Chapter 3

As a matter of fact, the critics are not to blame. I have read the expostulations of Mr. Finck about the untilled fields of Chopin. Yet his favorite Paderewski plays season in and season out a selection from the scheme I have just given, with possibly a few additions. The most versatile--and--also delightful--Chopinist is Pachmann. From his very first afternoon recital at old Chickering Hall, New York, in 1890, he gave a taste of the unfamiliar Chopin. Joseffy, thrice wonderful wizard, who has attained to the height of a true philosophic Parnassus--he only plays for himself, O wise Son of Light!--also gives at long intervals fleeting visions of the unknown Chopin. To Pachmann belongs the honor of persistently bringing forward to our notice such gems as the _Allegro de Concert_, many new mazurkas, the _F minor_, _F major_--_A minor Ballades_, the _F-sharp_ and _G-flat Impromptus_, the _B minor Sonata_, certain of the _Valses_, _Fantasies_, _Krakowiaks_, _Preludes_, _Studies_ and _Polonaises_--to mention a few. And his pioneer work may be easily followed by a dozen other lists, all new to concert-goers, all equally interesting. Chopin still remains a sealed book to the world, notwithstanding the ink spilled over his name every other minute of the clock's busy traffic with Eternity.

A fair moiety of this present chapter could be usurped by a detailed account of the beauties of the Unheard Chopin--you see I am emulating the critics with my phrase-making. But I am not the man to accomplish such a formidable task. I am too old, too disillusioned. The sap of a generous enthusiasm no longer stirs in my veins. Let the young fellows look to the matter--it is their affair. However, as I am an inveterate busybody I cannot refrain from an attempt to enlist your sympathies for some of my favorite Chopin.

Do you know the _E major Scherzo, Op. 54_, with its skimming, swallowlike flight, its delicate figuration, its evanescent hintings at a serious something in the major trio? Have you ever heard Pachmann _purl_ through this exquisitely conceived, contrived and balanced composition, truly a classic? _Whaur_ is your Willy Mendelssohn the _noo_? Or are you acquainted with the _G-sharp minor Prelude_? Do you play the _E-flat Scherzo_ from the _B minor Sonata_? Have you never shed a furtive tear--excuse my old-fashioned romanticism--over the bars of the _B major Larghetto_ in the same work? [The last movement is pure passage writing, yet clever as only Chopin knew how to be clever without being offensively gaudy.]

How about the first _Scherzo in B minor_? You play it, but do you understand its ferocious irony? [Oh, author of _Chopin: the Man and his Music_, what sins of rhetoric must be placed at your door!] And what of the _E-flat minor Scherzo_? Is it merely an excuse for blacksmith art and is the following _finale_ only a study in unisons? There is the _C-sharp minor Prelude_. In it Brahms is anticipated by a quarter of a century. The _Polonaise in F-sharp minor_ was damned years ago by Liszt, who found that it contained pathologic states. What of it? It is Chopin's masterpiece in this form and for that reason is seldom played in public. Why? My children, do you not know by this time that the garden variety of pianoforte virtuoso will play difficult music if the difficulties be technical not emotional, or emotional and not spiritual?

_The F-sharp minor Polonaise_ is always _drummed_ on the keyboard because some silly story got into print about Chopin's aunt asking the composer for a picture of his soul battling with the soul of his pet foe, the Russians. Militant the work is not, as swinging as are its resilient rhythms: granted that the gloomy repetitions betray a morbid dwelling upon some secret, exasperating sorrow; but as the human soul never experiences the same mood _twice_ in a lifetime, so Chopin never means his passages, identical as they may be, to be repeated in the same mood-key. Liszt, Tausig, and Rubinstein taught us the supreme art of color variation in the repetition of a theme. Paderewski knows the trick; so do Joseffy and Pachmann--the latter's _pianissimi_ begin where other men's cease. So the accusation of tonal or thematic monotony should not be brought against this _Polonaise_. Rather let us blame our imperfect sympathies and slender stock of the art of _nuance_.

But here I am pinning myself down to one composition, when I wish to touch lightly on so many! The _F minor Polonaise_, the _E-flat minor Polonaise_, called the _Siberian_--why I don't know; _I_ could never detect in its mobile measures the clanking of convict chains or the dreary landscape of Siberia--might be played by way of variety; and then there is the _C minor Polonaise_, which begins in tones of epic grandeur [go it, old man, you will be applying for a position on the Manayunk _Herbalist_ soon as a critic!] The _Nocturnes_--are they all familiar to you? The _F-sharp minor_ was a positive novelty a few years ago when Joseffy exhumed it, while the _C-sharp minor_, with its strong climaxes, its middle sections so evocative of Beethoven's _Sonata_ in the same key--have you mastered its content? _The Preludes_ are a perfect field for the "prospector"; though Essipoff and Arthur Friedheim played them in a single program. Nor must we overlook the so-called hackneyed valses, the tinkling charm of the one in _G-flat_, the elegiac quality of the one in _B minor_. The _Barcarolle_ is only for heroes. So I do not set it down in malice against the student or the everyday virtuosos that he--or she--does not attempt it. The _F minor Fantaisie_, I am sorry to say, is beginning to be tarnished like the _A-flat Ballade_, by impious hands. It is not for weaklings; nor are the other Fantaisies. Why not let us hear the _Bolero_ and _Tarantella_, not Chopin at his happiest, withal Chopin. Emil Sauer made a success of other brilliant birdlike music before an America public. As for the _Ballades_, I can no longer endure any but _Op. 38_ and _Op. 52_. Rosenthal played the beautiful _D-flat Study_ in _Les Trois nouvelles Etudes_ with signal results. It is a valse in disguise. And its neighbors in _A-flat_ and _F minor_ are Chopin in his most winning moods. Who, except Pachmann, essays the _G-flat major Impromptu_--wrongfully catalogued as _Des Dur_ in the Klindworth edition? To be sure, it resumes many traits of the two preceding _Impromptus_, yet is it none the less fascinating music. And the _Mazurkas_--I refuse positively to discuss at the present writing such a fertile theme. I am fatigued already, and I feel that my antique vaporings have fatigued you. Next month I shall stick to my leathery last, like the musical shoemaker that I am--I shall consider to some length the use of left-hand passage work in the Hummel sonatas. Or shall I speak of Chopin again, of the Chopin mazurkas! My sour bones become sweeter when I think of Chopin--ah, there I go again! Am I, too, among the rhapsodists?

VI

MORE ANENT CHOPIN

I had fully intended at the conclusion of my last chapter to close the curtain on Chopin and his music, for I agree with the remark Deppe once made to Amy Fay about the advisability of putting Chopin on the shelf for half a century and studying Mozart in the interim. Bless the dear Germans and their thoroughness! The type of teacher to which Deppe belonged always proceeded as if a pupil, like a cat, had nine lives. Fifty years of Chopin on the shelf! There's an idea for you. At the conclusion of this half century's immurement what would the world say to the Polish composer's music? That is to say, in 1955 the unknown inhabitants of the musical portion of this earth would have sprung upon them absolutely new music. The excitement would be colossal, colossal, too, would be the advertising. And then? And then I fancy a chorus of profoundly disappointed lovers of the tone art. Remember that the world moves in fifty years. Perhaps there would be no longer our pianoforte, our keyboard. How childish, how simple would sound the timid little Chopin of the far-away nineteenth century.

In the turbulent times to come music will have lost its personal flavor. Instead of interpretative artists there will be gigantic machinery capable of maniacal displays of virtuosity; merely dropping a small coin in a slot will sound the most abstruse scores of Richard Strauss--then the popular and bewhistled music maker. And yet it is difficult for us, so wedded are we to that tragic delusion of earthly glory and artistic immortality, to conjure up a day when the music of Chopin shall be stale and unprofitable to the hearing. For me the idea is inconceivable. Some of his music has lost interest for us, particularly the early works modeled after Hummel. Ehlert speaks of the twilight that is beginning to steal over certain of the nocturnes, valses, and fantasias. Now Hummel is quite perfect in his way. To imitate him, as Chopin certainly did, was excellent practice for the younger man, but not conducive to originality. Chopin soon found this out, and dropped both Hummel and Field out of his scheme. Nor shall I insist on the earlier impositions being the weaker; _Op. 10_ contains all Chopin in its twelve studies. The truth is, that this Chopin, to whom has been assigned two or three or four periods and styles and manners of development, sprang from the Minerva head of music a full-fledged genius. He grew. He lived. But the exquisite art was there from the first. That it had a "long foreground" I need not tell you.

What compositions, then, would our mythic citizens of 1955 prefer?--can't you see them crowding around the concert grand piano listening to the old-fashioned strains as we listen today when some musical antiquarian gives a recital of Scarlatti, Couperin, Rameau on a clavecin! Still, as Mozart and Bach are endurable now, there is no warrant for any supposition that Chopin would not be tolerated a half century hence. Fancy those sprightly, spiritual, and very national dances, the mazurkas, not making an impression! Or at least two of the ballades! Or three of the nocturnes! Not to mention the polonaises, preludes, scherzos, and etudes. Simply from curiosity the other night--I get so tired playing checkers--I went through all my various editions of Chopin--about ten--looking for trouble. I found it when I came across five mazurkas in the key of C-sharp minor. I have arrived at the conclusion that this was a favorite tonality of the Pole. Let us see.

Two studies in _Op. 10_ and _25_, respectively; the _Fantaisie-Impromptu_, _Op. 66_; five _Mazurkas_, above mentioned; one _Nocturne, Op. 27, No. 1_; one _Polonaise, Op. 26, No. 1_; one _Prelude, Op. 45_; one _Scherzo, Op. 39_; and a short second section, a _cantabile_ in the _E major Scherzo, Op. 54_; one _Valse, Op. 64, No. 2_--are there any more in C-sharp minor? If there are I cannot recall them. But this is a good showing for one key, and a minor one. Little wonder Chopin was pronounced elegiac in his tendencies--C-sharp minor is a mournful key and one that soon develops a cloying, morbid quality if too much insisted upon.

The mazurkas are worthy specimens of their creator's gift for varying not only a simple dance form, but also in juggling with a simple melodic idea so masterfully that the hearer forgets he is hearing a three-part composition on a keyboard. Chopin was a magician. The first of the _Mazurkas in C-sharp minor_ bears the early _Op. 6, No. 2_. By no means representative, it is nevertheless interesting and characteristic. That brief introduction with its pedal bass sounds the rhythmic life of the piece. I like it; I like the dance proper; I like the major--you see the peasant girls on the green footing away--and the ending is full of a sad charm. _Op. 30, No. 4_, the next in order, is bigger in conception, bigger in workmanship. It is not so cheerful, perhaps, as its predecessor in the same key; the heavy basses twanging in tenths like a contrabasso are intentionally monotone in effect. There is defiance and despair in the mood. And look at the line before the last--those consecutive fifths and sevenths were not placed there as a whim; they mean something. Here is a mazurka that will be heard later than 1955! By the way, while you are loitering through this Op. 30 do not neglect No. 3, the stunning specimen in D-flat. It is my favorite mazurka.

Now let us hurry on to _Op. 41, No. 1_. It well repays careful study. Note the grip our composer has on the theme, it bobs up in the middle voices; it comes thundering at the close in octave and chordal _unisons_, it rumbles in the bass and is persistently asserted by the soprano voice. Its scale is unusual, the atmosphere not altogether cheerful. Chopin could be depressingly pessimistic at times. _Op. 50, No. 3_, shows how closely the composer studied his Bach. It is by all odds the most elaborately worked out of the series, difficult to play, difficult to grasp in its rather disconnected procession of moods. To me it has a clear ring of exasperation, as if Chopin had lost interest, but perversely determined to finish his idea. As played by Pachmann, we get it in all its peevish, sardonic humors, especially if the audience, or the weather, or the piano seat does not suit the fat little blackbird from Odessa. _Op. 63, No. 3_, ends this list of mazurkas in C-sharp minor. In it Chopin has limbered up, his mood is freer, melancholy as it is. Louis Ehlert wrote of this: "A more perfect canon in the octave could not have been written by one who had grown gray in the learned arts." Those last few bars prove that Chopin--they once called him amateurish in his harmonies!--could do what he pleased in the contrapuntal line.

Shall I continue? Shall I insist on the obvious; hammer in my truisms! It may be possible that out here on the Wissahickon--where the summer hiccoughs grow--that I do not get all the news of the musical world. Yet I vainly scan piano recital programs for such numbers as those C-sharp minor mazurkas, for the _F minor Ballade_, for that beautiful and extremely original _Ballade Op. 38_ which begins in F and ends in A minor. Isn't there a legend to the effect that Schumann heard Chopin play his _Ballade_ in private and that there was no stormy middle measures? I've forgotten the source, possibly one of the greater Chopinist's--or _Chopine_-ists, as they had it in Paris. What a stumbling-block that A minor explosion was to audiences and students and to pianists themselves. "Too wild, too wild!" I remember hearing the old guard exclaim when Rubinstein, after miraculously prolonging the three A's with those singing fingers of his, not forgetting the pedals, smashed down the keyboard, gobbling up the sixteenth notes, not in phrases, but pages. How grandly he rolled out those bass scales, the chords in the treble transformed into a _Cantus Firmus_. Then, his Calmuck features all afire, he would begin to smile gently and lo!--the tiny, little tune, as if children had unconsciously composed it at play! The last page was carnage. Port Arthur was stormed and captured in every bar. What a pianist, what an artist, what a _man_!

I suppose it is because my imagination weakens with my years--remember that I read in the daily papers the news of Chopin's death! I do long for a definite program to be appended to the _F-major Ballade_. Why not offer a small prize for the best program and let me be judge? I have also reached the time of life when the _A-flat Ballade_ affects my nerves, just as Liszt was affected when a pupil brought for criticism the _G minor Ballade_. Preserve me from the _Third Ballade_! It is winning, gracious, delicate, capricious, melodic, poetic, and what not, but it has gone to meet the _D-flat Valse_ and _E-flat Nocturne_--as the obituaries say. The fourth, the _F minor Ballade_--ah, you touch me in a weak spot. Sticking for over a half century to Bach so closely, I imagine that the economy of thematic material and the ingeniously spun fabric of this _Ballade_ have made it my pet. I do not dwell upon the loveliness of the first theme in F minor, or of that melodious approach to it in the major. I am speaking now of the composition as a whole. Its themes are varied with consummate ease, and you wonder at the corners you so easily turn, bringing into view newer horizons; fresh and striking landscapes. When you are once afloat on those D-flat scales, four pages from the end nothing can stop your progress. Every bar slides nearer and nearer to the climax, which is seemingly chaos for the moment. After that the air clears and the whole work soars skyward on mighty pinions. I quite agree with those who place in the same category the _F minor Fantaisie_ with this _Ballade_. And it is not much played. Nor can the mechanical instruments reproduce its nuances, its bewildering pathos and passion. I see the musical mob of 1955 deeply interested when the Paderewski of those days puts it on his program as a gigantic novelty!

You see, here I have been blazing away at the same old target again, though we had agreed to drop Chopin last month. I can't help it. I felt choked off in my previous article and now the _dam_ has overflowed, though I hope not the reader's! While I think of it, some one wrote me asking if Chopin's first _Sonata in C minor, Op. 4_, was worth the study. Decidedly, though it is as dry as a Kalkbrenner Sonata for Sixteen Pianos and forty-five hands. The form clogged the light of the composer. Two things are worthy of notice in many pages choked with notes: there is a menuet, the only essay I recall of Chopin's in this graceful, artificial form; and the Larghetto is in 5/4 time--also a novel rhythm, and not very grateful. How Chopin reveled when he reached the _B-flat minor_ and _B minor Sonatas_ and threw formal physic to the dogs! I had intended devoting a portion of this chapter to the difference of old-time and modern methods in piano teaching. Alas! my unruly pen ran away with me!

VII

PIANO PLAYING TODAY AND YESTERDAY

How to listen to a teacher! How to profit by his precepts! Better still--How to practice after he has left the house! There are three titles for essays, pedagogic and otherwise, which might be supplemented by a fourth: How to pay promptly the music master's bills. But I do not propose indulging in any such generalities this beautiful day in late winter. First, let me rid the minds of my readers of a delusion. I am no longer a piano teacher, nor do I give lessons by mail. I am a very old fellow, fond of chatting, fond of reminiscences; with the latter I bore my listeners, I am sure. Nevertheless, I am not old in spirit, and I feel the liveliest curiosity in matters pianistic, matters musical. Hence, this month I will make a hasty comparison between new and old fashions in teaching the pianoforte. If you have patience with me you may hear something of importance; otherwise, if there is skating down your way don't miss it--fresh air is always healthier than esthetic gabbling.

Do they teach the piano better in the twentieth century than in the nineteenth? Yes, absolutely yes. When a young man survived the "old fogy" methods of the fifties, sixties and seventies of the past century, he was, it cannot be gainsaid, an excellent artist. But he was, as a rule, the survival of the fittest. For one of him successful there were one thousand failures. Strong hands, untiring patience and a deeply musical temperament were needed to withstand the absurd soulless drilling of the fingers. Unduly prolonged, the immense amount of dry studies, the antique disregard of fore-arm and upper-arm and the comparatively restricted repertory--well, it was a stout body and a robust musical temperament that rose superior to such cramping pedagogy. And then, too, the ideals of the pianist were quite different. It is only in recent years that tone has become an important factor in the scheme--thanks to Chopin, Thalberg and Liszt. In the early sixties we believed in velocity and clearness and brilliancy. Kalkbrenner, Herz, Dreyschock, Döhler, Thalberg--those were the lively boys who patrolled the keyboard like the north wind--brisk but chilly. I must add that the most luscious and melting tone I ever heard on the piano was produced by Thalberg and after him Henselt. Today Paderewski is the best exponent of their school; of course, modified by modern ideas and a Slavic temperament.

But now technic no longer counts. Be ye as fleet as Rosenthal and as pure as Pachmann--in a tonal sense--ye will not escape comparison with the mechanical pianist. It was their astounding accuracy that extorted from Eugen d'Albert a confession made to a friend of mine just before he sailed to this country last month:

"A great pianist should no longer bother himself about his technic. Any machine can beat him at the game. What he must excel in is--interpretation and tone."

Rosenthal, angry that a mere contrivance manipulated by a salesman could beat his speed, has taken the slopes of Parnassus by storm. He can play the Liszt _Don Juan_ paraphrase _faster_ than any machine in existence. (I refer to the drinking song, naturally.) But how few of us have attained such transcendental technic? None except Rosenthal, for I really believe if Karl Tausig would return to earth he would be dazzled by Rosenthal's performances--say, for example, of the Brahms-Paganini _Studies_ and, Liszt, in his palmy days, never had such a technic as Tausig's; while the latter was far more musical and intellectual than Rosenthal. Other days, other ways!

So tone, not technic alone, is our shibboleth. How many teachers realize this? How many still commit the sin of transforming their pupils into machines, developing muscle at the expense of music! To be sure, some of the old teachers considered the second F minor sonata of Beethoven the highest peak of execution and confined themselves to teaching Mozart and Field, Cramer and Mendelssohn, with an occasional fantasia by Thalberg--the latter to please the proud papa after dessert. Schumann was not understood; Chopin was misunderstood; and Liszt was _anathema_. Yet we often heard a sweet, singing tone, even if the mechanism was not above the normal. I am sure those who had the pleasure of listening to William Mason will recall the exquisite purity of his tone, the limpidity of his scales, the neat finish of his phrasing. Old style, I hear you say! Yes, old and ever new, because approaching more nearly perfection than the splashing, floundering, fly-by-night, hysterical, smash-the-ivories school of these latter days. Music, not noise--that's what we are after in piano playing, the _higher_ piano playing. All the rest is pianola-istic!

Singularly enough, with the shifting of technical standards, more simplicity reigns in methods of teaching at this very moment. The reason is that so much more is expected in variety of technic; therefore, no unnecessary time can be spared. If a modern pianist has not at _fifteen_ mastered all the tricks of finger, wrist, fore-arm and upper-arm he should study bookkeeping or the noble art of football. Immense are the demands made upon the memory. Whole volumes of fugues, sonatas of Chopin, Liszt, Schumann and the new men are memorized, as a matter of course. Better wrong notes, in the estimation of the more superficial musical public, than playing with the music on the piano desk. And then to top all these terrible things, you must have the physique of a sailor, the nerves of a woman, the impudence of a prize-fighter, and the humility of an innocent child. Is it any wonder that, paradoxical as it may sound, there are fewer great pianists today in public than there were fifty years ago, yet ten times as many pianists!