Part 5

Moreover, we admire the very great merit of the music of your Serene Highness not only on account of the high position of its composer, but also on account of its very pleasing artistic effect, which has astonished every one, when the music had been carefully examined by all the Gregorian musicians we summoned to try it. We all--not only I, who consider myself the most insignificant, but also the Gregorian disciples--we all pray in deep humility that the kindly blessings of Heaven may for many years support your Serene Highness in your beneficent functions, for the advantage of the Church, and for the consolation of all good people, especially also for the benefit of your dependants, of whom the Gregorian disciples delight in being the most humble. Permit me to recommend especially these, together with myself, your most humble servant, in our deepest reverence, to your most gracious favour and benevolence. We thus continually pray with bended knees, venturing to hope with the most implicit confidence that Heaven's blessing will result to us from the Archipiscopal Mitre and Pastoral Staff, which we humbly reverence with our kisses.

Your Serene Highness' Most humble Servant,

GREGORIUS SCHILGER, Soc. Jesu, Inspector of the St. Gregorian House.

Munich, August 7th, 1720."

There are some touching instances on record of royal personages in affliction finding relief and consolation in studying music. The last King of Hanover had the misfortune of being nearly deprived of his eyesight some time before he came to the throne. As Crown Prince he published a pamphlet entitled 'Ideas and Reflections on the Properties of Music,' from which a few short extracts may find a place here, as they show how soothing a balm this art was to him:--

"From early youth I have striven to make music my own. It has become to me a companion and comforter through life; it has become more and more valuable to me the more I learnt to comprehend and appreciate its boundless exuberance of ideas, its inexhaustible fulness, the more intimately its whole poetry was interwoven with my whole being.... By means of music, ideas, feelings, and historical events, natural phenomena, pictures, scenes of life of all sorts, are as clearly and intelligibly expressed as by any language in words; and we are ourselves enabled to express ourselves in such a manner and to make ourselves understood by others.... Of all the senses of man, sight and hearing are those by which most effect is produced upon mind and heart, and which are consequently the most powerful springs for the moral and rational feelings, actions, and opinions of men. But Hearing appears to be the most influential and operative of the two organs; for this reason, that by inharmonious discordant tones our feelings may be so shocked, even to their deepest recesses, and so painfully wounded as to drive us almost beside ourselves; which impression cannot possibly be produced in us by a bad picture, a dreary landscape, or a very faulty poem.... I have known persons whose spirits were broken, and their hearts rent by care, grief, and affliction. They wandered about, murmuring at their fate, absorbed in meditation, in vain seeking hope, in vain looking for a way to escape. But, the excess of their inward pangs needed alleviation; the heart discovered the means of procuring it: the deep-drawn sighs of the oppressed bosom were involuntarily converted into tones of lamentation, and this unconscious effusion was productive of relief, composure, and courageously calm resignation. Yes, indeed, it is above all in the gloomy hours of affliction that Music is a soothing comforter, a sympathizing friend to the sufferer; it gives expression to the gnawing anguish which rends the soul, and which it thereby mitigates and softens: it lends a tear to the stupefaction of grief; it drops mollifying healing balsam into every wounded heart. Whoever has experienced this effect himself, or witnessed it in others, will admit with me that for this fairest service rendered by the art we cannot sufficiently thank and revere it."

How sad and suggestive are these lines, penned by a royal musician!

Blind people delight in descriptive music depicting scenes which painters might use as subjects for pictures. By the help of a lively imagination, the ear to some extent serves also the purpose of the eye. Thus may be explained the preference given by the Crown Prince to certain compositions which are by no means of the highest class. Speaking of Bellini's opera 'Norma,' he remarks: "In the Introduction there is a most ingenious representation of a country. Commencing with low tones, it unfolds itself in sombre harmony, and faithfully reproduces the same impression that the darkness of the thick wood makes upon the wanderer. Single, sliding, and abrupt notes seem to denote lighter spots in the dark wood, and thus the first decoration of the opera, the grove of sacrifice, is appropriately represented. The reader will certainly be still more struck by the appositeness of this musical picture, when I assure him that I know a blind person who, when he first heard this introduction, immediately guessed that it was intended to represent a scene in a wood."

Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony is, as might be expected, an especial favourite with him, and he gives a detailed description of its several movements, prefaced by the exclamation: "How clearly are the daily occurrences and the individual scenes of rural life presented to the hearer!"

Neither is it surprising that Haydn's 'Creation,' with its many descriptive passages, should forcibly and very agreeably appeal to his imagination. In commenting upon certain beauties in this oratorio, which he especially admires, he remarks: "Above all, how strikingly has the composer represented with all the powers of music the moment called forth by the creative words 'Let there be light!' _and there was light_. At these words the orchestra discharges itself in a truly electric manner, so as absolutely to dazzle you. The hearer feels perfectly the impression which the real occurrence of this adorable miracle of Almighty power would make upon him; and in this delineation by tones is exhibited to the sense of mortal man the only possible representation of that sublime wonder in the most striking and convincing manner."

It not unfrequently happens to a musical composer that when a new idea occurs to him while he is extemporizing, it appears to him at the first moment more beautiful than he finds it to be on reconsideration. The Prince, who enjoyed extemporizing on the pianoforte, kept in his service a pianist, whose business it was to write down his inventions, which he played repeatedly to the pianist to enable him to sketch at once as faithfully as possible the chief ideas and modulations. These sketches the pianist, who was a talented musician, had to take home in order to work them out carefully according to the rules of musical composition. Having accomplished his task, he attended at the palace with the manuscript; and now it was his turn to play the new piece to his royal master. But, however anxious he had been to preserve intact the original ideas, he generally learnt to his concern that the music possessed no longer those beauties which had been dictated to him.

Royal musicians who have studied Thorough Bass are sometimes formidable critics. At any rate, it would appear so from some musical criticisms of Frederick II., and of his sister the Princess Amalia. Frederick II. (Frederick the Great) King of Prussia (born 1712, died 1786) was a composer as well as a virtuoso on the flute. He regularly practised his instrument daily. In earlier life it was his habit to play the scales every morning as soon as he had risen from his bed; and he often performed in the evening five concertos on the flute, which his royal orchestra had to accompany. In composing he wrote down only the melody, and he indicated with it in words how the bass and the other parts should be contrived; for instance,--"Here the bass shall be in Quavers;"--"Here the violins shall play alone," etc. These directions he gave to his Kapellmeister Agricola, who then completed the score.

The musical pursuits of Frederick II. are interesting, but are too well known to be here circumstantially recorded. Suffice it to mention his singular behaviour on the occasion of the performance of Graun's 'Te Deum,' after the termination of the Seven Years' War, in 1763. The orchestra and singers who had assembled in the royal palace at Charlottenburg punctually at the time at which they had been ordered to appear, found to their surprise that there was no audience assembling. After having waited for about half an hour in suspense, wondering whether the performance of the 'Te Deum' was to take place, or whether they had been summoned by inadvertence, they observed a side door being opened at the end of the hall opposite to them, through which the King entered quite alone, without any attendance. He sat down on a chair in a corner, and made a sign to them to commence. At some of the full choruses, when all the voices united, he held his hands before his eyes to hide his tears. Several of the musicians who saw him became so much affected that the tears rolled down their cheeks while they played. At the end of the performance the King thanked them by a slight inclination of his head, and retired through the side door through which he had entered.

This noble royal musician was, however, so prepossessed by the compositions of Graun, that hardly any composer, but such as wrote in Graun's style, had a chance of finding favour with him. Kirnberger, the celebrated theorist, in vain endeavoured to insinuate himself with the King by submitting to "His Majesty's approval" a new treatise of his on Thorough Bass. The treatise was soon returned to him with the following letter:--

"His Royal Majesty of Prussia, etc., our most gracious Lord, cannot persuade himself that the announced work of the Princely Chamber-musician Kirnberger, in Berlin, contains anything new, or particularly useful for the art of music, or for musical composition, considering that Thorough Bass was already brought to a certain perfection many years ago. This is, therefore, not to be withheld from the said Kirnberger, in reply to his solicitation of the day before yesterday.

FRIEDERICH.

Potsdam, February 25th, 1781."

The Princess Amalia, a pupil of Kirnberger, was a great upholder of the rules of Thorough Bass, and a sharp critic. As Gluck did not care much about many of those dry rules, it is perhaps not surprising that the Princess Amalia did not care much about Gluck. What she thought of him she has expressed forcibly enough in the following extract from a letter to Kirnberger, who had sent her the opera 'Iphigenia in Tauris':--

"Mr. Gluck will, in my opinion, never pass for a clever man in musical composition. He has, firstly, not the least invention; secondly, a bad, miserable melody; and thirdly, no accent, no expression,--it is all alike. He is very different from Graun and Hasse, but very similar to.... The introductory piece ought to be a kind of overture; but the good man does not like Imitations, and he is right, for they require labour. However, he is more fond of Transposition. This is not altogether objectionable; for, if a bar is often repeated, the hearer will all the more easily remember it; but Gluck appears to transpose the same idea from want of a new one. Finally, regarded in its entirety, the opera is very miserable. Now, this is in the new taste which has a great many adherents. However, I thank you for having sent it me. Through the faults of others one learns to know one's own. Be so kind as to procure for me the words of the whole opera; but, as regards the musical notation, I am not yet wise enough to find it beautiful."

If the letters of musicians to princes are often sadly devoid of sincerity, those of princes to musicians possess generally at least the negative merit of not containing intentional misrepresentations, since a prince has seldom a motive for disguising his likes and dislikes in music. Whether the estimable Kapellmeister Schulz had committed the indiscretion of suggesting to Princess Amalia that she was still capable of some improvement as a musical composer is uncertain, but appears probable, to judge from the following letter which she wrote to him after he had sent her the manuscript of his choruses to 'Athalia,' with the humble request for permission to dedicate them to her,--or, as he expressed himself, "to preface the work with the adorable name of so illustrious a connoisseur."

The reply he received from her is here translated from the German as literally as possible.

"To the Kapellmeister Schulz in Rheimsberg.

I surmise, Mr. Schulz, that by an oversight you have sent me, instead of your own work, the musical bungling of a child, since I cannot discover in it the least scientific art; on the contrary, it is throughout faulty from beginning to end, in the expression, sentiment, and meaning of the language as well as in the rhythm. The _motus contrarius_ has been entirely neglected; there is no proper harmony; no impressive melody; the interval of the Third is often entirely omitted; the key is never clearly indicated, so that one has to guess in what key the music is meant to move. There are no canonic imitations, not the least trace of counterpoint, but plenty of consecutive fifths and octaves! And this is to be called music! May heaven open the eyes of those who possess such a high conceit of themselves, and enlighten their understanding to make them comprehend that they are but bunglers and fumblers. I have heard it said that the work ought to praise the master; now-a-day everything is reversed and confused, the masters are the only ones who praise themselves, even if their works are offensive. Enough of this.

AMALIA.

Berlin, January 31st, 1785."

The amiable and respected Kapellmeister Schulz, in mentioning to an old friend the contents of this letter, merely added: "All this may be true; but why tell it me so rudely?"[24]

No doubt the most praiseworthy royal musicians are those who make it less their object to be accomplished players, composers, or theorists, than to discover and to assist really talented professional musicians, and thus to promote the advancement of the art. Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia, who lost his life in the battle of Saalfeld in 1806, at the age of 34 years, may be noticed as a remarkable exception. He was a distinguished pianist; a fine composer,--perhaps the best of all the royal musicians whose compositions have been published or are otherwise known; and a true patron of the art,--which he showed by his cultivation of classical music as well as by his kindness to Beethoven, Dussek, Spohr, and other eminent composers. This is the prince of whom it is told that Beethoven, on hearing him play, exclaimed with surprise: "Your Royal Highness does not play like a Prince; you play like a musician!"

As a true patron of music, who in this capacity has been more useful to the art than if he had composed operas and symphonies, must be mentioned Rudolph, Archduke of Austria, the pupil of Beethoven. The subjoined letter by him, translated from the German, speaks for itself:--

"Dear Beethoven,

I shall return to Vienna as early as Tuesday, August 5th, and I shall then remain in town for several days. I only wish that your health may permit you to come then to town. In the afternoon, from four to seven o'clock, I am generally at home.

My brother-in-law, Prince Anton, has written to me already that the King of Saxony expects your beautiful Mass.

Respecting D----r, I have spoken with our gracious Monarch, and likewise with Count Dietrichstein. I do not know whether this recommendation will be of use, as there is to be a competition for the appointment in question, in which any one wishing to obtain it, has to prove his fitness. It would be a gratification to me if I could be useful to that clever man, whom I heard with pleasure playing the organ last Monday in Baden,--especially as I am convinced that you would not recommend an unworthy person.

I hope you have written down your Canon, and I pray you, in case it might be injurious to your health to come to town, not to exert yourself too soon out of attachment to me.

Your well-wishing

RUDOLPH.[25]

Vienna, July 31st, 1823."

No doubt, there have been in olden time kings who, as history records, possessed as much skill in music as their best bards or minstrels. If Alfred the Great could enter and explore the Danish camp under the disguise of a harper, his harp-playing must have been in the genuine professional manner of his time, otherwise it would have revealed to the Danish lovers of music that he was not what he pretended to be.

To become an eminent musician, one requires, besides an extraordinary talent, much time, freedom from disturbance, and perseverance,--conditions which are seldom at the command of royal personages. The middle classes are in this respect the most favoured,--as they are, in fact, in all intellectual pursuits. When King Solomon says: "Give me neither poverty nor riches," (Proverbs, Chap. XXX. v. 8), he speaks rather as a musician, or poet. A king requires riches as necessarily as a musician requires talent.

[24] 'Tonkünstler-Lexicon Berlin's, von C. Freiherrn von Ledebur;' Berlin, 1861; p. 6.

[25] 'Biographie von Ludwig van Beethoven, verfasst von A. Schindler;' Münster, 1845; p. 141.

COMPOSERS AND PRACTICAL MEN.

It is sad to think how some of our distinguished musical composers have had to struggle with poverty, when with a proper attention to business matters they might easily have been men of independent means. True, to be what is called a practical man requires a talent very different from that required by an artist; and an inferior artist may be,--nay, often is a far more practical man than a superior artist. But a superior artist is not necessarily devoid of the qualifications which constitute a clever man of business. To maintain that a highly gifted musical composer must needs be deficient in common sense as regards money transactions would be as unwarrantable as to assert that a musician who understands how to use the art as a milch-cow must necessarily be a bad musician. His love for the art, and his desire to achieve something great, not unfrequently animates the true artist to disregard, or even to sacrifice for its sake, his property, health, and other advantages which the practical man regards as the real happiness of life.

Whatever the composer produces less as a labour of love than for gain, by command, according to a plan prescribed to him, and under similar circumstances, is generally not the best he is capable of accomplishing. An artist must be allowed to create unfettered the work with which he feels the greatest inclination to occupy himself. But, if he possesses no property, he may starve before his work is finished. There are some painful instances on record of starving musical composers, who, with their admirable talents, might have saved themselves and others much trouble, if only they had thought it worth their while to be a little more practical.

Composers generally receive their worst pay for their best works. Their best works are generally those which made them celebrated; and when they have become celebrated, they are often well paid for insignificant or mediocre productions.

Composers sometimes appear to be much more unpractical than they really are. This may, for instance, easily be the case with those who strike out a new path in the art, or who aim at a reform, the disirableness of which seems questionable to all but themselves. However, occasionally it happens that an innovation, which is at first unpopular, comes by some unexpected cause rather suddenly in vogue, or at least finds many advocates; and in this case the originator of the innovation, who was regarded as an unpractical man, may attain the reputation of being of a remarkably practical turn of mind. When Richard Wagner, about thirty years ago, as a poor and obscure musician in Paris, was arranging operatic melodies for the cornet-à-piston to save himself from starvation, his notions about the opera of the future appeared to those few musicians to whom he communicated them, as a dream which to realize would be as impossible as it would be undesirable. At the present day he has many estimable musicians among his ardent admirers; he is honoured by kings, leads the life of a prince, and probably there are but few persons who would deny that he deserves to be called a practical man.

Several of our classical composers have shown that they could be shrewd men of business at periods when the pressure of want, or the desire for independence, urgently incited them to acquire property. Beethoven on one or two occasions formed the resolution of making it his special object to accumulate a sum of money, the possession of which would enable him to compose without regard to publishers and mercantile speculations. But the endeavour to carry out this resolution seems to have been generally of but short duration. In the year 1821, the music-seller Tobias Haslinger, in Vienna, compiled a tariff in which he enumerated the different kinds of compositions with the prices he was willing to pay for them, if Beethoven by signing the tariff would bind himself to give all his new compositions to Haslinger for publication. This tariff is so interesting that it shall be inserted here, although Beethoven, who at first expected from it a golden future, was soon dissuaded by his friends from entering into any contract of the kind.

INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC.

Symphony for full Orchestra 60-80 ducats. Overture for full Orchestra 20-30 " Concerto for Violin with Orchestral accompaniment 50 " Octett for different instruments 60 " Septett, ditto 60 " Sextett, ditto 60 " Quintett for 2 Violins, 2 Tenors, and Violoncello 50 " Quartett for 2 Violins, 2 Tenors, and Violoncello 40 " Trio for Violin, Tenor and Violoncello 40 "

FOR PIANOFORTE.