position on the page 
 of musical history, carried the development of 
 technique still further in his admirable search 
 after a fine legato style. In his epoch-making 
 book on " The True Manner of Playing the 
 Clavichord," he says : " Methinks music ought 
 principally to move the heart, and in this no 
 performer on the pianoforte will succeed by 
 merely thumping and drumming or by contin- 
 ual arpeggio playing. During the last few years 
 my chief endeavor has been to play the piano- 
 forte, in spite of its deficiency in sustaining 
 sound, as much as possible in a singing manner 
 and to compose for it accordingly. This is by 
 no means an easy task if we desire not to leave 
 the ear empty, or to disturb the noble simplicity 
 of the cantabile with too much noise." This art 
 of singing on the pianoforte is still one of the 
 great desiderata of a lofty style, and to-day no 
 higher praise can be awarded to any player'*
 
 156 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 touch than to say that his cantabile made his 
 hearers forget that the pianoforte was not a pro- 
 ducer of sustained tones. 
 
 The whole structure of modern piano tech- 
 nique, which was over a century in the course 
 of development, rests upon the foundation of 
 the Bach legato ; for from this came our smooth 
 and equal scale and arpeggio playing, which is 
 one of the most salient features of our technique. 
 All the other features of modern technique are 
 derived either from this, or from the virtues of 
 the old polyphonic style. The Schumann tech- 
 nique is simply a rational development of a 
 blending of the two styles. Now let us see 
 wherein the mechanical wonder of Bach's revo- 
 lution lies. 
 
 Previous to his day players had used the 
 fingers in an outstretched position, the thumb 
 hanging down (Fig. 1). Bach at once per- 
 ceived that this position 
 of the hand was unnat- 
 ural, that it robbed the 
 fingers of their normal 
 power and left a valua- 
 F,G - '• ble ally unemployed. He, 
 
 therefore, began to make as free use of his 
 thumb as he did of the other fingers. But the 
 moment that he attempted to use the thumb he
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIQUE. 1 57 
 
 was forced to change the position of the other 
 fingers and the old order of things was over- 
 thrown. For in order to play with the thumb 
 as well as the fingers, it was necessary, on ac- 
 count of the shortness of the former, to curve 
 the latter (Fig. 2). As Dr. Spitta puts it in 
 his great " Life of Bach," 
 " This curving at once ex- 
 cluded all rigidity ; the 
 fingers remained in an 
 easy, elastic attitude, 
 ready for extension or F,G - 2 - 
 
 contraction at any moment, and they could 
 now hit the keys rapidly and accurately as they 
 hovered close over them. Thus by diligent 
 practice the greatest possible equality of touch, 
 strength, and rapidity was acquired in both 
 hands, and each was made quite independent 
 of the other." 
 
 Bach was not alone in the free use of the 
 thumb, for Francois Couperin (1668-1733), Jo- 
 hann Gottfried Walther, a contemporary of 
 Bach, Heinichen, and Handel, who was a great 
 clavier player, and whose hands were used in a 
 bent position, according to Chrysander, all em- 
 ployed the thumb in many ways ; but it was 
 Bach who systematically developed a method 
 of fingering based on the new style and who
 
 158 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 handed down rules. Some of them have lived 
 until our day, for as Dr. Spitta says, " The 
 natural tendency of the thumb to bend toward 
 the hollow of the hand made it of admirable use 
 in passing it under the other fingers, or them 
 over it." It was Bach who refingered the scales 
 in accordance with this natural use of the thumb. 
 Now let us see how this innovation of Bach's 
 revolutionized the technique of piano playing 
 and the style of musical utterance employed by 
 writers for the piano. As soon as composers 
 found that the freedom of the hand facilitated 
 scale playing, they naturally began to write 
 extended melodies based on scales, a practice 
 already introduced in vocal music. The com- 
 plete beauty of this style is found in the works 
 of Mozart, who was the next great piano com- 
 poser after the Bachs. And we ought to notice 
 the interesting fact that the fondness for scale 
 passages fostered by Mozart's great virtuosity as 
 a pianist influenced his orchestral style and 
 even his operatic creations. We must remember 
 that Mozart's career began at the piano. Even 
 in Beethoven's time the use of the scale had not 
 palled upon composers, and some of the noblest 
 thoughts of the mighty Ludwig are built on sim- 
 ple scale passages. Of course in Beethoven's 
 early piano concertos, when he was still under
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIQUE. 1 59 
 
 the influence of Mozart's genius, scale passages 
 and the running style prevail, and I think I do 
 not go too far in saying that there is nothing in 
 these works which cannot be performed with 
 the technique of Emanuel Bach. 
 
 Mozart followed the theory of Emanuel 
 Bach as to the singing character of the piano. 
 Jahn says : " Mozart's musical training was 
 founded on song — and his inclinations led him 
 to song — in a greater degree than was the case 
 with his two predecessors." Bearing in mind, 
 then, the influence of his early training as a 
 pianist and his later development as an operatic 
 composer, we see the logical tendency of Mo- 
 zart's technique. He demanded of the pianist 
 a perfect legato, a singing touch, and an unaf- 
 fected style. It is on record that he said as 
 much, and the internal evidence of his music 
 shows that he practised what he preached. 
 His beautiful fingering was the result of a close 
 study of Sebastian Bach and his son Eman- 
 uel. He carried forward the development of 
 the latter's technique, and is the connecting link 
 between him and Clementi. He demanded " a 
 quiet and steady hand, with its natural light- 
 ness, smoothness, and gliding rapidity so well 
 developed that the passages should flow like 
 oil." He required the delivery of every note,
 
 l60 THE EVOLUTION OF PIAXO MUSIC. 
 
 grace, and accent with appropriate expression 
 and taste. He was opposed to over-rapidity of 
 execution and to violations of time. "Three 
 things," he said, " are necessary for a good per- 
 former ; " and he pointed to his head, his heart, 
 and his fingers. Thus we perceive that from 
 the moment that Bach threw off the shackles 
 of the old rules and made it possible by the use 
 of the thumb to play scale passages smoothly 
 and evenly, the genius of piano-music composers 
 led them in the direction of a singing style 
 based on the scale. 
 
 The next great change in the style of piano 
 composition and piano technique, for the two 
 things go hand in hand, came about in the 
 course of the supremacy of Muzio Clementi 
 (1752-1832). This man was in some respects 
 a repetition in musical history of Emanuel 
 Bach. He was not a great composer, not even 
 as good a composer as Emanuel, and his music 
 never figures in general concerts in our day any 
 more than that of Bach's son ; but he had the 
 keen insight of his predecessor into the nature 
 and possibilities of the instrument on which he 
 played. Given a different instrument in the 
 hands of such a man and you will have new 
 results. This is just what took place. The 
 prime cause of the vast difference between the
 
 DEVELOPMENT OE THE TECHNIQUE. l6l 
 
 technique of Clementi and that of Mozart was 
 a difference of instruments. Clementi used the 
 English piano; Mozart, the Viennese. The 
 English piano, as Ernst Pauer has noted, had 
 thicker strings, and a richer tone, and its ham- 
 mer had a deeper fall. This made it " favor- 
 able to the sure execution of thirds, sixths, and 
 octaves, and to the clear and precise playing of 
 chords in succession ; the tone of the Vienna 
 piano, though thin and of shorter duration, was 
 highly agreeable, and its action was so light 
 that (as in the harpsichord) the most delicate 
 pressure produced a sound from the key. 
 . . . Clementi's piano was therefore favor- 
 able to a substantial and masculine treatment ; 
 while the Vienna piano responded best to a 
 rapid fluent style and to arpeggio playing." 
 
 In every art there come periods when its vo- 
 taries devote themselves wholly to the develop- 
 ment of its technique. I think we are passing 
 through such a stage in some arts to-day. 
 Poets are more concerned just now about the 
 music of their verse than about the vitality of 
 their thought. And when artists take up this 
 study of technique they almost invariably seek 
 to carry it beyond the domain of their art, as 
 did the ancient painter who painted grapes so 
 as to deceive the birds. That was great tech- 
 ii
 
 1 62 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 nique, but it was not art at all. So the follow- 
 ers of Clementi have striven to make the piano 
 a rival of the orchestra, for he was the founder 
 of the school which aims at immense sonor- 
 ity and bewildering complexity. The Vienna 
 school aimed at retaining the character of the 
 piano as a chamber instrument. The more 
 powerful construction of the English piano 
 tempted Clementi to develop a larger style. 
 This could not be reached through the simple 
 scale passages and single-note progressions of 
 Mozart. If you wish to get a volume of tone 
 from a piano you must take notes by the hand- 
 ful. Consequently in Clementi's compositions 
 appear rapid passages in thirds, sixths, and oc- 
 taves. Moreover, he writes more extended 
 chords and demands of the player a muscular 
 power previously unknown. Clementi, as I 
 have said, was a piano technician pure and sim- 
 ple, and he wrote almost exclusively for his 
 chosen instrument. His exploration into its 
 resources developed a technique which is ample 
 for the performance of everything in piano mu- 
 sic up to the death of Beethoven. It is natural 
 that this man should have trained John Field, 
 the teacher of Alexander Villoing, who was the 
 only instructor of Anton Rubinstein. 
 
 We have now seen the transition from the
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIQUE. 1 63 
 
 polyphonic style to the monophonic legato, and 
 we have seen added to that the use of chord 
 successions and the other elements of a sonorous 
 and masculine method. These two styles are 
 the foundation of our present technique, which 
 is the result of their natural and inevitable 
 union. For it was not to be supposed that 
 pianists would rest content with a division of 
 styles based on a difference of instruments. 
 The demand of the musical world for a piano 
 on which both styles could be employed with 
 equal facility and brilliancy was, of course, un- 
 avoidable, and the development of music com- 
 bining the two styles was bound to be, if any- 
 thing, a step in advance of the growth of the 
 means of execution. 
 
 I have said that the technique of Clementi 
 was sufficient for the performance of everything 
 up to the death of Beethoven. The emotional 
 content of the mighty Ludwig's works is, of 
 course, far more important than their technical 
 peculiarities. Indeed, in respect of technique, 
 Beethoven's sonatas and concertos show little 
 advance over the works of his predecessors. 
 All that is best in the styles of Bach, Mozart, 
 and Clementi is to be found in Beethoven's 
 works ; and that which is distinctively his own 
 is the spirit rather than the mechanism. He
 
 1 64 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 certainly did, however, enrich the piano style 
 of his time by a freer use of polyphony than his 
 immediate predecessors had made. It was not 
 the ecclesiastical polyphony of the contrapun- 
 tists, but a modernized kind, the growth of an 
 adaptation of scholastic material to the needs of 
 romantic expression. The tremendous finale of 
 the sonata, opus III, is an example of Beetho- 
 ven's use of this style. Again, Beethoven's orig- 
 inality in rhythm demanded of pianists increased 
 attention to the distribution of accents ; and to 
 achieve the desired effects it was necessary to 
 be more careful in developing independence of 
 finger, a thing which in our day is a sine qua 
 non of piano-playing. Finally, the majestic dig- 
 nity of the musical utterance of these sonatas 
 and concertos called for a broader and nobler 
 tone-color and a more dramatic phrasing than 
 had hitherto been known to the piano. Even 
 in our day, with the superb instruments at our 
 command, and the entire resources of Liszt's 
 witchcraft in tone-color open to us, we cannot 
 exceed the requirements of Beethoven's works 
 in the details of sonority and variety of color. 
 This feature of their technical aspect points, as 
 all their other traits do, to the fact that the 
 child of the Bonngasse wrote not for a day, but 
 for all time.
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIQUE. l6$ 
 
 Nevertheless, as far as the mere mechanics of 
 piano-playing are concerned, the technique of 
 Clementi's " Gradus ad Parnassum " suffices for 
 the performance of even the "Emperor" con- 
 certo. The technique of Schubert and Weber 
 was also based on Clementi's. The latter, how- 
 ever, showed some originality in the use of ex- 
 tended chords, and in his " Concertstuck " in- 
 troduced the octave glissando, a cheap virtuoso 
 trick. In general it may be accepted as an es- 
 tablished fact that all players and composers of 
 music in the classical style since Clementi have 
 based their technique on his " Gradus," and 
 those features of our modern playing which 
 cannot be found therein are the productions of 
 Liszt and the other romanticists. It is only in 
 the use of the damper pedal that players not 
 exclusively romantic have exceeded the limits 
 of Clementi's teaching. 
 
 The history of the use of the pedals would of 
 itself make a large and interesting chapter, but 
 must here be touched briefly. In the Ruckers 
 harpsichords an attempt to reach some of the 
 effects now attained by pedals was made " by 
 adding to the two unison strings of each note 
 a third of shorter length and finer wire, tuned 
 an octave higher," which increased the power 
 and brilliancy of the tone. There was a second
 
 1 66 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 keyboard, and stops which controlled the action 
 of the jacks on the strings. Of course these 
 contrivances produced a very limited variety of 
 tone effects. I have tried them on a very ex- 
 cellent harpsichord of the Mozart period, for- 
 merly in the collection of M. Steinert, of New 
 Haven, and can testify that only a moderate in- 
 crease of tone and richness are obtained. If my 
 memory serves me rightly, in that particular in- 
 strument the necessity of moving stops with 
 the hands had been obviated by the introduc- 
 tion of pedals, which were invented by Hay- 
 ward, an Englishman, in 1670. Real piano and 
 forte pedals first appeared in 1783, when they 
 were patented by John Broadvvood. Naturally 
 pianists soon began to make use of them, and 
 we find very explicit directions for the use of 
 the pedals in Beethoven's piano concerto in G 
 and in the sonatas, opera 101, 106, 109, no, and 
 in. The piano pedal was extensively used by 
 the classic players, but it remained for Chopin to 
 show how both pedals could be employed alter- 
 nately or in combination for the production of 
 the most beautiful effects of tone-color. Liszt, 
 of course, elaborated this department of tech- 
 nique, as he did all others. It is hardly neces- 
 sary to remind the reader that in our day edu- 
 cated pianists use the pedals not to obtain
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIQUE. 1 67 
 
 contrasts of loudness and softness, but entirely 
 in the production of tone-color. The infinite 
 variety of qualities of tone which contempo- 
 raneous artists, like D'Albert, Rummel, and 
 others, get out of a piano is wholly due to a 
 combination of many different kinds of touch 
 with changing uses of the pedals, employing 
 sometimes one, sometimes the other, now both, 
 and again neither. It was Chopin who revealed 
 the possibilities of the pedal, Liszt who per- 
 fected the powers of touch. 
 
 The whole character of our contemporary 
 technique is the result of romanticism in music. 
 It has come from the efforts of romantic writers 
 to imbue the piano with a greater power of 
 emotional utterance, to make it a dramatic force, 
 and, even more than that, a personality. Clas- 
 sicism means perfection of form, unfailing 
 beauty of thought and utterance. It is the 
 science of the beautiful in music. But roman- 
 ticism means personality, characterization, in- 
 dividual expression, even universal revelation; 
 and it has no hesitation in pouring for*h abrupl 
 rhythms, harsh dissonance, startling progressions, 
 when these speak the thought of the composer. 
 The repose and suavity, the serenity and the 
 dignity of all that was noblest in the age of 
 musical sculpture are exhibited by the romantic
 
 1 68 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 school when required ; but its favorite moods 
 are hot, passionate, changeful, and irresistible. 
 For these the utterance of the piano had to l<e 
 widened. The polished legato of Mozart on a 
 scale basis could not serve all moods. The 
 rapid thirds, sixths, and chords of Clementi 
 were at hand and were needed, as also was the 
 broad phrase and great color of Beethoven. 
 But, with all these elements, the romanticists 
 cried for more. Schumann, Chopin, and Liszt 
 — two immortal composers and one the Stanley 
 of the piano — unlocked the treasures that lay 
 concealed in the instrument. The first and 
 second, having immortal creative genius to let 
 loose, developed technique along the lines sug- 
 gested by their own individualities ; the third, 
 having great gifts without the divine spark, de- 
 veloped technique in a direction suggested by 
 the various possibilities of the instrument as it 
 yielded up its hitherto unexplored territory to 
 him. 
 
 Schumann's ideas did not at first seem suited 
 to utterance through the medium of the piano; 
 yet it was equally evident that they were not 
 suited to any other instrument nor to the or- 
 chestra. The man spoke his new thought in a 
 new language, to which the piano had to adapt 
 itself as best it could. To speak the new tongue
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIQUE. 169 
 
 the instrument was compelled to acquire a new- 
 articulation, which we call the Schumann tech- 
 nique. It is familiar enough to us now; but it 
 was strange and troublesome at first. The fun- 
 damental reason of this was Schumann's incom- 
 pleteness of training. He was not a thoroughly 
 schooled musician, and his technique was not 
 based, like Chopin's, on an exhaustive mastery 
 of all that had been done by his predecessors. 
 I am aware that these assertions are not new. 
 The same points have been brought out by 
 John Comfort Fillmore, whose " History of 
 Piano Music " I cheerfully commend to all stu- 
 dents of the divine art. But they are facts, and 
 must be repeated here. The new difficulties of 
 the Schumann technique consisted in obscure 
 and involved rhythms, in peculiar relations of 
 melodies to their accompaniments, in the un- 
 usual use of extended chords in difficult posi- 
 tions, and in the participation of both hands in 
 the delivery of the same phrase. This catalogue 
 of novelties does not look formidable at first 
 sight; but when one remembers that rhythm 
 is at the base of all music, and that any wide 
 change in it upsets the entire structure, then one 
 perceives that the strange Schumann rhythms, 
 with the other new things added, must have de- 
 manded execution hitherto unknown to the pi-
 
 170 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 ano. It is now an accepted fact that mastery 
 of the Schumann technique can only be acquired 
 by means of special exercises not necessary to 
 the performance of piano music written before 
 Schumann's time. 
 
 If I was asked what one thing lay behind the 
 whole difference between Schumann's technique 
 and that of Chopin, I might answer rhythm. 
 That would not be strictly true, for no one thing 
 accounts for the whole difference. But the fact 
 is that while Schumann's rhythms are strange, 
 and sometimes almost insoluble, Chopin pre- 
 ferred forms built on some accepted rhythm, 
 such as the valse, mazourka, polonaise. The 
 disguise which he throws around these forms is 
 one of idea rather than of technique. The 
 Chopin technique, new, marvellous, and learned 
 as it is, never obtrudes itself. This, I think, 
 was because it was chiefly concerned with a re- 
 modelling of the principles of a beautiful legato 
 style. Chopin taught us how to play chromatic 
 passages in double thirds and other intervals 
 legato by putting the fifth finger under the 
 fourth and third in descending, and the third 
 and fourth over the fifth in ascending. He 
 wrote arpeggios dispersed in wide intervals or 
 so interspersed with passing notes that no ear- 
 lier rules of fingering would apply to them.
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIQUE. IJ I 
 
 He, therefore, made new rules by which the 
 novel successions could be performed with cer- 
 tainty. In other words, it was reserved for 
 Chopin to finally revolutionize the Bach 
 method of scale playing, which had held its 
 influence in music even to Beethoven's day. 
 Even the Clementi technique did not break 
 through the old limits ; on the contrary, it re- 
 mained within them. Its principles depended 
 on the construction of compositions from five- 
 finger passages, scales, and arpeggios. Its rules 
 required that a five-finger position once taken 
 should not be changed unnecessarily; that all 
 passages made from scales and arpeggios should 
 be fingered in the same way as the scales and 
 arpeggios when played as exercises; that the 
 thumb and little finger should not be used on 
 the black keys except under extraordinary de- 
 mand. Chopin overthrew all those rules and 
 introduced methods of fingering which would 
 have made Clementi stand aghast, but which 
 rendered the performance of the new music pos- 
 sible. 
 
 Liszt knew all that Schumann and Chopin 
 could teach him. Using their improvements in 
 the use of the fingers, together with his own de- 
 vices, he set out to make the piano the rival of 
 the orchestra in sonority, brilliancy, and variety
 
 172 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 of tone. To him we owe the deep study of the 
 possibilities of the different kinds of touch. He 
 showed us how to acquire the greatest strength 
 and power of discriminative emphasis in the in- 
 dividual fingers. He developed the resources 
 of the loose wrist, showing how it could be em- 
 ployed to produce effects previously unknown. 
 He taught us to hold it higher than had before 
 been the custom and to have it quite flexible, 
 yet in such a position that the fingers had all 
 possible mechanical advantage for the produc- 
 tion of a powerful tone. The etudes which 
 Liszt composed for the use of piano students 
 are an epitome of modern technique. They 
 are a complete revelation of the resources of the 
 instrument. It is possible that the future may 
 witness a further development of piano tech- 
 nique ; but the instrument must first acquire 
 new powers. Looking back over what has 
 been done for the piano by inventive minds in 
 the last fifty years, who can say what the next 
 century may produce? Let us hope, however, 
 that one great evil will not come — the loss of 
 the character of the instrument. 
 
 The lesson of the growth of piano technique 
 is the same as that taught by the growth of or- 
 chestral technique and of vocal power. Look- 
 ing back over the history of music we find that
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE TECHNIQUE. 1 73 
 
 a very simple array of instruments sufficed for 
 the classic ideas of Mozart, while the tremen- 
 dous romantic conceptions of Wagner called 
 forth all the resources of the contemporaneous 
 instrumental army. Before romanticism got its 
 hand upon the pulse of opera, the rule of the 
 legato scale school extended even to the lyric 
 stage, and all Europe sat breathless at the feet 
 of that singer who could sing scales and trills 
 faster and more accurately than anyone else. 
 Romanticism introduced a sort of Schumann 
 technique into singing, and for a time the new 
 style was deemed foreign to the human voice. 
 Only a few years ago artists declared that they 
 could not sing " Tristan und Isolde." Now it 
 is familiar wherever music is truly known. The 
 whole development of technique in music has 
 been brought about by the requirements of ro- 
 mantic thought. Wagner epitomized the growth 
 in the words of Hans Sachs in " Die Meister- 
 singer : " 
 
 Nun sang er wie er musst' ! 
 Und wie er musst', so konnt' er's. 
 
 Which may be translated freely thus : 
 
 He sang but as his thought compelled, 
 And from the need the power upwelled.
 
 III. — The Modern Concerto. 
 
 The influence of romanticism in piano-music 
 did not cease with its effect on technique. It 
 caused also a revolution in form. It brought 
 about a new treatment of the sonata idea, chang- 
 ing the outward shape and intensifying the old 
 spirit of unity and continuity which underlay, 
 yet never fully dominated, the classic sonata 
 form. The new shape grew out of the old, yet 
 is different. Both are conspicuous examples of 
 adaptation to aesthetic purpose. The purposes 
 of the two are different, yet each originated in 
 the search after coherence. 
 
 The development of musical forms is one of 
 the most interesting studies in the realm of the 
 tone art. The significance of the developed 
 form, hovvever, is too often missed ; in fact it is 
 almost wholly overlooked by those who write 
 on the subject. The technical aspect of the 
 growth is that which seems to interest them 
 most, and in their consideration of it they are 
 led away from the more profitable examination
 
 THE MODERN CONCERTO. 1 75 
 
 of the emotional causes which produced the 
 successive changes. A performance of the B- 
 minor piano concerto of Eugene d' Albert, with 
 the little giant himself as the solo player, caused 
 the writer to realize that there had come to be 
 an almost complete dissociation of modern ro- 
 mantic thought in music from classical forms. 
 
 That the D'Albert concerto is a remarkable 
 composition is a conclusion that cannot be 
 avoided when listening to it, and at its end one 
 is so influenced by its vigorous vitality that he 
 is ready to declare that it ought to live. One 
 has a similar feeling in listening to the piano 
 concerto of Richard Burmeister, one of the 
 loveliest compositions ever produced in America, 
 gentle and dignified as a statue of Diana, and 
 differing from the D'Albert work as Diana's 
 image from that of the Farnese Hercules. The 
 Burmeister concerto is romantic in spirit, but 
 leans toward classicism in form, while the 
 D'Albert composition at once raises the ques- 
 tion in the hearer's mind whether the composer 
 has not stepped beyond the domain of the piano, 
 or of the concerto, or of both. 
 
 The question is a natural one, but it is far 
 easier to ask than to answer. As to the domain 
 of the piano, I do not propose to enter upon a 
 discussion of that topic for the reason that we
 
 176 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 know not what the future has in store for us. 
 Nor can I decide whether D'Albert has stepped 
 beyond the limits of the concerto. It is easier 
 for the metaphysician to find answers for the 
 theories of materialists than for the student of 
 musical progress to foretell at what point in- 
 strumental composition will find its limits. 
 One thing appears to be beyond doubt : the 
 D'Albert concerto is in a direct line of devel- 
 opment which has been going forward since 
 Mozart's time, and which may lead to the rec- 
 ognition of a new form distinct from the con- 
 certo. 
 
 The whole matter turns upon the question, 
 whether we are to recognize in the contempo- 
 raneous form set up by ultra-romanticists a pur- 
 pose wholly different from that of the conven- 
 tional concerto. The classical concerto was 
 designed to display the technical facility of the 
 performer and the resources of his instrument 
 without sacrifice of musical beauty and dignity. 
 Such a concerto as that of D'Albert relegates 
 technical achievements and musical beauty to a 
 secondary place. It makes them subservient 
 to the utterance of thoroughly dramatic ideas. 
 It elevates the orchestra to an equality with the 
 piano, and almost wholly deprives the latter of 
 its character as a solo instrument by denuding
 
 THE MODER.V CO.VCERTO. 1/7 
 
 its part of what I must for lack of a better word 
 call pianism. The solo part has few or none of 
 those passages in which the special character of 
 the piano is made known. The instrument is 
 treated orchestrally, and its share of the con- 
 certo becomes part and parcel of the complete 
 utterance of the composer ; in fact he writes 
 simply a symphonic poem for two orchestras, 
 the piano being used as the second orchestra, 
 and the two instrumental factors being employed 
 with varying force. Sometimes it is the orches- 
 tra which is the chief speaker; again it is the 
 piano. And nearly every trace of the form of 
 the classical concerto has disappeared. The 
 new thing is, as I have intimated, an adaptation 
 of Liszt's contrivance, the symphonic poem, a 
 form based on the assumption that there is no 
 break between any two successive emotional 
 states ; hence there is no disconnection of the 
 several movements. If we choose to call such 
 a composition as D'Albert's a concerto, we must 
 admit that, while it is the descendant of the 
 Mozart form (which is a variety of the true 
 classic sonata), it is totaly changed in purpose, 
 shape, content, and technical treatment. 
 
 Writers on musical theory are fond of saying 
 that Mozart settled the form of the modern con- 
 certo, and then proceeding to give an account 
 
 12
 
 178 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 of the concerto's growth, which conclusively 
 proves that the glorious boy did nothing of the 
 sort. Mozart laid the foundation of the modern 
 concerto by giving us a form absolutely perfect 
 for the purpose for which it was designed. The 
 purpose, however, is gone. We no longer aim 
 at a mere display of the power of an instrument 
 as an explicator and embellisher of ideas which 
 are admirable wholly for their pure euphonic 
 beauty. " Ausdruck der Empfindung " — expres- 
 sion of emotion — as Beethoven put it, is the 
 slogan of contemporaneous music. 
 
 Mozart made a form which in and for itself 
 was beautiful and unsurpassable. But when 
 Beethoven came as the culmination of the classic 
 and the father of the romantic school, the form 
 had to give way to variations made necessary by 
 the expression of new thoughts and the birth of 
 new purposes. These changes in form have 
 been going on ever since without cessation, and 
 it is impossible to say where they will end. The 
 Mozart form is not dead. There is no reason 
 why it should be. If any man to-day desires to 
 write a piano concerto in which there is to be an 
 exposition of pure euphonic beauty and perfect 
 symmetry, the perfect form is ready to his hand. 
 For his purpose he cannot in all probability in- 
 vent anything better than the Mozart model ;
 
 THE MODERN CONCERTO. 1 79 
 
 but if he wishes to write in the spirit of his time, 
 there is nothing in the canons of art to forbid 
 his altering the old form or making a new one. 
 All that art demands of a form is that it shall 
 be the best for the purpose for which it was de- 
 signed. 
 
 It is not our purpose to enter into a review of 
 the steps in the development of the modern con- 
 certo. Those who care to look into the matter 
 will find sufficient information within easy reach. 
 It may not be unprofitable, however, to point 
 out one or two salient features. In the first place 
 modern composers, beginning with Beethoven, 
 have shown a tendency to abandon the cere- 
 monious introductory tutti, in which the or- 
 chestra made a prolonged announcement of the 
 themes. 
 
 Again, Beethoven set the fashion of writing 
 his own cadenzas, instead of leaving them to the 
 fancy of the performer. Furthermore, he intro- 
 duced the novelty of accompanying the cadenza 
 — or at least part of it — thereby completely 
 changing its character, purpose, and effect. 
 Mendelssohn went further, and placed the 
 cadenza of his violin concerto in the middle in- 
 stead of at the end of the first movement. All 
 composers, save one or two, since Mozart have 
 developed the orchestral part of the concerto,
 
 1 80 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 thus leading up to the advent of genuinely 
 symphonic productions like D'Albert's. 
 
 The joining of the three conventional move- 
 ments of the concerto was suggested by Beet- 
 hoven when, for the sake of avoiding an inter- 
 ruption of his thought, he united the second and 
 third movements of the G and E flat major piano 
 concertos. Later writers, notably Liszt, went 
 further and joined all three movements. More- 
 over, the Abbe adopted the plan, employed by 
 Schumann in his D minor symphony, of carry- 
 ing forward the thematic germs of one move- 
 ment into the next. Liszt's A major concerto, 
 for instance, has several connected movements 
 built on the same melodic subjects through- 
 out. 
 
 Some commentators have denied Liszt's con- 
 certos the right to be classed as concertos. It 
 matters very little what they are called. They 
 certainly are not concertos of the same kind as 
 Mozart's were. Their object is wider, and their 
 shape is altered thereby. D'Albert's concerto is 
 a natural outgrowth of the developments we 
 have noted. He has abandoned the introductory 
 tutti, the separated movements, the formal, un- 
 accompanied cadenza of the first part, and the 
 difference of themes. His concerto has four con- 
 nected movements in which the same melodic
 
 THE MODERN CONCERTO. l8l 
 
 material is employed, and his cadenza is placed 
 near the end of the whole work, where it is the 
 beginning of a climax simply stupendous in 
 technical difficulty and musical utterance. 
 
 If Liszt's so-called concertos are not concertos, 
 D'Albert's certainly is not. It may be that in 
 the future educated musical taste will decide to 
 apply the term concerto only to compositions in 
 the Mozartian, or, at any rate, the Beethovenian 
 form, and to give the new style a title of its own 
 which shall more aptly describe its character. 
 Musical nomenclature is very limited and often 
 inadequate, and it may be that none of us will 
 trouble ourselves much about the name of a com- 
 position as long as it is so charged with matter 
 as this piano work of D'Albert's. But com- 
 posers are certainly moving toward a very differ- 
 ent combination of the piano and orchestra from 
 that of so recent a time as Schumann's. Whether 
 the new style, so full of dramatic power, is better 
 than that of Beethoven's last period, or than 
 Schumann's, it is too soon to decide. It is 
 certainly more ambitious, and therein lies a 
 danger, for the fate of vaulting ambition is fa- 
 miliar. 
 
 One thing must undoubtedly be borne in mind 
 in considering this matter, and that is the splen- 
 did development of the piano. The resources
 
 1 82 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 of the instrument, as every one must have real- 
 ized while listening to the piano performances 
 of the last few seasons, are now beyond the 
 fondest dreams of Beethoven and the wildest 
 imagination of Mozart. Rubinstein in one of his 
 concertos has set forth his idea that the piano is 
 the equal and the rival of the orchestra. There 
 is a substantial foundation for this thought. In 
 power the piano yields only to the boldest for- 
 tissimo of a full modern orchestra. In feeling 
 it gives way to the violin and 'cello, but in variety 
 and extent of tone-color and dynamic gradations 
 it surpasses them. 
 
 D'Albert has employed the solo instrument 
 with superb effect, both alone and in combina- 
 tions, in his B minor concerto. Some of his 
 passages — for instance, those in which stopped 
 horns accompany the piano, are marvellous in 
 their intensity. As we said before, the whole 
 work is surprising and masterful. If the ad- 
 vance of compositions for piano and orchestra 
 designed to embody the concentrated and com- 
 plex emotional feeling of the new romantic 
 school is to be along the line foreshadowed by 
 Beethoven and developed by Liszt, there is 
 probably no man living more competent to con- 
 duct the march of progress than that little giant 
 of the pianoforte, Eugene d'Albert ; and it is be-
 
 THE MODERN CONCERTO. 1 83 
 
 yond question that the term concerto is both 
 feeble and inexpressive. I do not like the name 
 symphonic poem. It is awkward and mislead- 
 ing* y e t musical nomenclature is so barren that 
 I do not blame Liszt for adopting such a title. 
 It would certainly be a more fitting appellation 
 for such compositions as that of D'Albert than 
 concerto. 
 
 But by whatever name we may call these 
 works — and D'Albert's being in the direct 
 line of development will not be the last of 
 them — we must recognize the fact that they 
 open a field for the piano which no prophet 
 could have foreseen when Scarlatti was defining 
 the rudiments of technique, or even when Bach 
 was making those rules of fingering which we 
 still admire and practise. We have followed in 
 this review of the evolution of piano music a 
 long and marvellous series of advances. Look- 
 ing back over them we must perceive that the 
 tendency has always been toward greater power 
 and wider range of effects in technique, toward 
 concentration in ideas and intensification of 
 feeling. The natural results of these tenden- 
 cies, as exemplified first in the Clementi tech- 
 nique, afterward in the Schumann technique, in 
 the connected movements of the G and E flat 
 concertos of Beethoven, and later in the con-
 
 1 84 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 tinuous movements and reiterated fundamental 
 melody of the Liszt concertos, are seen in such 
 a work as the B-minor concerto of D'Albert. 
 From the mountain spring to the sea is a far 
 cry ; but one can trace the river all the way.
 
 IV.— Some Living Players. 
 
 It would be a pity to leave the piano without 
 a word or two about contemporaneous players. 
 All that we have been reviewing in the evo- 
 lution of piano music would be but a sealed 
 book to most of us were it not for the eloquent 
 exposition of the great performers of our day. 
 In a single chronological recital we get an in- 
 sight into the history of technical and aestheti- 
 cal development that no printed pages can give. 
 There are many persons in every audience, to 
 be sure, who do not get this insight, for the 
 piano is fashionable and many learn it simply 
 as an accomplishment. 
 
 But those who have some talent penetrate 
 deeper into the mysteries of the instrument and 
 learn to recognize some of the higher qualities 
 of technique, and even to catch an inkling of 
 the aesthetic basis of the player's work. This 
 insight into the inner consciousness of the piano 
 is becoming more widely spread, and the result 
 is that good piano-playing is beginning to get
 
 1 86 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 something like real appreciation. The number 
 of those who can discriminate between mere 
 technical brilliancy and real musical feeling is 
 constantly growing, and any pianist who comes 
 before a musical public at the present day is 
 fairly sure of an intelligent hearing. This is a 
 good thing for the good players, but it is mani- 
 festly bad for the poor ones. As time passes 
 there is bound to be less and less toleration for 
 mediocrity and little pity for pretentious inca- 
 pacity. The pounders and the mutilators must 
 go to the wall and make room for those who 
 can speak distinctly, beautifully, and eloquently 
 through the medium of the most popular solo 
 instrument of our time. 
 
 Those who do so speak are, as intimated, the 
 greatest gainers from the development of public 
 taste. The number of persons who can tell the 
 differences between the playing of men like 
 D'Albert and Von Biilow is much larger than 
 it was a few years ago. This has come about 
 through the energetic and self-reliant attitude 
 of music lovers. The people who really know 
 and understand music are in the habit nowa- 
 days of thinking for themselves a good deal. 
 To be sure, they read much, and take their 
 Schur6 or Wolzogen in large doses, and they 
 look at the newspapers. But they reserve for
 
 SOME LIVING PLAYERS. 1 87 
 
 themselves the liberty of taking everything on 
 trial and coming to their own conclusions at 
 last. The newspaper comments on current mu- 
 sical events are read by most lovers of music; 
 but, as a rule, they serve chiefly to stimulate the 
 readers to thoughtfulness and the formation of 
 their own opinions. It is a good thing that this 
 is so. The benefit of criticism is much greater 
 when it induces people to think independently 
 than when it gains blind adherence. 
 
 Among contemporaneous pianists conspicu- 
 ous figures are Von Biilow, D'Albert, Rummel, 
 Rosenthal, and — so far as America is concerned 
 — Joseffy. Dr. von Biilow is, perhaps, greater 
 for what he represents than for what he is. It 
 may be that we must view something of his 
 present through the roseate glory of his past ; 
 but standing at the summit of sixty-two years 
 of life and thirty -nine years of musical expe- 
 rience, resting upon the laurels of triumphant 
 victory in the battle of the new German school, 
 first for existence and then for supremacy, 
 wielding as executant, teacher, and conductor 
 an influence which radiates from Berlin to the 
 four corners of the earth, Dr. von Biilow looms 
 up as an intensely absorbing personality and a 
 conspicuously important figure in the musical 
 progress of the day.
 
 1 88 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 Moritz Rosenthal is a pianistic whirlwind. 
 The impression he made on me at a first hearing 
 was that he literally paralyzed the sensibilities 
 of his audience. Stupefied by such an exhibi- 
 tion of technical perfection and physical power 
 as had not been known since the springtime of 
 Rubenstein, his first hearers momentarily forgot 
 that there was spirituality in music and went 
 mad over its bodily strength and beauty. Yet 
 Rosenthal's playing was far from being devoid 
 of musical feeling. Sometimes he was really 
 eloquent; but it seemed that his eloquence was 
 sporadic and governed largely by the mood of 
 the moment. This is not consistent with the 
 true artist's singleness of purpose. Again, there 
 were times when Rosenthal showed high intel- 
 ligence. His performance of Beethoven's sonata 
 in E flat major (No. 3) was more satisfactory to 
 the true musician than most of his other work. 
 He played the composition in a manly, straight- 
 forward, honest style, presenting the themes and 
 their development in a very intelligible manner. 
 It was a thoughtful interpretation, worthy not 
 only of an eminent pianist, but of a man of cult- 
 ure. Again, Rosenthal was sometimes a mu- 
 sical poet, as, for instance, when he played Cho- 
 pin's E minor concerto. He had penetrated to 
 the soul of that composition and knew how to
 
 SOME LIVING PLAYERS. 1 89 
 
 lay it bare before his hearers. His exposition 
 of the themes was unsurpassed in its justice and 
 eloquence. His treatment of the involved pas- 
 sages was vital with the most subtle delicacy of 
 feeling, couched in a tone that was absolutely 
 caressing. His color was soft as September 
 haze and warm as June sunset; his touch was 
 as sweet and as moist as dew. But the entire 
 reserve of his technique was completely subor- 
 dinated to a faithful rendering of the composer's 
 poetry. It was a performance which made us 
 willing to accord him a position in the front 
 rank of pianists. 
 
 Yet when he played Schumann's " Carnaval," 
 in a most uneven manner, he demonstrated that 
 he had not achieved greatness. He gave the 
 " Preambule" with superb breadth, dignity, and 
 volume of tone. The " Eusebius " he actually 
 interpreted, giving its delicious voice-parts their 
 relative value, imparting to the whole passage a 
 soft and organ-like tone-color, and imbuing it 
 with something of the wistful mysticism re- 
 vealed to us in that particular mood of his own 
 personality called by Schumann Eusebius. On 
 the other hand, he played the "Valse Alle- 
 mande " with a ridiculously affected tempo ru- 
 bato, and he fairly burlesqued the quiet humor 
 of the march of the " Davidsbiindler." What
 
 190 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 was it that this brilliant young pianist most 
 lacked ? It was repose, without which no lofty 
 art-work is possible. Technically this failing 
 showed itself in a tendency to play many 
 phrases in a manner best described by that un- 
 pleasant word "jerky." ^sthetically it showed 
 itself in a want of even balance of ideas. But 
 Rosenthal is a thinker and a student ; his time 
 will come. I agree with Heinrich Ehrlich. Ros- 
 enthal has reached the topmost peak of virtu- 
 osity. There he will spread his wings for flight 
 toward the sky of musical feeling. 
 
 Eugene d'Albert I have already called the 
 little giant of the pianoforte. Here is a man 
 even smaller than Rosenthal, and with a tech- 
 nique as great as the Roumanian's. To describe 
 Rosenthal's technical ability would be to sum- 
 marize the entire field of piano mechanics as 
 known to the virtuosity of to-day. The same 
 thing is to be said of D'Albert, but something is 
 to be added. There is a greater man than Ro- 
 senthal behind the technique. There is a more 
 intense and vital individuality, a deeper and 
 subtler temperament, a more highly gifted and 
 roundly developed intellectuality. D'Albert is 
 not only a great pianist, but also a great musi- 
 cian. He is a thinker, an analyzer, an explica- 
 tor. The marvellous technique of the player
 
 SOME LIVIMG PLAYERS. 191 
 
 renders the mechanical performance of any mu- 
 sic facile to him. The artistic temperament fills 
 the execution with passion and vitality. The 
 brain controls the whole and fashions it into 
 a well-rounded, luminous, influential exposition. 
 It is hardly necessary to mention specially any 
 details of D'Albert's style. One thing, however, 
 which struck me may be worth noting. His de- 
 licious tempo rubato undoibtedly puzzles some 
 of his hearers. He obeys the spirit, but not 
 the letter, of Chopin's injunction to preserve the 
 tempo with the left hand, letting the right some- 
 times run ahead and sometimes linger behind. 
 Whenever the chief thematic utterance passes 
 into the left hand, D'Albert transfers the tempo 
 rubato with it. The effect is striking. At times 
 it is dramatic. It adds to his work a variety of 
 fruitful nuances which to the untrained hearer 
 increase the complexity of his playing. But 
 complexity is often a feature of higher types in 
 art as well as in biology. D'Albert's supremacy 
 as a performer of Beethoven's concertos must 
 not be forgotten. His wonderful rendering of 
 the G major concerto ought to be long remem- 
 bered by lovers of piano music. It was ideal in 
 its perfection. In loftiness of conception it was 
 beautiful. In finish of technical treatment it 
 was wonderful. We hear much about the art of
 
 192 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 singing on the pianoforte, but we seldom meet 
 with a genuine example. D'Albert's vocal pres- 
 entation of the second movement of this concer- 
 to transformed the piano into something almost 
 human ; and his treatment of the cadenza of 
 the first movement was in itself an education in 
 piano-playing. His performance of the " Em- 
 peror " concerto was another splendid achieve- 
 ment. The pianist did not astound with his 
 reading, but he certainly moved the heart and 
 fired the imagination. No one else whom I have 
 heard has played this loftiest poem of the piano 
 with such manliness, solidity, fidelity, and sym- 
 metry. 
 
 Yet there is something lacking in D'Albert. 
 He is, of course, not perfect. The same just- 
 ness of conception and rounded finish of pres- 
 entation as he showed in the Beethoven works 
 were not always conspicuous in his performances. 
 A few quotations from Adolf Christiani's inter- 
 esting book on the " Principles of Expression in 
 Pianoforte Playing" will be instructive here. 
 He says : 
 
 " Talent implies a peculiar aptitude for a 
 special employment ; hence pianistic talent im- 
 plies a peculiar aptitude for that particular 
 branch of musical art. ... A pianist may 
 be a great specialist without being much of a
 
 SOME LIVING PLAYERS. 1 93 
 
 musician, but to be a truly great artist he should 
 be an accomplished musician also." He must 
 have emotion, which will make him all warmth 
 and feeling. Emotion is "that sixth sense, 
 ' the power of conceiving and divining the beau- 
 tiful,' which is the exclusive gift of God to the 
 artist. ... It involves the germs and in- 
 stinct of several minor faculties, such as natural 
 taste and instinctive discrimination ; these, how- 
 ever, like talent, in order to become perfect, de- 
 pend on intellectual training. Then only does 
 natural taste become cultured refinement and in- 
 stinctive discrimination become sound judg- 
 ment." 
 
 " The term intelligence," the author contin- 
 ues, " presupposes capacity, and comprises all 
 musical attainments that are teachable. . . . 
 It requires each and every musical attainment 
 acquirable by the exercise of thought and mind, 
 including self-control, mastery of emotion, and 
 repose. Intelligence aids and corrects talent ; 
 it guides and regulates emotion, and directs 
 technique." 
 
 " Technique," he says further, " is, in a cer- 
 tain sense, the opposite of aesthetics ; inasmuch 
 as aesthetics have to do with the perceptions 
 of a work of art and technique with the em- 
 bodiment of it. . . . Therefore, technique 
 13
 
 194 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 comprises more than mechanism. Mechanism 
 is merely the manual part of technique, not 
 requiring any directing thought ; technique, 
 however, requires thought. For example : as 
 to fingering, which precedes mechanism ; as to 
 tempo, which governs mechanism ; as to force, 
 which qualifies mechanism ; as to touch, which 
 ennobles mechanism." 
 
 Apply these considerations to D'Albert. In 
 emotion he is pre-eminent. He certainly has 
 the " power of conceiving and divining the 
 beautiful." And his natural taste has become 
 cultured refinement; his instinctive discrimina- 
 tion sound judgment. His special pianistic tal- 
 ent is beyond a moment's doubt. And his tech- 
 nique is gigantic. The only one of Christiani's 
 departments in which D'Albert is still lack- 
 ing is intelligence. He has not yet acquired 
 perfect self-control, mastery of emotion, and re- 
 pose. He is not always able to preserve the 
 delicate mental state of Chopin in his feminine 
 moods. Of Chopin in his masculine moods he 
 is a superb explicator. But D'Albert's fiery in- 
 dividuality breaks the bonds of Chopin, the 
 female, at times, and translates the ultra-refined 
 ideas into a sterner utterance than befits them, 
 and so shocks our sensibilities. We may readily 
 forgive him this, for his tremendous masculinity
 
 SOME LIVING PLAYERS. 1 95 
 
 makes him a grand preacher of the gospel ac- 
 cording to Beethoven. He is very young, and 
 his blood is hot. The judgment is ripening, and 
 self-control, mastery of emotion, and repose will 
 come with the years. Repose is the consumma- 
 tion of artistic development. It is the child of 
 time and study. We must not demand it in a 
 mere youth. He must accomplish his develop- 
 ment normally. To have attained mastery of 
 emotion and repose at his age would presuppose 
 the quelling of the fire of youth. D'Albert is 
 already great. He will be greater if the world 
 does not spoil him, as it loves to spoil artists. 
 Perhaps the impulses in this little man are too 
 large to be checked by the world's adulation. 
 For the sake of art let us hope so. 
 
 Mr. Joseffy has always impressed the writer 
 as being deficient in elevation of sentiment. The 
 limitations of his technique cannot be at present 
 defined because he has of late sought to make 
 certain changes in its character. His playing 
 was formerly distinguished by crystalline purity 
 and clearness, coupled with a delicacy and neat- 
 ness which transformed everything he touched 
 into a sort of Queen Mab scherzo. But recently 
 Mr. Joseffy has aimed at breadth and power. 
 He is seeking for a deeper dramatic note, but I 
 am not quite sure that he is justified in doing
 
 I96 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 so. It is better for the executive musician to be 
 perfect within a limited field than imperfect out- 
 side of it. But it is beyond dispute that Mr. 
 Joseffy has gained in depth and dignity in the 
 last ten years, and his future may demonstrate 
 that the line of his advance has been wisely 
 chosen. One thing is certain : he has fairly 
 earned a place in the front rank of pianists — a 
 fact which is more and more fully demonstrated 
 when he is brought into comparison with artists 
 acknowledged to be of the first order. 
 
 This study would be incomplete without some 
 reference to so noble an artist as Franz Rummel. 
 I confess without hesitation that I do not know 
 just where to place Rummel. If it were not for 
 a certain hardness of style, which obtrudes itself 
 at times, and which seems to me to be the out- 
 come of an over-elaborate adjustment of tech- 
 nical means with a view to reaching just the ex- 
 act effect sought by the player, I should put 
 Rummel ahead of all these pianists. Perhaps 
 he ought to be placed there anyhow. He cer- 
 tainly is a great pianist and belongs in the front 
 rank. His development has been notably sane 
 and logical. In former years he was all emo- 
 tion. He had no self-control, and his tem- 
 perament fairly ran away with him. All that is 
 past, however. I had the good fortune to hear
 
 SOME LIVING PLAYERS. 1 97 
 
 htm frequently in the season of 1890-91, after 
 not hearing him for three years. It was im- 
 mediately evident that the old accusation of a 
 lack of symmetry and repose could no longer be 
 brought against him. 
 
 At the first concert in which I heard him he 
 played Beethoven's G major and Liszt's E flat 
 concertos. The newly developed qualities of 
 the artist's work were shown in a high light in 
 the first selection. His reading of the noble 
 composition was scholarly in its justice, master- 
 ful in its sympathetic warmth and wide scope of 
 feeling, luminous in the varied picturesqueness 
 of its color, and stamped with the finish of lofty 
 art in its dignity and repose. All the fiery im- 
 petuosity of the man's temperament remained. 
 His emotional force was as strong as it ever had 
 been, but the period of defiance of government 
 was passed. The emotional power was held in 
 the grasp of a strong and commanding intel- 
 ligence, which guided it with firmness and 
 wisdom. It would have been an impossibility 
 for any hearer to rightly measure the amount 
 of study and self-control displayed in such a per- 
 formance as Mr. Rummel gave on the occa- 
 sion under consideration. To approach such a 
 judgment would require an intimate acquaint- 
 ance with the pianist's methods of private labor
 
 I98 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 as well as with the changeful nature of his strong 
 moods. But remembering that the player but 
 a few years ago had been a creature of unbridled 
 emotion, playing from impulse rather than idea, 
 I could not avoid marvelling at the breadth and 
 depth of artistic devotion which this growth, 
 accomplished in three years, plainly revealed. 
 Where Rummel seems to me to fall short of 
 the highest possible achievement is in the low- 
 est department of his art — technique. There is 
 a lack of spontaneity in his tone-color, beautiful 
 as it often is. The mechanism is too often ex- 
 posed. The effort of the player to accomplish 
 the design of the artist is betrayed. 
 
 As for Dr. Von Biilow, the special trait of his 
 ability which gives him his position is easily 
 discernible. Indeed, it is frequently obtrusive. 
 He is the highest living embodiment of musical 
 intelligence. He has acquired, in the most per- 
 fect degree, self-control, mastery of emotion, and 
 repose. It has been said that he is deficient in 
 emotion. Doubtless there is some truth in this. 
 The time has been when, if Dr. von Biilow had 
 possessed as much emotional warmth as intelli- 
 gence, he would have been the ideal pianist, and 
 the boundaries of piano-playing would have been 
 defined. Happily for art and artists, the doctor 
 was cold, and the world is still waiting and seek-
 
 SOME LIVING PLAYERS. 1 99 
 
 ing. All the musical emotion which he has is 
 under the most complete control of his brain. 
 Personal feeling never gets the better of him. 
 He is always an objective player, striving to in- 
 terpret the composer, not himself. Therein he 
 differs widely from D'Albert, who often projects 
 his own personality in too brilliant a light upon 
 the musical picture which he is painting. Dr. 
 von Biilow is always an interpreter, revitalizing 
 for us the thoughts of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, 
 and Schumann with reverential fidelity and a 
 remarkable range of technical styles. To listen 
 to one of his recitals is to live in turn with each 
 of the composers on the programme. Dr. von 
 Biilow gives contemporaneous human interest 
 to dead composers not by modernizing them, as 
 so many weaker artists do, but by taking his au- 
 dience back with him into their time. 
 
 The doctor is failing in technical power, but he 
 is still a most instructive pianist. We may be as- 
 tonished, electrified, paralyzed by the others ; we 
 are convinced by the doctor. But let us remem- 
 ber that without emotion the supreme pinnacle 
 of performance cannot be reached. Experience, 
 deep and thoughtful study, and arduous practice 
 have made Dr. von Biilow what he is, or rather 
 what he was. But with all his thought he can- 
 not move a hearer as D'Albert or Rummel can.
 
 200 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 In closing this brief view of the work of some 
 living pianists something must be said of one 
 whose personal magnetism is so great that it 
 sometimes obscures the real nature of his play- 
 ing. Ignace Jean Paderewski produced a pro- 
 found impression upon all who heard him in 
 both England and America; and the impression 
 was one which did credit to the musical percep- 
 tion of both countries. It seems idle to reiter- 
 ate the oft-repeated assertion that Paderewski 
 is a very great pianist, yet it must be repeated 
 here for the sake of the record. Those of us 
 who sat under the magic spell of his perform- 
 ances in New York, and at times let emotion 
 run away with judgment, will never forget how 
 we awoke, as it were, on leaving the hall, and 
 were conscious of vague questionings. 
 
 Perfection, we reflected, is still a poet's dream. 
 We could not listen even to the Arabian Nights' 
 entertainments of Paderewski without repeating 
 the familiar query which the young man of de- 
 partmental ditties attributed to the distorted 
 genius of his Satanic Majesty — "Is it art?" 
 And then we turned scornfully upon ourselves 
 and cried, " Away with all cynics ! Throw crit- 
 icism to the dogs ! Let us praise, applaud, and 
 be merry ; for to-morrow some piano-manufact- 
 urer will import a pianist who cannot play thus.
 
 SOME LIVING PLAYERS. 201 
 
 Let us sound the loud timbrel of laudation o'er 
 Egypt's dark sea of analysis. Great is Paderew- 
 
 ski ! " 
 
 And he is great. His performance of the Em- 
 peror concerto of Beethoven was not what we ex- 
 pected ; but it is not a sine qua non that a pian- 
 ist should be in complete sympathy with the 
 majestic musical thoughts of the mighty Lud- 
 wig. No one but a great artist could have 
 played Schumann's A minor concerto as Pader- 
 ewski did. His performance was lovely in the 
 poetry of its feeling, exquisite in the delicacy 
 and warmth of its color, convincing in its ex- 
 pression, and captivating in its refinement. It 
 was a complete demonstration of the player's ar- 
 tistic nature. It was a radiant companion piece 
 to his interpretation of Rubinstein's beautiful 
 D minor concerto, and his incomparable delivery 
 of some of Schubert's works. Moreover, no one 
 but a musician of genuine originality could have 
 written Paderewski's own concerto, and I do not 
 believe that any other living pianist could play 
 it with such ease, brilliancy, and beauty. 
 
 Paderewski's mastery of the key-board is sim- 
 ply glorious. All the difficulties of modern 
 compositions resolve themselves into fancies 
 under the magic caress of his graceful hands. 
 But that is a minor consideration. The great
 
 202 THE EVOLUTION OF PIANO MUSIC. 
 
 fundamental trait of his playing is its vocal char- 
 acter. When Emmanuel Bach said : " During 
 the last few years my chief endeavor has been 
 to play the piano-forte, in spite of its deficiency 
 in sustaining sound, as much as possible in a 
 singing manner, and to compose for it accord- 
 ingly," he formulated the true principle of all 
 instrumental performance. Now, as a matter of 
 course, the passages which Paderewski plays so 
 wonderfully on the piano could not be sung; 
 but he makes them sound as if they could be, 
 and, indeed, were sung. He steeps every com- 
 position in a vocal atmosphere, which causes the 
 piano to seem animated by the breath of life. 
 The ability to do this combines with a rare gift 
 of sympathy, uncommon poetic insight, and a 
 marvellous faculty of conveying his own feeling 
 through the medium of the key-board to the 
 hearer, to make Paderewski what he is — a man 
 with interpretative and creative individuality. 
 In every art such a being is precious.
 
 SCHUMANN AND THE PROGRAMME- 
 SYMPHONY.
 
 SCHUMANN AND THE PROGRAMME- 
 SYMPHONY. 
 
 After the first performance of one of his 
 symphonies Robert Schumann wrote to a friend 
 expressing his delight at its favorable reception. 
 No symphony had been taken so kindly by the 
 public since Beethoven. Schumann's pleasure 
 had a very substantial foundation. The condi- 
 tion of the public feeling toward his works is the 
 same now as it was then, with the addition of 
 that deeper respect which familiarity with good 
 intellectual work always breeds instead of con- 
 tempt. Schumann is pretty generally accepted 
 now as the second in rank of the great sym- 
 phonic writers. There is still a tendency in some 
 quarters to overrate Mendelssohn, whose worth 
 must certainly not be underestimated. But 
 close and sympathetic study, without which any 
 critical summary must be built on insecure foun- 
 dations, will, we think, convince any one that
 
 206 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 Schumann is surpassed in emotional depth, in- 
 tellectual force, and expressive ability by Beet- 
 hoven alone. 
 
 Emil Naumann, whose " History of Music " is 
 an exhaustive work and sufficiently trustworthy 
 as to facts, declared his belief that Robert Schu- 
 mann was not a genius. If he was not, I am very 
 doubtful as to the existence of more than four 
 geniuses in the whole record of music. They 
 are Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, and Wagner. 
 The reader will note that this list omits such im- 
 portant personages as Orlando Lasso, Palestri- 
 na, Haydn, Gluck, Mendelssohn, Schubert, and 
 Chopin, not to mention the whole list of opera- 
 tic composers of the Italian and French schools. 
 Naumann, however, is a man of no middle meas- 
 ures. Having decided that Schumann was 
 simply a man of talent, he dismisses him, to- 
 gether with Schubert and Mendelssohn, in a few 
 scant pages. 
 
 It is fair to suspect that a good deal of the 
 reasoning which led Naumann to make this 
 classification was affected by what H. T. Finck 
 calls the worship of Jumboism. If Franz Schu- 
 bert was not a genius, then the universal concep- 
 tion of genius as inspired ability is false. Schu- 
 bert's songs are small works as compared with 
 Beethoven's symphonies ; but it is cheap criti-
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 207 
 
 cism that measures the value of a painter's work 
 by the size of his canvas. There have been 
 hundreds of grand operas worth far less to the 
 world than Schubert's " Doppelganger," " Du 
 bist die Ruh," or " Erlkonig." The same com- 
 parison can be made in regard to Schumann's 
 songs. 
 
 This digression is made with a view to show- 
 ing that Naumann's classification is arbitrary and 
 foolish. Robert Schumann was surely a genius, 
 and he proves it in his symphonic writings as 
 fully as in his songs and piano pieces. His 
 symphonies are as incontestably entitled to the 
 rank of master-songs as is " Morgenlich leuch- 
 tend." If there is one quality more potent than 
 another in his orchestral words it is that intense, 
 concentrated, and irresistible emotional force 
 which is the soul of his songs. And this emo- 
 tional intensity is not hampered by a lack of 
 utterance. There is no mistaking Schumann's 
 moods, for his musical exposition of them is so 
 luminously eloquent that even those unskilled 
 in the language of music must be quickened by 
 their innate warmth. Like Wotan's sword in 
 the trunk of the tree, they glow even upon the 
 eyes of the uninformed. 
 
 It has always seemed to me to require singular 
 opacity to fail to perceive Schumann's tremen-
 
 208 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 dous virility. It reveals itself most brilliantly 
 in his four symphonies, of which three certainly 
 deserve to be classed in the first rank, as second 
 only to the third, fifth, seventh, and ninth of 
 Beethoven. Though Schumann undoubtedly 
 lacked the fertile invention and the lofty sim- 
 plicity of thematic utterance possessed by the 
 greatest of all symphonic writers, he equalled 
 his predecessor in earnestness of purpose and in 
 the originality of the methods by which he 
 sought to make his purposes known. This is a 
 broad assertion ; but it seems to me that a care- 
 ful study of Schumann's symphonies will justify 
 it. Perceiving, as I always do, the big human 
 heart of the man in every measure of his music 
 and feeling at each hearing of the C major, 
 the Rhenish and the D minor the glorious 
 magnetism of a sympathy which it is the privi- 
 lege of music to build between the quick and the 
 dead, I approach the task of paying my tribute 
 to the memory of Robert Schumann with no 
 little feeling. He was the keenest and wisest of 
 critics, a king among men and a prince among 
 composers. 
 
 Schumann was a romanticist by temperament 
 and by the environment of time and situation. 
 Therefore he wrote programme music ; for pro- 
 gramme music has always been a special means
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 209 
 
 of expression for romanticism. Let us, then, 
 first consider this kind of composition. Many 
 words have been written about it, and "yet is 
 there strength, labor, and sorrow." Whether it 
 is a good or bad thing, beneficent or maleficent 
 toward art, has been discussed ad infinitum, and, 
 perhaps, ad nauseam. It is a question which 
 cannot be answered categorically. Whether pro- 
 gramme music is good or bad depends, in the 
 first place, on the composer's design and upon his 
 just observance of the limitations of his art ; and, 
 in the second place, on the hearer's conception 
 of the possibilities of musical significance. 
 
 No one can deny that interest is added to a 
 composition for the average hearer by the appli- 
 cation of a " programme." Men and women 
 are fond of having a peg on which to hang their 
 imaginations. This is sometimes urged as an 
 objection against all programme music. The 
 objectors say that one cannot understand such 
 music without a key. That is true enough ; 
 but when the key is supplied it certainly opens 
 the door for us and lets us see what is going on 
 in the composer's mind. The music stimulates 
 the imagination, and the two act and react on 
 one another. The objection offered against this 
 is that the whole proceeding is largely a mat- 
 ter of imagination. But that objection may be 
 14
 
 2IO ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 made to all art. It is certainly fair to offer it 
 against poetry, fiction, and the drama. The 
 novelist imagines a series of incidents, and by 
 the force of his words makes us see them with 
 the mind's eye. He tells us what he wishes us 
 to imagine, and we imagine it. How much dif- 
 ference is there between his power and that of 
 the composer ? 
 
 The difference is in the character of the con- 
 cepts formed by the mind. The novelist can 
 tell a direct story ; he can name his personages, 
 and describe the color of their eyes. This is 
 not in the power of music. She fills the mind 
 with broad, universal imaginations rather than 
 with images. To be sure there are persons who 
 seek for images in all music. Among them are 
 those fanciful enthusiasts who find the colors of 
 the rainbow, the thunders of the mountain- 
 storm, the babbling of the meadow - brook, or 
 the bellowing of the great deep in this or that 
 composition. Sometimes in the carrying out of 
 a great plan the masters have written music de- 
 signed to conjure up in the mind images of ex- 
 ternal objects, but to do that is to put music to 
 its lowest use. 
 
 The highest form of programme music is that 
 in which the programme is simply an emotional 
 schedule. I mean that the composer, having
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 211 
 
 studied his own soul, and having found that 
 certain events in his life or observation have 
 given rise to a train of emotions, designs his 
 composition to convey some knowledge of that 
 train of emotions to his hearer, and to place him 
 in responsive sympathy with it. He says to 
 the hearer, " Listen to my music and feel what 
 I have felt." Unless I have failed to compre- 
 hend his obscure language (not made more com- 
 prehensible in Mr. Lawson's translation) this is 
 what Dr. Hand means in his " ^Esthetics of 
 Musical Art," when he says : " We truly cannot 
 tell what every individual tone in a piece of 
 music says, as is possible in the case of the 
 words of language, or even what feeling is ex- 
 pressed in particular harmonies ; but in the 
 condition of feeling — which in itself is not in- 
 definite — the fantasy operates, and creates and 
 combines melodic and harmonic tone-pictures, 
 which not only represent that condition, but are 
 also, in themselves, valid as representations. 
 Thus, for instance, the feeling of perfect enjoy- 
 ment of life, or of sadness, becomes a picture in 
 a Rondo, or in an Adagio, in which all individ- 
 ual successions of tones, and forms of tones, are 
 in unison with the fundamental feeling." 
 
 This, it seems to me, was the kind of pro- 
 gramme music that Robert Schumann wrote.
 
 212 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 It is not music for the masses, I admit, though 
 Schumann's manly strength is so plainly re- 
 vealed in his music that even the superficial get 
 a certain pleasure from his symphonies. But 
 the real meaning of Schumann's orchestral works 
 is reserved for him who can find the key to 
 their emotional basis. Once you have discov- 
 ered the composer's schedule of feeling, you 
 have opened up for yourself a mine of musical 
 wealth which, it seems to me, could only have 
 been worked by a real genius. Reading Schu- 
 mann's symphonies thus, we must perceive that 
 they are programme music of the loftiest order, 
 in which the essential nature of romanticism in 
 music becomes at once the rule of their con- 
 struction and the justification of their existence. 
 This essential nature of romanticism, which 
 means the completion of an emotional circuit 
 between the composer and the hearer, is the 
 only argument in favor of programme music. 
 It is the only ground upon which the sym- 
 phonic poem and the leit motif can stand with 
 any hope of safety. It is the ground upon 
 which Beethoven placed his pastoral symphony 
 when he wrote over it, " mehr Ausdruck der 
 Empfindung als Malerei : " more an expression 
 of emotion than portraiture. If we go back to 
 the earliest programme music we find that it
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 213 
 
 does not stand the application of these princi- 
 ples. Take, for instance, the ballet suites of 
 Francois Couperin. After writing, he sought 
 for effective theatrical titles, and called his 
 movements by such names as " La majestueuse," 
 " La voluptueuse," " Les enjouments bachiques," 
 " Tendresses bachiques," " Fureurs bachiques." 
 The auditors were supposed to discover the 
 qualities indicated by these titles, or at any rate 
 to imagine them. But as Couperin was not 
 conscious of any particular emotional state in 
 the composition of these pieces, as he had no 
 conception of the possibility of projecting his 
 emotion through his music, his titles were 
 meaningless, and his programme music con- 
 structed on false principles. 
 
 In failing to grasp the real possibilities of pro- 
 gramme music, Couperin was, like his contem- 
 poraries, hampered by the condition of musical 
 art. Music was not yet free from the shackles 
 of the ecclesiastical scales, and the ecclesiastical 
 spirit still controlled her utterance. All the 
 great composers of the day failed comparatively 
 in emotional writing the moment they attempted 
 anything that was not religious. Bach's " St. 
 Matthew Passion " will live forever; but his in- 
 strumental programme pieces are only musical 
 curiosities. We have seen in our study of piano
 
 214 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 music how Kuhnau tried to write programme 
 music of a pictorial kind and was unsuccessful. 
 Yet the internal evidence of Kuhnau's works 
 goes to show that he had some ideas as to the 
 limitations of his art. For instance, the argu- 
 ment of his " Saul Cured by David by Means 
 of Music" is thus quoted by Dr. Spitta : First, 
 Saul's melancholy and madness. Second, Da- 
 vid's refreshing harp-playing. Third, the King's 
 mind restored to peace." Dr. Spitta describes 
 this as really well made. The themes are char- 
 acteristic and well handled. The great point, 
 however, in this and the other sonatas is this : 
 " Situations are selected which are characterized 
 by the most simple and unmixed sentiment." 
 In other words, Kuhnau sometimes had a dim 
 perception of the truth that only broad effects 
 were attainable. The very moment that one 
 attempts to paint details in music, text becomes 
 necessary. The domain of absolute music is 
 transcended, and we must have the choral sym- 
 phony, the cantata, or, best of all, the opera. 
 
 Kuhnau's descriptive sonatas gave us Bach's 
 " Capriccio sopra la lontananza del suo fratello 
 dilettissimo " — " capriccio on the absence [de- 
 parture] of a loved brother." It has often been 
 said that Bach was the father of programme 
 music, but in the face of Froberger, Kuhnau,
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 215 
 
 Couperin, and Knecht, with his two labelled 
 symphonies, it would be better to drop this as- 
 sertion. Those who are unacquainted with this 
 composition of Bach's will find food for reflec- 
 tion in the composer's programme : The first 
 number is labelled " Persuasion addressed to 
 friends that they withhold him from the jour- 
 ney ; " the second, " A representation of the va- 
 rious casual ities which may happen to him in a 
 foreign country ; " third, " A general lamenta- 
 tion by friends ; " fourth, " The friends, seeing 
 that it cannot be otherwise, come to take leave; " 
 fifth, " Aria de postiglione." Dr. Spitta adds, 
 with dry humor, " When the carriage has driven 
 off and the composer is left alone, he takes ad- 
 vantage of his solitude to write a double fugue 
 on the post-horn call." Delightful consolation ! 
 Can one fail to discern how the whole spirit 
 of programme music was misconceived by the 
 masters of the first half of the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, including the great Sebastian ? Kuhnau 
 did the most surprising things, such as writing 
 recitative without words for the clavier in his 
 vain efforts to transform that modest instrument 
 into a dramatic singer. Bach must have felt 
 that his attempt to make the clavier catalogue 
 the accidents that might happen to his brother 
 in a foreign land was a failure. At any rate he
 
 2l6 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 did not pursue the study of programme music. 
 It was not in the line of Bach's development 
 anyhow. 
 
 The truth of the matter lies just here: No 
 composer can convey a definite descriptive com- 
 munication to his hearer in music. He can re- 
 veal his mood and reproduce it in the sympa- 
 thetic auditor; but that is as far as he can go. 
 He can be gay or sad, calm or stormy, peaceful 
 or heroic, and he can make the hearer share his 
 feelings. But the very moment he desires to 
 say to his hearer, " I am sad because my only 
 brother has gone to China," he must put that 
 fact in words. For the hearer's idea of sadness 
 on account of the absence of a brother may be 
 very different from that of the composer, and 
 the former in that case will fail to comprehend 
 the latter. It is here that a key is needed, either 
 of text or of knowledge of the causes producing 
 the emotional conditions under which the music 
 was written. Without a key the hearer is as 
 helpless as he would be in the presence of a 
 Bayreuth leit motif divorced from its text. 
 
 If Wagner had written a theme designed to 
 express the sorrow of the Volsungs, and given 
 it to us dissociated from its dramatic text, we 
 should recognize its marvellous melancholy, but 
 we could go no further. Herein lies the only
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 217 
 
 possible justification, as I have intimated, of 
 the leit motif. It is explained by the very text 
 whose meaning it intensifies and illustrates. 
 Just as the intonations of the human voice be- 
 tray the feelings that lie behind words, so does 
 Wagner's leading motive, substituted for the 
 spoken tone, throw warmth and influence into 
 his text. But without the text the meaning of 
 the motive would remain a secret in the com- 
 poser's breast, because it would be beyond his 
 power to make music anything but subjective. 
 This must not be understood as a declaration of 
 belief that every time a leit motif is repeated 
 the text should accompany it. The explanation 
 once given should suffice to make the theme sig- 
 nificant through the drama. 
 
 What are we to think, then, about orchestral 
 music and piano compositions ? What becomes 
 of our theories about being faithful to the inten- 
 tions of the composer ? The truth is that, un- 
 less the composer has left us some indication of 
 his design, we are limited to such knowledge as 
 can be obtained from the internal evidence of 
 the music, and that, as seems to be pretty thor- 
 oughly established, is only of a broad and gen- 
 eral nature. Who has solved the riddles of 
 Beethoven's last quartets and sonatas ? Their 
 interpretation must rest upon a sympathetic
 
 2l8 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 study of the emotional life of the composer at 
 the time when they were written. Tell us what 
 Beethoven suffered or dreamed while he wrote 
 any one of these works, and you have offered us 
 a key to his meaning. To play those works in 
 such a way as to reproduce in the hearer some- 
 thing of the emotional life of the master at that 
 time is to approach as nearly as any human be- 
 ing can to carrying out the composer's intention. 
 It is to vindicate the influence of music and 
 to establish its spirituality. It is to demolish 
 the transcendent rubbish of Tolstoi on the one 
 hand, and the rhapsodical idiocy of rainbow 
 and sunshine discoverers on the other. It is to 
 establish the intellectuality of the tone art and 
 to demonstrate that materialism cannot debase 
 it. 
 
 It is in this spirit that we must approach the 
 symphonic works of Robert Schumann. We 
 must examine them in their relation to the com- 
 poser's life, and look upon them as in some 
 measure a record of his emotional experience — 
 not necessarily written under the stress of the 
 emotions which they express, but designed in 
 calmer moments to paint the composer's heart 
 for us. If there be any notable end to be gained 
 by a continuance of the classic inquiry into the 
 nature of the true, the beautiful, and the good,
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 2IO, 
 
 then there is a profit in the thoughtful study of 
 Schumann's music. 
 
 To be sure, standards of judgment vary. One 
 man says all music should be beautiful; but he 
 does not know what "beautiful" is, and he 
 shares this elementary ignorance with Thales, 
 Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Sir Will- 
 iam Hamilton, Ruskin, Spencer, Voltaire, Did- 
 erot, Kant, Wieland, Vischer, Schopenhauer, 
 and Oscar Wilde, all of whom tried to define 
 the beautiful with conspicuous lack of success. 
 Another man — and he, be it noted, is always a 
 rabid Wagnerite — abides by the dictum of Jean 
 Jacques Rousseau : " La tout est beau, parce 
 que tout est vrai." Which assertion crumbles 
 into absurdity in the presence of a brown-stone 
 house or a canon by Jadassohn. But the Schu- 
 mann emotional programme music is both beau- 
 tiful and true, and, measured by the standard of 
 either man, must be pronounced good, if not 
 great. 
 
 The composer fell into this way of writing 
 early in his career. His great sensibility, keen 
 and subtle perception, strong sense of humor, 
 and vivid imagination rendered him incapable 
 of writing music simply for music's sake. His 
 wealth of impressions found utterance in what 
 he wrote. It prevented him from succeeding as
 
 220 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 a writer in the sonata form. He could not shut 
 himself up within the boundaries of a formula. 
 He never wrote a great work in the sonata form 
 until he saw how that form could be made to 
 bend and yield to his wishes, as it did in the C 
 major and D minor symphonies. But his pro- 
 gramme music for the piano was a revelation. 
 It not only revealed the tendencies and wonder- 
 ful powers of Schumann's creative gifts, but it 
 discovered to the world new possibilities of ex- 
 pression in the piano. Schumann began his ca- 
 reer as a pianist. He understood the instrument 
 and knew how to make it speak his language. 
 That he invented for it a new manner of speech 
 will be apparent to every student of the tech- 
 nique of the instrument. But he did more than 
 that. He gave the piano new thoughts to ut- 
 ter. The instrument, which had been a prattling 
 babe in the hands of Scarlatti, a singing boy in 
 the hands of Mozart, a hero and a prophet in the 
 hands of Beethoven, became a poet in those of 
 Schumann. 
 
 We may say what we will of Beethoven's so- 
 natas — and to the writer they have always been 
 the greatest music written for the piano — but we 
 must bear in mind that they are great as music 
 pure and simple, not especially as piano music. 
 Through them the piano utters thoughts never
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 221 
 
 before uttered by it ; but its language, its vocab- 
 ulary, remains the same. Beethoven invented 
 no new figures. Therefore, he was not essen- 
 tially a developer of the instrument. Schumann 
 not only said new things, but said them in a 
 new way. He enriched the vocabulary of the 
 piano a thousandfold, and opened the way for 
 later writers to produce effects which were pre- 
 viously unknown. Together with Chopin, his 
 twin giant, he revolutionized the rhetoric of 
 piano music. Beethoven had thundered his 
 Areopagitica through the piano — had made it 
 the mouthpiece of his great cries for human 
 liberty. Schumann and Chopin were no orators 
 as Beethoven was ; but they were poets, and 
 they sang together as the morning stars did, 
 " or ever the earth and the world were born." 
 
 Schumann began to paint his soul-pictures as 
 early as 1831, when he finished "The Papil- 
 lons." It is not necessary to remind music 
 lovers of the beauty of these short pieces. It 
 has been well said that in some of these there 
 was no great significance, but an exquisite poetic 
 idea underlay their arrangement. It has been 
 well said, also, that the rhythm of the pro- 
 foundly beautiful waltz marks the time of the 
 hearts rather than of the feet of the dancers. 
 This was to be expected of Schumann, and we
 
 222 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 should not go far astray, probably, if we ac- 
 cepted that waltz as marking the beat of the 
 composer's own heart ; for it is impossible to 
 avoid perceiving that the originality of Schu- 
 mann's music is the result of his constant en- 
 deavor to express his own soul. You can trace 
 his attempts through such piano works as the 
 " Davidsbundler," Opus 6 ; " Carnival," Opus 9 ; 
 " Fantasiestiicken," Opus 12; "Scenes from 
 Childhood," Opus 15 ; " Vienna Carnival," Opus 
 26 ; " Album for Youth," Opus 68 ; " Forest 
 Scenes," Opus 82 ; " Album Leaves," Opus 124. 
 Yet we know that Schumann did not wish these 
 compositions to be accepted as programme mu- 
 sic in the older sense. He held his hearer down 
 to no binding schedule of scenes and incidents. 
 He preferred to give a title which hinted at 
 his ideas, and then let his music awaken the 
 hearer's emotions. 
 
 That Schumann felt his own power, that he 
 realized that a new force was making itself known 
 in German music, can hardly be doubted. In 
 his critical writings the composer gave utterance 
 frequently to words of much significance. In 
 one place he says : " Consciously or uncon- 
 sciously a new and as yet undeveloped school is 
 being founded on the basis of the Beethoven- 
 Schubert romanticism, a school which we may
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 22$ 
 
 venture to expect will mark a special epoch in 
 the history of art. Its destiny seems to be to 
 usher in a period which will nevertheless have 
 many links to connect it with the past century." 
 His feeling that he was destined to be one of 
 the singers of this school is shown in a letter 
 written to Moscheles in 1836, wherein he says : 
 "If you only knew how I feel — as though I had 
 reached the lowest bough of the tree of heaven, 
 and could hear overhead, in hours of sacred 
 loneliness, songs, some of which I may yet re- 
 veal to those I love — you surely would not deny 
 me an encouraging word." Can we not per- 
 ceive in these words the yearning of a great soul 
 for self-expression ? 
 
 The time came. Stimulated by the enthusi- 
 astic resolution with which he entered upon the 
 defence of all that was noble in art in the Neue 
 Zeitschrift fiir Musik, his imagination began to 
 embody the indefinite emotions of his soul. It 
 was in the years 1836 to 1839, when he had well 
 mastered the routine of journalistic labor, that 
 he poured out those immortal piano works, in- 
 cluding the Fantasia in C, the F minor sonata, 
 " Kreisleriana," and " Faschingsschwank," which 
 have made his name dear to all lovers of piano 
 music. Now he realized that he could express 
 his inner self: " I used to rack my brains for a
 
 2 24 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 long time," he writes ; " but now I hardly ever 
 scratch out a note. It all comes from within, 
 and I often feel as if I could go playing straight 
 on without ever coming to an end." But it was 
 in 1840 that he began to pour out his heart in a 
 new manner. It was in that year that his strug- 
 gle for the hand of Clara Wieck came to its vic- 
 torious close. As the man beheld day after day 
 the unshaken steadfastness of the woman who 
 loved him in the face of all opposition, he felt 
 that the piano, marvellously as he himself had 
 increased its power of speech, could not embody 
 his emotions, and he turned to the oldest and 
 most flexible instrument, the human voice. In 
 the year 1840 Schumann wrote over one hun- 
 dred songs, of which the world never tires and 
 probably never will ; for their romantic self- 
 expression is so broad, so human, that they will 
 stand for all time as the soul-hymns of men. 
 
 The artistic development of Schumann is so 
 indisputably the result of his life up to this 
 point, that we are not surprised at his next step. 
 The tumult of young love lifted him from the 
 piano to the voice. The consummation of his 
 manhood, in the union with a woman of noble 
 heart and commanding intellect, led him to the 
 orchestra. In 1841 he rushed into the sym- 
 phonic field, and composed no less than three
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 22$ 
 
 of his orchestral works. The first of these was 
 his B flat symphony (opus 38), which was pro- 
 duced, at the Leipzig Gevvandhaus, under Men- 
 delssohn's careful and sympathetic direction, on 
 March 31st. The other two were produced on 
 December 6th. One was the work now called 
 " Overture, Scherzo, and Finale," which, it 
 is said, Schumann originally called " Sinfo- 
 ni'etta." The other was the immortal D minor 
 symphony, now known as the fourth. It was 
 not a great success at its first production, and 
 Schumann was dissatisfied with it. He re- 
 scored it, filling in the brass especially, so that 
 the best critics are now generally agreed that it 
 is somewhat thick and clouded. Joseph Mosen- 
 thal, who has seen a copy of the original orches- 
 tration (in the possession of Johannes Brahms), 
 says that it is much more clear and delicate. The 
 failure of the effect of the original score was due 
 to the weakness of the strings in the orchestra. 
 It is necessary to bear these facts in mind in 
 order to get a proper idea of the emotional con- 
 tents of the D minor and C major symphonies, 
 of which I purpose to speak particularly as em- 
 bodiments of Schumann's inner life. The B 
 flat symphony, which preceded the D minor in 
 the same year, is Schumann's spring symphony. 
 He even intended at one time to give it that 
 1?
 
 226 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 title, and it is generally so called. It is full of 
 the spirit, the gladness, the buoyancy of that 
 happy season, beloved of poets and musicians. 
 
 Do you know that wondrous time when 
 spring buds into summer, when the timid tinge 
 of the half-blown leaves bursts into a trium- 
 phant splendor of emerald, when the wild orchids 
 lift their heads among the woodland hollows, 
 when the busy hum of bees begins around the 
 vine-clad porches, and the great sun, rolling in 
 dazzling majesty across our deep-blue northern 
 skies, sends new currents of life bounding 
 through the veins of plants and beasts and men 
 alike ? It is not the " early spring," of which 
 so many youthful poets carol, but that later 
 spring that merges into summer, and is the new- 
 crowned glory of the year. It is of such a sea- 
 son that Schumann's D minor symphony sings 
 — of such a season, not among the birds and 
 brooks and flowers, but in the infinite universe 
 of a man's heart. It is Schumann's nuptial 
 hymn, the " Io triumphe " of love victorious and 
 manhood blessed. 
 
 Is it any wonder that this man, growing, as 
 we have seen him grow, with a constant roman- 
 ticism, and an unflagging search after self-ex- 
 pression, should have swept away the barriers of 
 form, and, while preserving the general shape
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 2^^ 
 
 of the symphony, have given us a work, novel 
 in appearance as it was in feeling ? Let us — 
 for it is necessary — enter for a brief time upon 
 the unhappy business of analysis. The first 
 thing that strikes the student of the score is the 
 title : " Fourth Symphony : introduction, alle- 
 gro, romanze, scherzo, and finale in one move- 
 ment." We seldom hear this symphony played 
 in one movement ; a break is usually made be- 
 tween the allegro and the romance, thereby 
 breaking the flow of the composer's ideas and 
 doing violence to his intentions. No thoroughly 
 artistic conductor should be guilty of such a 
 wrong. Schumann wrote his symphony in one 
 movement with a purpose. It is, as I have said, 
 his nuptial hymn, the free, untrammelled out- 
 pour of his emotions, and he desires that the 
 hearer's feelings shall pass, as his own did, from 
 one state to the next without interruption. In 
 a word, this is the first symphonic poem, a form 
 which is based upon the irrefutable assertion 
 that " there is no break between two successive 
 emotional states." Now, Schumann did not 
 rest here ; but he introduced a device which had 
 not been used by Beethoven when that master 
 saw the need of unbroken connection between 
 his movements. This device has been called 
 "partial community of theme." I do not like
 
 228 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 that appellation ; it belongs to a style of termi- 
 nology which treats music as if it were a science, 
 not an art. Music is a form of poetry. Let us 
 not treat it as a form of mechanics. Schu- 
 mann's " partial community of theme " is noth- 
 ing more nor less than an approach to the leit 
 motive system. Wagner himself tells us, in his 
 account of the composition of " The Flying 
 Dutchman," how the conviction dawned upon 
 him that the recurrence of a thought or emo- 
 tional state in the opera should be made known 
 by a repetition of the music in which it was first 
 embodied. Knowing full well the eagerness of 
 commentators to read into the works of artists 
 things of which the artists themselves never 
 dreamed, I must admit that there is no evidence 
 of Schumann's having anticipated Wagner's con- 
 clusion ; but there is abundant internal proof in 
 his music that his strong feeling for direct self- 
 expression led him to a usage resembling in prin- 
 ciple that of the leit motive. The introduction 
 of the D minor symphony is made of this theme: 
 
 The soft, caressing, yearning nature of this 
 theme is at once apparent to every hearer, and
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 22$ 
 
 is intensified by its orchestral treatment. It is 
 announced by the second violins, playing on 
 the fourth string, and the first bassoon in unison, 
 the violas and second bassoon in unison playing 
 a second part in sixths below. The clarinets are 
 added, an octave above, in the fifth measure. In 
 twenty-one measures the melody evolved from 
 the above theme is completed and the brief but 
 eloquent exposition of that yearning tenderness 
 which has in it a note of pain is ended. I call 
 this the yearning motive. Six short measures, 
 in which Schumann plainly throws aside his 
 softer mood and turns to a hymn of happiness, 
 lead us to the motive of rejoicing : 
 
 Ebenezer Prout has made an analysis of the 
 D minor symphony, in which he speaks thus of 
 this theme : " Trite and uninteresting as it is, it 
 follows us relentlessly — now in the bass, now in 
 the middle, now in the upper parts, now in the 
 passages of imitation, till, when we reach the 
 end of the movement, we hardly know whether 
 to feel aggravated at its pertinacity, or aston-
 
 23O ROBERT SCHUMANN^ 
 
 ished at the effect produced by such an unprom- 
 ising subject." It seems to me that a musician 
 so well informed as Mr. Prout must have written 
 that sentence without due consideration. Surely 
 the subject is no more unpromising than the 
 simple diatonic scale which Beethoven so often 
 used with astounding effect. It seems to me 
 that Schumann has done what all great sym- 
 phonists have done : he has taken a simple 
 melody and developed it in an effective manner. 
 His theme of rejoicing does, indeed, echo and 
 re-echo from all parts of the orchestra, now 
 thundering in the basses, again carolling with 
 the flutes, but always swelling higher and higher 
 in its rapturous utterance, till at the end of the 
 movement we certainly " are astonished at the 
 effect " and wonder how the composer is to 
 spread the wings of his fancy for further flight. 
 
 One part of Mr. Prout's analysis (which I am 
 far from dispraising) is worthy of reproduction 
 here. He notes that a vigorous forte concludes 
 the first part of the allegro, and continues by 
 saying : " From this point to the end of the 
 movement we find nothing but what is com- 
 monly called the free fantasia. It would be 
 very interesting to find out how many hearers 
 of this symphony have ever noticed that neither 
 the first nor the second subject ever recurs in
 
 THE PR O GRA MME-S YM PHONY. 
 
 231 
 
 the latter part. The music is almost entirely 
 constructed of new material, to which the open- 
 ing bar of the first theme mostly serves as an 
 accompaniment ; and such unity of character is 
 given to the whole by this means that it is 
 doubtful if one hearer in a hundred has de- 
 tected the irregularity of the form." There are 
 two reasons for this " irregularity of form." 
 First, Schumann's purpose was plainly to de- 
 velop to its furthest power of emotional expres- 
 siveness his motive of rejoicing. He sought to 
 do this not only by carrying it through a series 
 of modulations, and setting our auditory nerves 
 to vibrating under the invigorating shock of 
 such foreign tonalities as D flat major, but by a 
 process of variation, made familiar by Beetho- 
 ven, through which, by the addition of small 
 portions of new material, the original melody 
 takes on a new form and color. Here is the 
 treatment to which Schumann, in his search 
 after accents of joy, subjects his theme : 
 
 Wood
 
 232 
 
 ROBERT SCHUMANN-. 
 
 He works this out in such a manner that at the 
 end of the allegro it is succeeded by this form : 
 
 p^ 
 
 r*z 
 
 Now, if the student of the score will turn to the 
 final allegro (what would under ordinary cir- 
 cumstances be called the last movement) he will 
 find that his theme, plainly a motive of tri- 
 umphant victory, is made out of these two 
 forms in this manner: 
 
 No. a 
 
 No. i. ' 
 
 And this explains why Schumann did not fol- 
 low the sonata form in his first allegro and re- 
 peat his principal subject in a third part of the 
 movement. Having once stated his motive of 
 joy, he had no further use for it but to develop 
 it into a paean of victory at the end of the one 
 grand movement which constitutes the sym- 
 phony.
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 2$$ 
 
 Does not this view throw a truthful light upon 
 the purpose of the composer? Is it not justified 
 by our preliminary study of the real nature of 
 programme music and the bent of Schumann's 
 genius ? If there were no other revelations of a 
 purpose to convey to the hearer the knowledge 
 of a series of emotional states, we might rest 
 here and declare that the existence of a pro- 
 gramme symphony was established. But this 
 is not all. I have spoken of a yearning motive, 
 which is used to introduce the symphony. 
 Later in the first movement (using the conven- 
 tional terminology) appears a theme whose 
 character is so similar that I always think of it 
 as the motive of love's tenderness, fittingly as- 
 sociated, as it is, with the motive of joy. It is 
 this: 
 
 ft dolce. 
 
 If my view of Schumann's method of compos- 
 ing the D minor symphony is correct, there 
 should be a counterpart of this theme in the 
 finale. So there is, and Schumann uses it to be- 
 gin his coda, his last burst of rapturous triumph.
 
 234 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 Put them in the same key and try them con- 
 nectedly in the order in which they stand here, 
 and you will see how beautifully one supplements 
 the other in feeling as well as in melodic char- 
 acter. Surely, we must admit, remembering the 
 composer's indisputable attempt to give his work 
 unity, that his purpose governed the construc- 
 tion of these two themes. 
 
 Again, having given free rein to his expres- 
 sion of love's joy and tenderness in the first 
 movement, he enters immediately upon the 
 romanza. This is clearly a serenade beneath 
 the window of his bride. That Schumann in- 
 tended to give it such a character is shown by 
 his use in the original score of the guitar, after- 
 ward taken out because it was ineffective in the 
 mass of strings. If Schumann had written the 
 D minor symphony thirty years later, he would 
 have used a harp and achieved his effect fully ; 
 but he was too close to Beethoven to know the 
 value of that improvement on the model of 
 symphonic instrumentation left by the mighty 
 Ludwig. Yet in his romanza he continues to 
 exploit his new treatment of symphonic form in 
 a most touching manner; for immediately after 
 the first enunciation of the theme of the serenade, 
 he recurs to the yearning motive, thus giving us 
 a most eloquent expression of the feelings of the
 
 THE PR GRA MME-S YMMOXl '. 
 
 235 
 
 singer beneath the window. He is outside, but 
 he yearns to be at her side. 
 
 Here follows one of the loveliest touches in 
 the whole work. The yearning melody ends 
 with this passage : 
 
 And this is succeeded at once by a very beauti- 
 ful section in which the body of strings plays 
 the subjoined air, obviously formed from the 
 passage just given : 
 
 »--^ 
 
 =fc^ 
 
 g^S^plllf 
 
 i£E*E 
 
 And above this the voice of a single violin 
 sings the following lovely variation : 
 
 Wtrf"*^
 
 236 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 This is a marvellous working out of the yearn- 
 ing melody with which the symphony begins, 
 is it not ? How such treatment as this reveals 
 us the closeness of Schumann's self-analysis and 
 the firmness of his purpose to express his heart 
 in his music ! How thoroughly it explains to us 
 his recourse to the orchestra to obtain adequate 
 means for the representation of the multitude 
 of joyous and tender emotions which crowded 
 his heart in the full realization of all his hopes! 
 If this is not the tone-poem of a genius, where 
 are we to look for one ? 
 
 After the romanza the composer passes with- 
 out pause to the scherzo. It has always seemed 
 to me that conductors who are resolved to inter- 
 rupt the continuous flow of this symphony at 
 some point would better make the break be- 
 tween the romanza and the scherzo than else- 
 where. The connection between these two 
 movements at the point of contact is less marked, 
 I think, than that between the first two. The 
 scherzo itself is true to its name. It is play- 
 ful and airy, the badinage of the lover. But 
 mark how charmingly he reminds the object of 
 his affection of the yearning mood that has pre- 
 vailed in his heart so much of the time. He 
 does it in the trio, not by a repetition of the 
 yearning melody itself, but by a reproduction in
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 
 
 237 
 
 all the first violins of the variation given in the 
 romanza to a solo violin : 
 
 It is with a working out of this melody that 
 he concludes the scherzo and returns to the first 
 theme of the whole symphony, which is given 
 out by the first strings, accompanied by the 
 tremolo of the second violins and violas, sus- 
 tained chords in the wood, and declamatory 
 phrases in the brass. It reminds one of the 
 wonderful passage from the scherzo to the finale 
 of Beethoven's fifth, though it has not the im- 
 pressive mystery of that awe-inspiring episode. 
 Schumann lets his now triumphant mood grow 
 through the orchestra till he reaches a pause on 
 a full forte chord. Then he bursts into his 
 paean of victory previously described. This 
 movement contains considerable new material, 
 all of which, however, is bright in movement 
 and happy in character. The hearer of the 
 symphony finds no difficulty in following its 
 treatment. I cannot agree with Prout, who 
 says that the free fantasia of this part is labored.
 
 238 ROBERT SCHUMANN: 
 
 The entire work has always impressed me as 
 being singularly devoid of obtrusive evidence of 
 the great amount of thought which a study of 
 its construction reveals. I heard it several 
 times before the most obvious passages of repe- 
 tition forced themselves upon my attention. 
 The less patent did not reveal themselves ex- 
 cept under a careful study of the score. 
 
 After what has been said about the D minor 
 symphony the C major may be dismissed with 
 shorter consideration. Schumann himself tells 
 us that it was sketched " during a period of 
 great physical suffering and severe mental con- 
 flict, in the endeavor to combat the difficulties 
 of his circumstances — a conflict which he says 
 left its traces behind it, and which in fact led at 
 last to his unhappy death." What a flood of 
 light this explanation lets in upon the tremen- 
 dous vigor and stress of the entire work. How 
 fully it makes us understand the difference be- 
 tween this and the Spring symphony. We can- 
 not fail to be caught and carried by the flood 
 of power — aggressive, militant power — in this C 
 major work, and here is a satisfactory reason for 
 its presence. Truly this is the voice of a great 
 singer. In this work we see a further use of 
 the methods of construction employed in the 
 D minor symphony. They are not so elabo-
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 239 
 
 rately carried out because the composer's pur- 
 pose did not demand it. But he does not lose 
 sight of his idea of repeating certain primary 
 themes in every movement. The sostenuto as- 
 sai in the C major is "an introduction not to 
 the first allegro, but to the whole symphony," 
 as Sir George Grove has noted. " The call of 
 the brass instruments, which forms the first and 
 most enduring phrase in the opening, is heard 
 in the same instruments at the climax of the al- 
 legro, again at the close of the allegro, and lastly 
 in the termination of the finale, and thus acts 
 the part of a motto or refrain." Sir George also 
 points out that other phrases of the introduction 
 occur later, and that the theme of the adagio re- 
 turns in the finale. He also specifies the very 
 beautiful employment of a subsidiary melody in 
 the introduction as the basis of the second sub- 
 ject of the first movement. I think Sir George 
 Grove did not read between the lines here. The 
 probabilities are that Schumann created the two 
 subjects of his first movement before he under- 
 took the composition of the introduction, and 
 this subsidiary melody in the introduction was 
 derived purposely from the second subject of 
 the movement. This would be more in accord 
 with the evidences of deep design which the en- 
 tire symphony contains.
 
 240 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 I may be pardoned for a momentary digres- 
 sion here to remark that Sir George seems puz- 
 zled to account for the scherzo's two trios, and 
 timidly supposes that the composer may have 
 got the idea from Beethoven's repetition of the 
 trios in the fourth and seventh symphonies, or 
 from "some ' cassatio ' of Mozart or Haydn." 
 He should have known that in Sebastian Bach's 
 great concerto in F for solo violin, two horns, 
 three oboes, bassoon, and strings there is a minuet 
 with three trios, after each of which the minuet 
 is repeated. And he should also have known 
 that Mozart took up this idea half a century 
 later. In his divertimento in D (Kochel, 131), 
 there are two minuets, the first of which has 
 three trios and the second two. This use of a 
 second trio, therefore, is not a modern custom 
 and may be dismissed. 
 
 The matter under consideration is the repeated 
 use of the same themes in different parts of the 
 symphony, a fashion which was the model of 
 the Liszt variety of piano concerto, and which 
 unquestionably led that writer to the invention 
 of the symphonic poem. The question may 
 now be asked, and it is very pertinent, Whether 
 this repetition of themes is a confession of weak- 
 ness on the part of the composer ? Does it mean 
 that he is not able to invent new melodies for
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 241 
 
 each new movement ? Or does it mean that he 
 is able to produce melodies which will bear ex- 
 tended discussion ? I fancy this question is 
 not so very difficult to answer after all. The 
 thoughtful student will readily perceive that it 
 speedily resolves itself into a question of fact : 
 Do the ideas which are repeated bear the repeti- 
 tion and elaboration ? 
 
 If the recurring melodies strike the mind with 
 fresh force at each re-entrance, if they gain in 
 beauty and significance with elaboration, the 
 composer is justified in repeating them for the 
 sake of euphonious effect alone, without regard 
 for deeper aesthetic considerations. Schumann's 
 D minor is the most conspicuous example of a 
 symphony written in this manner. Does it 
 weary the hearer to find a theme of the first 
 movement used as the foundation for the finale ? 
 I think not. On the contrary, I think that, 
 from a purely sensuous point of view, the un- 
 familiar hearer is always surprised and delighted 
 at the return, and at the new and triumphant 
 modification of the melody. 
 
 But we have already seen that Schumann did 
 not use his ideas over and over simply for the 
 purpose of ringing euphonic changes on them. 
 He had a deeper purpose — one which stamps 
 him as a great musical thinker and demonstrates 
 16
 
 242 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 that he had explored the resources of music as 
 an emotional language. The character of this 
 C major symphony is, as we have seen, aggres- 
 sive, resisting, combative. He wrote it when 
 in the heat of a physical and mental conflict. 
 In the light of this fact examine that brazen 
 phrase with which the symphony begins. Surely 
 this is a challenge, the fanfare of the knight en- 
 tering the lists against fate. It is stern, weighty, 
 and resolute, the expression of the determina- 
 tion of a brave and unyielding spirit. It is 
 simply the Schumann leit motive, representing 
 through the storm and stress of the symphonic 
 struggle the calm courage of the man. And at 
 the end to what alone does this phrase give 
 way? To a triumphant hymn of victory, a pro- 
 phetic vision of the composer which was des- 
 tined never to be realized. 
 
 Does the reader think these explanations fan- 
 ciful ? They are no more so than the explana- 
 tions of Beethoven's third and fifth. They are 
 no more so than those of Wagner's Walhalla or 
 "Wanderer" motives. And the writer does not 
 deem those explanations fanciful in the least. 
 They are logically deduced from substantial 
 data. The explanations of Schumann's D mi- 
 nor and C major symphonies herewith given are 
 deduced in the same way ; and a suggestion is
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 243 
 
 offered as to the value of the repetition of sub- 
 jects. The reader, of course, will accept it or 
 not as he chooses. But I may add this : That 
 it has always been, since the days of Bach, the 
 object of composers to express their own souls. 
 Indeed, the endeavor to do this can be traced 
 back to even earlier days in the history of mu- 
 sic. No sooner had the mass of contrapuntal 
 learning which had been growing for several 
 centuries reached its height in the hair-splitting 
 and puzzle-building of Okeghem's time, than 
 Josquin des Pres, his pupil, sought to impart 
 euphonic beauty to his music ; and but little 
 later Orlando Lasso was producing music which 
 nobly expressed religious feeling, the only emo- 
 tional utterance attempted in the art-music of 
 the time. Thenceforward composers developed 
 the emotional element till they reached a com- 
 prehension of the great truth that they must 
 look within for their inspiration. As Dr. 
 Henry Maudsley has it : " It is not man's func- 
 tion to think and feel only ; his inner life he 
 must express or utter in action of some kind — 
 in word or deed." Music is the composer's 
 word, and by a thoughtful study of his own 
 mental and emotional states he brings under 
 his survey the entire psychic experience of 
 humanity. The essential characteristic of ro-
 
 244 ROBERT SCHUMANN. 
 
 manticism in music is the ceaseless endeavor to 
 reveal this inner life. If Robert Schumann 
 was truly a romanticist, as people are in the 
 habit of saying, without much thought about it, 
 then he was trying to disclose his inner self in 
 his music, and the insight given by the compos- 
 er into his emotional states at the time of the 
 composition of the D minor and C major sym- 
 phonies justifies the explanations which have 
 been offered. 
 
 " It requires much time to discover musical 
 Mediterraneans," says epigrammatic Berlioz, 
 " and still more to master their navigation." It 
 took much time to discover the true vocation of 
 programme music, and there are many whose 
 eyes are still blinded. It was reserved for Beet- 
 hoven to show how the symphony could be 
 made to utter the life of the inner man. It was 
 Schumann's task to teach us a new method of 
 symphonic speech. I suppose the general judg- 
 ment of cultivated lovers of music will award 
 Schumann the second place among sympho- 
 nists ; yet I often feel that the words of his let- 
 ter to Kossmaly on another subject would be ap- 
 plicable to this. He says : " In your article on 
 the ' Lied,' I was a little grieved that you placed 
 me in the second class. I do not lay claim to 
 the first, but I think I have a claim to a place of
 
 THE PROGRAMME-SYMPHONY. 245 
 
 my own, and least of all do I wish to see my- 
 self associated with Reissiger, Kurschmann, etc. 
 1 know that my aims, my resources, are far be- 
 yond theirs, and I hope you will concede this 
 and not accuse me of vanity, which is far from 
 me. 
 
 Schumann would have asked no higher meed 
 of praise than to be ranked second to Beetho- 
 ven as a symphonist. But let us remember 
 when we set him there that he had certainly a 
 great claim to a place of his own. The revela- 
 tions made to us by the scores of the two sym- 
 phonies which I have discussed lift the curtains 
 from the inner shrine of a genius of the first 
 order.
 
 THE STORY OF MUSIC. 
 
 By W. J. HENDERSON. 
 
 12mo, Ornamental Cloth Cover, $1.00. 
 
 " Mr. Henderson tells in a clear, comprehensive, and logical 
 way the story of the growth of modern music. The work is pre- 
 fixed by a newly-prepared chronological table, which will be found 
 invaluable- by musical students, and which contains many dates and 
 notes of important events that are not further mentioned in the text. 
 . . Few cont-umporary writers on music have a more agreeable 
 
 style and few, even among the renowned and profound Germans, a 
 firmer grasp of the subject. The book, moreover, will be valuable 
 to the student for its references, which form a guide to the best 
 literature of music in all languages. 1 ho story of the development 
 of religious music, a subject that is too often made forbidding and 
 uninteresting to the general reader, is here related so simply as to 
 interest and instruct any reader, whether or not he has a thorough 
 knowledge of harmonics and an intimate acquaintance with the 
 estimable dominant and the deplorable consecutive fifths. The 
 chapter on instruments and instrumental forms is valuable for 
 exactly the same reasons." — New York Times. 
 
 " It is a pleasure to open a new book and discover on its first 
 page that the clearness and simple beauty of its typography has a 
 harmony in the clearness, directness, and restful finish of the 
 writer's style. . . . Mr. Henderson has accomplished, with ran 
 judgment and skill, the task of telling the story of the growth of the 
 art of music without encumbering his pages with excess of bio- 
 graphical material. He has aimed at a connected recital, and, for its 
 sake, has treated of creative epochs and epoch-making works, rather 
 than groups of composers segregated by the accidents of time and 
 space. . . . Admirable for its succinctness, clearness, and grace- 
 fulness of statement." — New York Tribune. 
 
 " The work is both statistical and narrative, and its special 
 design is to give a detailed and comprehensive history of the various 
 steps. in the development of music as an art. There is a very valu- 
 able chronological table, which presents important dates that could 
 not otherwise be well introduced into the book. The choice style in 
 which this book is written lends its added charms to a work most 
 important on the literary as well as on the artistic side of music." 
 
 — Boston Traveller. 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO., 
 
 91-93 Fifth Avenue, New York.
 
 university ot uanrornia 
 
 SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388 
 
 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 
 
 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. 
 
 Si-ries <»■! *2
 
 3 1205 00115 7336 
 
 
 IWlNlllli| T |||| RN REGI0NAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 A A 000 077 421
 
 Uni