Francois Couperin (1668-1733), now well-nigh forgotten, although once mentioned in the same breath with Moliere, wrote the pioneer clavier instruction book. In it he directs scholars how to avoid a harsh tone, and how to form a legato style. He advises parents to select teachers on whom implicit reliance may be placed, and teachers to keep the claviers of beginners under lock and key that there may be no practicing without supervision. His suggestions deserve consideration to-day.

He was the first to encourage professional clavier-playing among women.

His daughter Marguerite was the first woman appointed official court clavier player. He composed for the clavier little picture tunes, designed to depict sentiments, moods, phases of character and scenes from life. He fashioned many charming turns of expression, introduced an occasional tempo rubato, foreshadowed the intellectual element in music and laid the corner-stone of modern piano-playing. Jean Philippe Rameau (1683-1764) continued Couperin's work.

What is generally recognized as the first period of clavier-virtuosity begins with the Neapolitan Domenico Scarlatti (1683-1757), and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), the German of Germans. The style of Scarlatti is peculiarly the product of Italian love of beautiful tone, and what he wrote, though without depth of motive, kept well in view the technical possibilities of the harpsichord. His "Cat's Fugue," and his one movement sonatas still appear on concert programmes. In a collection of thirty sonatas he explained his purpose in these words: "Amateur, or professor, whoever thou art, seek not in these compositions for any profound feeling. They are only a frolic of art, meant to increase thy confidence in the clavier."

In Germany, with grand old Father Bach, the keyboard instrument was found capable of mirroring a mighty soul. The germ of all modern musical design lies in his clavier writings. It has been aptly said of this master of masters that he constructed a great university of music, from which all must graduate who would accomplish anything of value in music.

Men of genius, from Mozart to the present time, have extolled him for the beauty of his melodies and harmonies, the expressiveness of his modulations, the wealth, spontaneity and logical clearness of his ideas, and the superb architecture of his productions. Students miss the soul of Bach because of the soulless, mechanical way in which they deface his legacy to them.

His "Twelve Little Preludes" alone contain the materials for an entire system of music. The "Inventions," too often treated as dry-as-dust studies, are laden with beautiful figures and devices that furnish inspiration for all time. As indicated by their t.i.tle, which signifies a compound of appropriate expression and just disposition of the members, they were designed to cultivate the elements of musical taste, as well as freedom and equality of the fingers. His "Well Tempered Clavichord"

has been called the pianist's Sacred Book. Its Preludes and Fugues ill.u.s.trate every shade of human feeling, and were especially designed to exemplify the mode of tuning known as equal temperament, introduced into general use by Bach, and still employed by your piano tuner and mine.

Forkel, his biographer, has finely said that Bach considered the voices of his fugues a select company of persons conversing together. Each was allowed to speak only when there was something to say bearing on the subject in hand. A highly characteristic motive, or theme, as significant as the n.o.blest "typical phrase," developing into equally characteristic progressions and cadences, is a striking feature of the Bach fugue. His "Suites" exalted forever the familiar dance tunes of the German people. His wonderful "Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue" ushered the recitative into purely instrumental music.

As a teacher he was genial, kind, encouraging and in every respect a model. He obliged his pupils to write and understand as well as sound the notes. In his n.o.ble modesty he never held himself aloof as superior to others. When pupils were discouraged he reminded them how hard he had always been compelled to work, and a.s.sured them that equal industry would lead them to success. He gave the thumb its proper place on the keyboard, and materially improved fingering. Tranquillity and poetic beauty being prime essentials of his playing, he preferred to the more brilliant harpsichord, or spinet, the clavichord, whose thrilling, tremulous tone, owing to its construction, was exceedingly sensitive to the player's touch. The early hammer-clavier, or pianoforte, invented in 1711, by the Italian Cristofori, who derived the hammer idea from the dulcimer, did not attract him because of its extreme crudeness.

Nevertheless, it was destined to develop into the musical instrument essential to the perfect interpretation of his clavier music.

His son and pupil, Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714-1788), proceeding on the principles established by his ill.u.s.trious father, prepared the way for the modern pianist. His important theoretical work, "The True Art of Clavier Playing," was p.r.o.nounced by Haydn the school of schools for all time. It was highly extolled by Mozart, and to it Clementi ascribed his knowledge and skill. In his compositions he was an active agent in the crystallization of the sonata form. From him Haydn gained much that he later transferred to the orchestra.

Impulse to the second period of clavier virtuosity was given by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791) and Muzio Clementi (1752-1832). Mozart, who led the Viennese school, developed the singing style of playing and the smooth flowing legato. Leaving behind him the triumphs of his wonder-boyhood with spinet and harpsichord, he boldly entered the public concert-hall with the pianoforte, now greatly advanced by the improvements of Silbermann. Mozart brought into use its special features, showed its capacity for tone-shading and for the reflection of sentiment, and may well be said to have launched it on its career.

Tradition declares that his hand was fashioned for clavier keys, and that its graceful movements afforded the eye no less pleasure than the ear. His n.o.ble technique, based on his profound study of the Bachs, was spiritualized by his own glowing fancy. In his playing, as in his compositions, every note was a pearl of great price. With his piano concertos he showed how clavier and orchestra may converse earnestly together without either having its individuality marred. The same equilibrium is maintained in his piano and violin sonatas and his other concerted chamber music, amid all their persuasive and eloquent discourse. His charming four-hand and double piano pieces, written for himself and his gifted sister Marianne, and his solo clavier sonatas would prove his wealth of musical invention had he not written another note.

Clementi, born in Rome, pa.s.sed most of his life in London, where he attracted many pupils. Without great creative genius, he occupied himself chiefly with the technical problems of the pianoforte. He opened the way for the sonority of tone and imposing diction of the modern style. His music abounded in bold, brilliant pa.s.sages of single and double notes. He is even credited with having trilled in octaves with one hand. Taking upon himself the management of an English piano factory, he extended the keyboard, in 1793, to five and a half octaves.

Seven octaves were not reached until 1851. His "Gradus ad Parna.s.sum"

became the parent of Etude literature. Carl Tausig said: "There is but one G.o.d in technique, Bach, and Clementi is his prophet."

Losing the spirituality of a Mozart the Viennese school was destined to degenerate into empty bravura playing. Before its downfall it produced a Hummel, a Moscheles and a Czerny, each of whom left in their piano studies a valuable bequest to technique. Karl Czerny (1791-1857), called king of piano teachers, numbered among his pupils, Liszt, Doehler, Thalberg and Jaell. The Clementi school was continued in that familiar writer of Etudes, Johann Baptist Cramer (1771-1858), and began to show respect for the damper pedal. Its most eminent virtuoso was John Field (1782-1837) of Dublin.

Between these two schools stood Ludwig von Beethoven (1770-1827), a giant on lofty heights. Every accent of his dramatic music was embodied in his piano compositions. Tones furnished him unmistakably a language that needed no commentary. "In him," says Oscar Bie, "there were no tricks of technique to be admired, no mere virtuosity to praise; but he stirred his hearers to the depths of their hearts. Amid his storm and stress, whispering and listening, his awakening of the soul, an original naturalism of piano-playing was recognized, side by side with the naturalism of his creative art. Rhythm was the life of his playing." A union of conception and technique was a high aim of Beethoven, and he prized the latter only as it fulfilled the requirements of his idealism.

"The high development of the mechanical in pianoforte playing," he wrote to a friend, "will end in banishing all genuine emotion from music."

His prophetic words might serve as a warning to-day.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LILLIAN NORDICA]

The past century has given us the golden age of the pianoforte. Advanced knowledge of acoustics and improved methods of construction have made it the magnificent instrument we know in concert hall and home, and to which we now apply the more intimate name, piano. Oscar Bie calls it the music teacher of all mankind that has become great with the growth of modern music. As a photograph may convey to the home an excellent conception of a master painting in some distant art gallery, so the piano, in addition to the musical creations it has inspired, may present to the domestic circle intelligent reproductions of mighty choral, operatic and instrumental works. Through its medium the broad field of musical history and literature may be surveyed in private with profit and pleasure.

Piano composers and virtuosos rapidly increase. Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826) stood on the threshold of the fairyland of romance. His scheme of a dialogue, in the opening adagio of his "Invitation to the Dance," followed by an entrancing waltz and a grave concluding dialogue, betokens what he might have accomplished for the piano had he lived longer. Franz Schubert (1797-1828) and Robert Schumann (1810-1856) were the evangelists par excellence of the new romantic school. Schubert, closely allied in spirit to the master-builder, Beethoven, was unsurpa.s.sed in the refinement of his musical sentiment. The melody flooding his soul beautified his piano compositions, to which only a delicate touch may do justice. His Impromptus and Moments Musical, small impressionist pieces, in which isolated musical ideas are clothed in brief artistic forms adapted to the timbre of the instrument, may well be thought to have placed piano literature on a new basis.

The romantic temperament of Robert Schumann was nurtured on German romantic literature and music. His impressions of nature, life and literature he imprisoned in tones. He was a profound student of Bach, to whom he traced "the power of combination, poetry and humor in the new music." Infusing his own vital emotions into polyphonic forms he gave the piano far grander tone-pictures than those of Couperin. The dreamy fervor and the glowing fire of an impa.s.sioned nature may be felt in his works, but also many times the lack of balance that belongs with the malady by which he was a.s.sailed.

His love of music became early interwoven with love for Clara, the gifted daughter and pupil of his teacher, Friedrich Wieck. To her he dedicated his creative power. An attempt to gain flexibility by means of a mechanical contrivance having lamed his fingers, he turned from a pianist's career to composition and musical criticism. In becoming his wife Clara gave him both hands in more senses than one, and they shone together as a double star in the art firmament. Madame Schumann had acquired a splendid foundation for her career through the wise guidance of her father, whose pedagogic ideas every piano student might consider with profit. Her playing was distinguished by its musicianly intelligence and fine artistic feeling. Earnest simplicity surrounded her public and her private life, and the element of personal display was wholly foreign to her. She was the ideal woman, artist and teacher who remained in active service until a short time before her death, in 1896.

Those were charmed days in Leipsic when the Schumanns and Mendelssohn formed the centre of an enthusiastic circle of musicians, and created a far-reaching musical atmosphere. Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847), in his work for the piano, adapted to drawing-room use technical devices of his day, and in his "Songs without Words" gave a decisive short-story form to piano literature. His playing is described as possessing an organ firmness of touch without organ ponderosity, and having an expression that moved deeply without intoxicating. Living in genial surroundings, he was never forced to struggle, and although he climbed through flowery paths, he never reached the goal he longed for until his heart broke.

Delicate, sensitive, fastidious, Frederic Chopin (1809-1849) delivered his musical message with persuasive eloquence through the medium of the piano. It was his chosen comrade. With it he exchanged the most subtle confidences. Gaining a profound knowledge of its resources he raised it to an independent power. Polish patriotism steeped in Parisian elegance shaped his genius, and his compositions portray the emotions of his people in exquisitely polished tonal language. Spontaneous as was his creative power he was most painstaking in regard to the setting of his musical ideas and would often devote weeks to re-writing a single page that every detail might be perfect. The best that was in him he gave to music and to the piano. He enlarged the musical vocabulary, he re-created and enriched technique and diction, and to him the musician of to-day owes a debt that should never be forgotten. "He is of the race of eagles," said his teacher, Elsner. "Let all who aspire follow him in his flights toward regions sublime."

The man who, by his demands on the piano, induced improvements in its manufacture that materially increased its sonority and made it available for the modern idea, was Franz Liszt (1811-1886). He will always be remembered as the creator of orchestral piano-playing and of the symphonic poem. The impetuous rhythms and unfathomable mysteries of Magyar and gipsy life surrounding him in Hungary, the land of his birth, strongly influenced the shaping of his genius. Like the wandering children of nature who had filled the dreams of his childhood, he became a wanderer and marched a conqueror, radiant with triumphs, through the musical world. Chopin, who shrank from concert-playing, once said to him: "You are destined for it. You have the force to overwhelm, control, compel the public."

The bewitching tones of the gipsy violinist, Bihary, had fallen on his boyish ears "like drops of some fiery, volatile essence," stimulating him to effort. On the threshold of manhood he was inspired to apply the methods of Paganini to the piano. All his early realistic and revolutionary ideas found vent in his pianistic achievements. He gained marvelous fulness of chord power, great dynamic variety, and numerous unexpected solutions of the tone problem. Many technical means of expression were invented by him, and a wholly new fingering was required for his purposes. He taught the use of a loose wrist, absolute independence of the fingers and a new manipulation of the pedals. To carry out his designs the third or sustaining pedal became necessary.

His highest ambition, in his own words, was "to leave to piano players the foot-prints of attained advance." In 1839 he ventured on the first pure piano recital ever given in the concert hall. His series of performances in this line, covering the entire range of piano literature, in addition to his own compositions, given entirely without notes, led the public to expect playing by heart from all other artists.

As a great pianist, a composer of original conceptions, a magnetic conductor, an influential teacher, an intelligent writer on musical subjects and a devoted promoter of the interests of art, he stands out in bold relief, one of the grand figures in the history of music. His piano paraphrases and transcriptions are poetic re-settings of tone-creations he had thoroughly a.s.similated and made his own. In his original works, which Saint-Saens was perhaps the first to appreciate, students are now beginning to discover the ripe fruits of his genius.

Faithful ones among the pupils who flocked about him in cla.s.sic Weimar spread wide his influence, but also much harm was done in his name by charlatans who, calling themselves Liszt pupils, cast broadcast the fallacy that piano pounding was genuine pianistic power.

Large hearted, liberal minded, whole souled in his devotion to his art and its true interests, Franz Liszt seemed wholly without personal jealousies, and befriended and brought into public notice a large number of artists. Hector Berlioz declared that to him belonged "the sincere admiration of earnest minds, as well as the involuntary homage of the envious." At the opening of the Baireuth Temple of German Art, in 1876, Richard Wagner paid him this tribute in the midst of a joyful company: "Here is one who first gave me faith in my work when no one knew anything of me. But for him, my dear friend, Franz Liszt, you might not have had a note from me to-day."

A rival of Liszt in the concert field, especially before a Parisian public, was Sigismund Thalberg (1812-1871), who visited this country in 1855 and literally popularized the piano in America. Alfred Jaell and Henri Herz, who had preceded him, doubtless prepared the way for his triumphs. He and the "Creole Chopin," Louis Moreau Gottschalk, attracted much attention by several joint appearances in our musical centres of the time. Thalberg was a pupil of Hummel, and felt the influence of his teacher's cold, severely cla.s.sic style. He possessed a well-trained, fascinating mechanism, with scales, chords, arpeggios and octaves that were marvels of neatness and accuracy, and a tone that was mellow and liquid, though lacking in warmth. His operatic transcriptions, in which a central melody is enfolded in arabesques, chords and running pa.s.sages, have long since become antiquated, but his art of singing on the piano and many of his original studies still remain valuable to the pianist.

When Liszt and Thalberg were in possession of the concert platform, they occupied the attention of cartoonists as fully as Paderewski at a later date. Liszt, his hair floating wildly, was represented as darting through the air on wide-stretched pinions with keyboards attached--a play on Flugel, the German for grand piano. Thalberg, owing to his dignified repose, was caricatured as posing in a stiff, rigid manner before a box of keys.

Rubinstein and Von Bulow offer two more contrasting personalities. Anton Rubinstein (1830-1894) was the impressionist, the subjective artist, who re-created every composition he played. The Russian tone-colorist he has been called, and the warmth and glow with which he invested every nuance can never be forgotten by those who were privileged to hear his t.i.tanic interpretations, over whose very blemishes was cast the glamor of the impa.s.sioned temperament that caused them. "May Heaven forgive me for every wrong note I have struck!" he exclaimed to a youthful admirer after one of his concerts in this country during the season of 1872-3.

Certainly the listener under the spell of his magnetism could forgive, almost forget. Hans von Bulow (1830-1894) was the objective artist, whose scholarly attainments and musicianly discernment unraveled the most tangled web of phrasing and interpretation. His Beethoven recitals, when he was in America in 1875-6, were of especial value to piano students. As a piano virtuoso, a teacher, a conductor and an editor of musical works, he was a marked educational factor in music.

In his youth Johannes Brahms (1833-1897), the great apostle of modern intellectual music, made his debut before the musical world as a brilliant and versatile pianist. Once, when about to play in public Beethoven's magnificent Kreutzer Sonata, with Remenyi, who was the first to recognize his genius, he discovered that the piano was half a tone below concert pitch, and rather than spoil the effect by having the violin tuned down, the boy of nineteen unhesitatingly transposed the piano part which he was playing from memory into a higher key. The fire, energy and breadth of his rendering, together with the splendid musicianship displayed by this feat, deeply impressed the great violinist Joachim, who was present, and who became enthusiastic in his praise. Schumann, on making his acquaintance, proclaimed the advent of a genius who wrote music in which the spirit of the age found its consummation, and who, at the piano, unveiled wonders. By others he has been called the greatest contrapuntist after Bach, the greatest architectonist after Beethoven, the man of creative power who a.s.similated the older forms and invested them with a new life entirely his own. His piano works are a rich addition to the pianist's store, but whoever would unveil their beautiful proportions, all aglow as they are with sacred fire, must have taken a master's degree.

Two pupils of Liszt stand out prominently--Carl Tausig (1841-1871) and Eugene D'Albert (1864- ----). The first was distinguished by his extraordinary sense for style, and was thought to surpa.s.s his master in absolute flawlessness of technique. To the second Oscar Bie attributes the crown of piano playing in our time. Peter Iljitch Tschaikowsky (1840-1893), the distinguished representative of the modern Russian school, was an original, dramatic and fertile composer and wrote for the piano some of his highly colored and very characteristic music. Edward Grieg (1843- ----), the national tone-poet of Norway, has given the piano some of his most delightful efforts, fresh with the breezes of the North.

The veteran French composer, Charles Camille Saint-Saens (1835- ----), has won great renown as a pianist, and was one of the most precocious children on record, having begun the study of the piano when under three years of age. He was the teacher that knew how to develop the individuality of the young Russian, Leopold G.o.dowsky, who has done such remarkable work on two continents, as a teacher and piano virtuoso.

Perhaps the most famous piano teacher of recent times is Theodore Leschet.i.tzky, of Vienna. His method is that of common sense, based on keen a.n.a.lytical faculties, and he never trains the hand apart from the musical sense. His most renowned pupil is Ignace Jan Paderewski, the magnetic Pole, whose exquisite touch and tone long made him the idol of the concert room, and who, with time, has gained in robustness, but also in recklessness of style. Another gifted pupil of the Viennese master is Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler, of Chicago, an artiste of rare temperament, musical feeling and nervous power, of whom Dr. Hanslick said that her virtuosity was stupendous, her delicacy in the finest florid work as marvelous as her fascinating energy in the forte pa.s.sages.

The great tidal wave set in motion by the piano has swept over the civilized world, carrying with it hosts of accomplished pianists. Of some of those who are familiar figures in our musical centres it has been said that Teresa Carreno learned from Rubinstein the art of piano necromancy; that Rosenthal is an amazing technician whose interpretations lack tenderness; that De Pachmann is on terms of intimacy with Chopin, and that Rafael Joseffy, the disciple of Tausig, combines all that is best in the others with striking methods of his own.

Great is the piano, splendid its literature, many its earnest students, numerous its worthy exponents. That it is so often made a means of empty show is not the fault of the piano, it is due to a tendency of the day that calls for superficial glamor. Herbert Spencer was not so wrong as some of the critics seem to think when, in his last volume, he said that teachers of music and music performers were often corrupters of music.

Those certainly are corrupters of music who use the piano solely for meaningless technical feats.

VII

The Poetry and Leadership of Chopin

"The piano bard, the piano rhapsodist, the piano mind, the piano soul is Chopin," said Rubinstein. "Tragic, romantic, lyric, heroic, dramatic, fantastic, soulful, sweet, dreamy, brilliant, grand, simple, all possible expressions are found in his compositions and all are sung by him on his instrument."

In these few, bold strokes one who knew him by virtue of close art and race kinship, presents an incomparable outline sketch of the Polish tone-poet who explored the harmonic vastness of the pianoforte and made his own all its mystic secrets.

Born and bred on Poland's soil, son of a French father and a Polish mother, Frederic Chopin (1809-1849) combined within himself two natures, each complementing the other, both uniting to form a personality not understood by every casual observer. He is described as kind, courteous, possessed of the most captivating grace and ease of manner, now inclined to languorous melancholy, now scintillating with a joyous vivacity that was contagious. His sensitive nature, like the most exquisitely constructed sounding-board, vibrated with the despairing sadness, the suppressed wrath, and the sublime fort.i.tude of the brave, haughty, unhappy people he loved, and with his own homesickness when afar from his cherished native land.

Patriot and tone-poet in every fibre of his being, his genius inevitably claimed as its own the soul's divinest language, pure music, unfettered by words. The profound reserve of his nature made it peculiarly agreeable to him to gratify the haunting demands of his lyric muse through the medium of the one musical instrument that lends itself in privacy to the exploitation of all the mysteries of harmony. Strong conviction in regard to his own calling and clear perception of the hidden powers and future mission of the piano early compelled him to consecrate to it his unfaltering devotion. He evolved from its more intimate domain effects in sympathy with those of the orchestra, yet purely individual. He enriched it with new melodic, harmonic and rhythmic devices adapted to itself alone, and endowed it with a warmth of tone-coloring that spiritualized it for all time.

To the piano he confided all the conflicts that raged within him, all the courage and living hope that sustained him. In giving tonal form to the deep things of the soul, which are universal in their essence and application, he embodied universal rather than merely individual emotional experiences, and thus unbared what was most sacred to himself without jarring on the innate reticence which made purely personal confidences impossible. Although his mode of expression was peculiarly his own, he had received a strong impulse from the popular music of Poland. As a child he had become familiar with the folk-songs and dances heard in the harvest-fields and at market and village festivals. They were his earliest models; on them were builded his first themes. As Bach glorified the melodies of the German people, so Chopin glorified those of the Poles. The national tonality became to him a vehicle to be freighted with his own individual conceptions.

"I should like to be to my people what Uhland was to the Germans," he once said to a friend. He addressed himself to the heart of this people and immortalized its joys, sorrows and caprices by the force of his splendid art. Those who have attempted to interpret him as the sentimental hero of minor moods, the tone-poet in whom the weakness of despair predominates, have missed the leaping flames, the vivid intensity and the heroic manliness permeated with genuine love of beauty that animated him. True art softens the harshest accents of suffering by placing superior to it some elevating idea. So in the most melancholy strains of his music one who heeds well may detect the presence of a lofty ideal that uplifts and strengthens the travailing soul. It has been said of him that he had a sad heart but a joyful mind.

The two teachers of Chopin were Adalbert Zwyny, a Bohemian violinist, who taught the piano, and Joseph Elsner, a violinist, organist and theorist. "From Zwyny and Elsner even the greatest dunce must learn something," he is quoted as saying. Neither of these men attempted to hamper his free growth by rigid technical restraints. Their guidance left him master of his own genius, at liberty to "soar like the lark into the ethereal blue of the skies." He respected them both. A revering affection was cherished by him for Elsner, to whom he owed his sense of personal responsibility to his art, his habits of serious study and his intimate acquaintance with Bach.

There is food for thought in the fact that this Prince Charming of the piano, whose magic touch awakened the Sleeping Beauty of the instrument of wood and wires, never had a lesson in his life from a mere piano specialist. Liszt once said Chopin was the only pianist he ever knew that could play the violin on the piano. If he could do so it was because he had harkened to the voice of the violin and resolved to show that the piano, too, could produce thrilling effects. In the same way he had listened to the human voice, and determined that the song of his own instrument should be heard. Those who give ear to the piano alone will never learn the secret of calling forth its supreme eloquence.