History of the pianoforte and pianoforte players

by Oskar Bie

The “Galant” School

When Bach died, the musical centre of gravity tended to Germany; but it was doubtful what precise line would be followed. On Bach anything could be built. A great period of counterpoint might rise in which voices might go through a new series of harmonic complexities, similar to, and yet so different from those of the Middle Ages. Or there might come a period of great suites in which the simple dance-forms might grow in many-sided development. A high pathetic style might be introduced, or the details of expression might attract the attention of the amateur. The forms of the various compositions might alter in either direction, of new freedom or new restraint. Counterpoint might be deserted, concerted playing might be improved in the direction of increased grace.

For all or any of these possibilities Bach laid a foundation, and it only remained for the taste of the time to decide on the choice that should be made.

The taste of the time, leaving on one side both the pathetic and the scholarly, went off into the domain of the graceful. The experience of music was similar to that of architecture, which had already gone through the epoch of the “baroque” and “rococo,”[96] by which designers had sought to give variety to the lines of their work. Compared with the energy and manly swing of the Italian Concerto, a sonata of Philip Emanuel Bach is fairly characterised as “rococo.” In place of the sober delight in bold outline appears the “galant” appreciation of eccentricities and wayward curvings. Passion is ashamed of confessing itself openly, and offers the amusing spectacle of a natural emotion wilfully covering itself with an incongruous vesture of conventional form.

The newly formed tendency towards simple sensuousness does not obtrude itself; it merely smiles in the graceful oscillations of subtle harmonies.

Caprice is the true ruler, and in improvised outpourings, speaking pauses, piquant leaps, stupefying enharmonic changes, purposed perverseness of motive, she places the same material under the hands of the fair performers, which, a short time before, had taken such a scholarly form.

Where strict canons of the voices used to be carried honestly through, we now observe a pleasant trifling with imitation which becomes coquettish, and the pedantic old Dux and Comes[97] put up very well with the change in their conditions of service. Counterpoint turns into mere accompaniment, and daintiness with humorous ornament is the object of the composer.

The new auditor is the delicate dilettante who listens no longer so much to the inner parts, the ancient severity of which vanishes and is replaced by chord music. Now we listen to the melody, to the over-part, and we unfold its whole charm, revealing a hundred secrets of melodic pleasure, and disentangling them at ease. And in all this capricious enlivening of music there remains the same delightful contradiction as in the paintings and buildings of the time—the contradiction between inner freedom and the aim at a fixed form. The external form is to replace what was offered by the inner; and yet, from these new free figures, the intention is primarily to gain this form. The aim is not at collections of suites, but at the type of the free movement, of the piece, of the sonata. It is the same spectacle as when we see Hogarth and Greuze expressing a definite moral lesson in their pictures, or architectural principles conveyed in the play of childhood. In music, however, that exclusive predominance of form, which the French Revolution caused to prevail in the representative art, has never been quite attained. It is important to notice that this was only possible since music had emancipated itself from French influence. It was only in Germany that a Beethoven could arise.

The distinction between “professional” and “amateur” is one to which our attention is always more and more drawn. “Tablatures” and apparatus for the scholar vanish gradually, and titles meant to attract the amateur become more frequent. Bach’s inscription—“for the delight of amateurs”—over suites and concertos, appears on more than one title-page. We read “Cecilia playing on the clavier and satisfying the hearing,” or “Manipulus musices, a Handful of Pastime at the Clavier,” or again, “the Busy Muse Clio,” or even “Clavier-practice for the delight of mind and ear, in six easy galanterie parties adapted to modern taste, composed chiefly for young ladies.” A certain Tischer has put it very shortly on some suites—“The Contented Ear and the Quickened Soul.” As the most complete refiner of this taste, relying on the public at large, appears Philip Emanuel Bach, who inscribes his sonatas “easy” or “for ladies,” and thus openly confessed, much as he was censured therefor by the pedants, that he had systematically introduced the light genre as a music for the future.

F. W. Marpurg, Theoretician and Clavier
Teacher. 1718-1795.

Like the princes in the seventeenth century, or the middle classes in the nineteenth, it was the nobles in the eighteenth who played the part of Maecenas; and under their patronage appears, for the first time, a precisely marked musical society. Here too, in music, the nobility became an invaluable link between the artistic court and that public interest in art which, it would seem, is the necessary condition of all future advance. Even in the didactic musical romance which old Kuhnau wrote in 1700 under the title of “The Musical Quack,” we miss the type of the amateur Maecenas. In the background, invisible, stands the prince who keeps the chapel; in the foreground there are only musicians and quacks. The amateur who is not a quack, the genuine dilettante, first attains importance in the beginning of the century; but very shortly the concerts which are given in the salons of the Fürnbergs, Esterhazys, and Schwarzenbergs, do more for the beneficial advancement of art than even the devotion of a keenly musical court such as that of Frederick the Great at first was. The greater courts, like Dresden and Munich, begin somewhat to decline, while the smaller advance, and in England, Italy, and elsewhere, the nobility, who are not unlike small sovereign princes, aid the spread and development of music. The nobility are soon followed by the gentry; but it was not till the Revolution had shattered the nobles that the bourgeois Maecenas steps upon the scene. In this displacement of old relations it was inevitable that the clavier should play its important part; in accordance with its social nature it advanced more and more from an accompanying or supplementary instrument into an independent centre of drawing-room existence, as well as of bourgeois evening parties. Thus, in the attractive and successful pieces of the generation from 1750 to 1800, its popularity was for the first time established. Old Bach had as yet been the most serious professional musician who had yielded to “galant” impulses; and his concessions to the popular taste were only by the way. The distinction between public improvisation on set themes, and public interpretation of written works, was not yet sharply defined. The player was at his highest when he extemporised variations or fugues on a given subject. Such had been the improvisations of Sebastian Bach; but the spirit of improvisation, as it lives in the works of Philip Emanuel, is something quite different. In him the hand directly follows the inner feeling, constructs easily and simply, and plays for the sake of the playing, not for the sake of the art. Before the clavier had become a social instrument, this division of labour between composers and players had become imperative; reproduction was bound to diverge into a separate branch. The amateur, on whom more and more the art depends, is incapable of composing, but he will, on his clavier, hear the works of the masters, which are now so numerous, or even play them himself. He desires to have acts of operas, arrangements of concertos, or many dainty short pieces. The old clavier-books, which we can trace from the Elizabethan Virginal Book to the volumes of Bach’s children, now gradually disappear. Instead of copying with its personal character, the press is more and more in requisition, and the musical treasury is more and more thrown open to the public. The engraving of notes, during the eighteenth century, rapidly improves, and the clefs and types become more simple. The ornamental devices become constantly more fixed, and the player has less and less liberty in his use of them. And whereas, in earlier times, the instruction-books did not always distinguish between composition and playing, now, since Couperin’s time, the instruction-book of pure playing became constantly more common; while Philip Emanuel, to whom, perhaps with justice, we trace the systematisation of the principles of modern clavier-playing, wrote a book on playing, and then waited eight years before publishing a second part on the thorough bass.

The extension of musical interest led further to such a multitude of musical magazines as even to-day is not to be found. For the most part they disappear after a few years, but we have, as a matter of fact, in a year’s issue of such a paper, a very fair picture of musical tendencies. I have before me a volume of the last of these, published in 1762, by George Ludewig Winter, in Berlin. It is well printed, with dainty rococo borders. Very amusing and characteristic is the sanguine Preface, in which also is to be discerned the inability of the German tongue to restrain itself while talking of our classics. “Music,” says the publisher, “serves either to delight with its mere art the professor, whether he be such by nature or by cultivation—as a well-built house, or a well-laid out garden, satisfies the connoisseur; or, on the other hand, it is the language of emotion. Then roar forth tones teeming with revenge, sorrow glides over the strings, passion frantically beats the air, joy revels in the blue æther, friendship and love sigh forth on the delicate notes, praise and thankfulness well from a full heart on the vigorous melody, or rise, cleaving the clouds on the tongues of men, to the very throne of the Almighty.”

The good man, with his fearful fluency, declares that he is going to bring forward much of the lighter kind—meaning what we call the dilettante class of music. The numbers appeared week by week, and the continuation was always postponed for the next, often at the most thrilling passages—in the approved style of the clever magazine. The authors’ names are only given when they are very well known. Among these distinguished men are many whose names have not remained in the memory of history—fashionable composers, such as every epoch has in plenty. But there are also Philip Emanuel Bach, Kirnberger, and many others of the great Bach School. Most of it is clavier-music. Operatic airs, which occasionally appear, are so arranged that the voice part, under which the words are printed, is played by the right hand, and the completing orchestral notes are written small in the upper staves. There are also popular songs in abundance. A French spirit breathes through these pages; a fashionable spirit of enjoyment. The short character-pieces, which the French loved so dearly to introduce with significant titles, are mingled plentifully with sonatas and rondos, arranged in the Italian manner. Under the character-pieces, in the appropriate places, as in the biblical stories of Kuhnau, the explanatory programme-text is printed. Thus in a piece called “La Spinoza,”[98] the developments are marked as being philosophic reflections on a certain theme. Two pieces, called “Wonderment” and “Youthful Joy,” easily explain themselves. In one piece entitled, “Two friends grumbling over their wine,” by the arrangement and form of the two voices, in right and left hands, is represented how they converse, console each other, gain courage, and wait for a friendly glance of fortune. The most humorous is a short clavier-piece, “A Compliment,” which, usually in two voices, exhibits the following spirited contents: “If you are well, I am charmed.” “Rather I am glad that I see you so well” (Repeated). “I have heard that you have been poorly: I am sorry to hear it.” “Heaven be praised I am recovered.” “But I am ashamed”—“allow me”——They quarrel who shall bring the chair, and finally sit down. “I recommend myself”—“and I recommend myself”—“to your friendship.”

It was precisely at this period, when the clavier first became truly popular, that its construction was rapidly and constantly improved. It was then that the separation of the two systems of mechanism—the so-called English, and the Viennese—took place. The names mean nothing, for both systems alike arose in Germany proper. The distinction lies in the fact that in the English the hammer rests on a separate bracket from which the key strikes it, while in the Viennese the hammer rests directly, though loose, on the end of the key-lever.[99]

Although Germany was so partial to the clavichord with its intimate intellectuality—a quality which even to-day we can only reproduce in its fulness by reproducing the clavichord—yet it was the German pianoforte which for a long time took the lead. It was one of the first triumphs of German manufacture, and perhaps precisely because so little manufacture lay in it. In Italy the invention of Cristofori had vanished without leaving a trace. So utterly indeed was it forgotten, that when Italy decided, though very tardily, to replace the Gravicembalo by the pianoforte, instruments of this construction were preferably brought out there with the notice, “built in the Prussian manner.” Alongside of the Silbermann pianofortes, those of Friederici of Gera—which were known as “Fort Bien” and were still built largely on the clavichord model—and those of Spath of Regensburg, enjoyed a great renown in the second half of the century. But soon, chiefly through emigration, the best manufactories were transported to foreign parts, and it is only in the latest advance of German industry, especially by the labours of Bechstein and Blüthner, that pianos built in Germany itself have again achieved a world-wide repute.

The great French, English, American, and Austrian piano-factories can almost all be traced back to Germans. The three great Parisian houses, those of Erard, Pleyel, and Pape, were founded by Germans. Steinway emigrated from Brunswick to build in America those pianos which are to-day regarded as the best. Johann Zumpe carried the hammer-clavier to England,[100] where it was played by German executants, and brought into repute. It was, however, English houses, with that of Broadwood at their head, that effected the improvements which have resulted in the appropriation of the name “English” to the mechanism of Silbermann.

Factories alone, however, would never have brought about the final victory of the piano if there had been no virtuosos to play them. Clementi in England, Mozart in Germany and Austria, were the workers who won the decisive triumph of the piano. Even Philip Emanuel Bach had much preferred the clavichord to the newer instrument. But Mozart, the first world-virtuoso, the idol of the concert hall, thinking solely of sound-effects in the great halls, never hesitated for a moment between clavicymbal and piano. In 1777, at the age of twenty-one, he made, at Augsburg, the acquaintance of Silbermann’s disciple, Stein, the inventor of the Viennese mechanism. This received the name of “Viennese” when Stein’s children came to Vienna, and there, along with Streicher, the well-known friend of Schiller, established the world-renowned business. Here in this family for the first time appears a new phenomenon in musical society. Round the king of clavier-builders and his musical wife, young Streicher and Nanette Stein, there moves a brisk circle of musical spirits. It is a type which in our time has further gained in importance. With the greater popularity of the art, the social standing of the piano manufacturer has risen; and nothing contributed more to the introduction of the piano into middle-class houses than the reputation of this much-envied Viennese coterie.

Old Stein and young Streicher are two clearly-marked types. The latter is a romantic spirit, raves over the just-played “Robbers” of his school-fellow Schiller, forms the plan of going to Hamburg to perfect himself in clavier-playing under Philip Emanuel Bach, but never gets there, since he spends all his time running from town to town with the restless Schiller. Then he gives music lessons; next he meets Nanette Stein, marries her, goes to Vienna, becomes manager of the factory, and makes the invention associated with his name, in which the hammers strike from above. Finally, he becomes a centre of Viennese musical life. What a contrast is this modern industrial prince to the old Stein, working like a mediæval crafts-master there in Augsburg at his claviers, and giving equal devotion to every single part! He has been sketched by Mozart in a well-known letter; and I reprint this picture of the last of the old patriarchal clavier-builders, because it is not less interesting as showing the type than as showing the condition of technique at that time.

Streicher’s Pianoforte and Concert Saloon. After the lithograph of Lahn-Sandmann.

“I must now,” writes Mozart, “begin at once with Stein’s pianoforte. Before I saw anything of Stein’s work I liked Spath’s best; but now I must give the preference to Stein’s, for they damp much better than the Regensburg instruments. If I strike hard, whether I let the fingers lie on the keys or lift them up, the sound is over and done with the very instant I lift my hand. I may come down on the keys as I like, the tone will always be the same; it never hangs fire; it doesn’t get weaker, or grow stronger, or stay on; it’s just all one. It’s true you can’t get a pianoforte like that under three hundred florins, but the trouble and diligence he shows is not to be repaid. His instruments have this point that makes them better than others: they are made with an escapement which there isn’t a man in a thousand knows anything of; and without this it is just impossible for a pianoforte to help blocking or sounding again. His hammers, when the piano is played, fall back again the very moment they touch the strings, whether you hold the key down or let it go. When he has finished a piano, so he says, he sits down to it and tests all kinds of passages, runs and leaps, and works and scrapes until the piano’ll do anything; for he works only for the good of music, and not his own merely, or he would be done long before. He often says: ‘If I myself didn’t love music so passionately, or couldn’t do a little on the piano, I should long ago have lost all patience in my work; but I’m just a lover of instruments which don’t try the player and will last.’ His pianos do last, too. He guarantees that the sounding-board won’t warp or break. When he has got a sounding-board ready for a piano, he puts it in the air, rain, snow, sun, or any beastly thing, to warp it, and then he glues crossbars in until it is strong and firm. He’s quite glad when it warps, for you’re about certain nothing more can happen to it. He often cuts into it himself, and glues it again, and so makes it strong. He has three of these pianos ready, and I have played to-day on them for the first time.

“The machine which you move with the knee is also made better by him than by others. I scarcely touch it, when off it goes; and as soon as I take my knee the least bit away, you can’t hear the slightest after-sound.”

George Frederick Handel.
Engraved by Thomson.

We see from this letter of Mozart’s that in 1777 the “escapement,” which lets the hammers fall back immediately after the strings are struck, was as yet by no means universal, but that the pedal, which was pressed at the side by the knee and raised the dampers, was already a usual feature. What numberless small modifications and improvements must have been introduced before the developed mechanism exhibited by the key-levers, the hammers, the dampers, the escapements, the pedals, the sounding-boards, could have advanced to the self-evident simplicity which made possible the meteoric splendours of piano-technique about the middle of this century! Prices for pianos were still fairly high. The younger Ruckers obtained three thousand francs for a clavier, but it had painted on it those rich pictures with which the spinet, when it began to take its place among household furniture, was so captivatingly adorned. We hear also that the Parisian pianos with leather-plectrums (jeu de buffle) fetched, in their finest specimens, as much as three thousand francs. A Wagner clavicymbal from Dresden, which was a so-called Deckenclavier, in which the tone could be softened or strengthened by fan-shaped dislocations of the inner lid, fetched six hundred and sixty thalers; and Frederick the Great actually gave seven hundred thalers to Silbermann for the first hammer-claviers. If Stein, with his three hundred florins, seems to fall off from this price, we must remember the difference in the purchasing power of money. But, to-day, two thousand marks for a good pianoforte is cheap in comparison with the prices of those days. It is only through the growth of popularity that the greater demand and the lower price have become possible.

I turn to the works themselves. Our step falls very heavy, and our judgment may easily be unduly harsh, when we have just parted with old Bach. This meeting with genius, which we celebrate in every bar—this earnest greatness which meets us at every turn, has made us very exacting in our demands for the higher beauty. In the first moment the “Galant” School seems to us a school of pigmies, until the sight has again adjusted itself, and the vision has again become awake to the miniature beauties of this smaller art. A good transition is provided by Handel, for, against Handel, Philip Emanuel Bach appears an astonishing genius.

The tendency of the public, to group celebrities in pairs, has brought not merely Goethe and Schiller, but Bach and Handel, into juxtaposition. How little the scholarly hermit had in common with the grandiose world-musician—who first followed the wise prescription, glory in Italy, gain in England—would be seen from a comparison of their clavier-writings, which are a fair average of their general work. Handel is the negation of the classic. He gets his results from materials close at hand; brings them into plastic clearness, and writes from the point of view of the vulgar herd; he is never troubled by an exacting inward conception, or overwhelmed by his own imagination, as are all true classic artists.[101]

Handel’s clavier-pieces are written in an extravagantly popular style. His suites, which moreover embrace not dance-forms only; his capriccios, variations and fantasias, flow like futile “water-music.” They are brilliant without being difficult, and entertaining without being suggestive. There is no colour on the sky of their landscapes; no tempest lashes their trees. We roll in our coaches on well-macadamised roads, the melody of the wheels reminding us meanwhile of this or that well-worn turn in the operas or oratorios. Seldom is a halt necessary in order to look at the view. Perhaps we may stop a moment longer than usual at those frequent singing sarabands in the popular style, at the charming salon-gigues (especially the long one in G minor), the genuine virtuoso’s Tarantella, or at the better F sharp minor suite with its short free prelude, staccato largo, insinuating fugue and dramatic gigue. Perhaps, also, the fugue with its three beats from the E minor Prelude may please us; but there is a something which the whole fails to give us. It is an acquaintance—not a personal intimacy.

Quite other is the impression produced by the “galant” music of Philip Emanuel Bach. While his elder brother Friedemann stands somewhat nearer to Sebastian in kind, and actually wrote pieces, like the C minor fugue, of which the old man need not have been ashamed, Philip Emanuel, with greater decision and also with greater significance, pursued a different path. It is as if fate had marked out this difference. Sebastian Bach held Friedemann as the cleverer musician; but he frittered his life away. Philip was first set to study jurisprudence, and out of the painstaking lawyer grew the sober and energetic composer. The life of Philip was as simple as his father’s. In 1740, at the age of twenty-six, he went to the court of Frederick the Great, where he worked as royal cembalist and accompanist. In 1767 he went to Hamburg, and died there in 1788. He does not seem to have been able to agree with the King; and it is likely enough that he felt and worked more freely in Hamburg. Berlin was always having trouble with its people. Had Philip Emanuel stayed there, Berlin would have been the greatest centre of piano-playing in Germany, and its walls would have been associated with lasting memories of the ancestors of modern musical forms. Had Mozart, in later years, accepted the offer of Frederick William II. of a position as chief Kapellmeister with the extraordinary salary of three thousand thalers, Berlin would have been enabled to absorb a little of the musical life of Vienna. Or, later still, if the Academy of Singing had been given to Mendelssohn (who was a candidate), rather than to Rungenhagen, the intoxicating glory of Leipzig, which lasted for a time, would have been transferred to the banks of the Spree. But the spirit of Zelter remained over Berlin.

In 1753 Philip Emanuel published at his own expense his “Essay on the true Method of playing the Clavier.” This was the most copious work on clavier technique that had yet appeared. It was at the same time the sufficient apology for the technique of the thumb, which has become the ground-work of our fingering. When the extreme importance of the thumb had at last been recognised, it was not hard to investigate systematically the places of its application. The main rules were necessarily that, in ascending, the thumb of the right hand is put after one or more black keys, and the thumb of the left hand in descending, and vice versa. The setting of the thumb on the black keys themselves must be avoided, and the passing over of one finger by another, which earlier had been the main feature in scale passages, was now abandoned. The whole art was built on the thumb, which passed under in the right place. This work of Philip Emanuel, which gives special attention to the legato, may be called a panegyric on the thumb. In this clear insight, as well as in the arrangement of his exercises, which begin with scales and chords, preferring the unison practice of the two hands, and advancing slowly to easy pieces, his work is still one of our most modern exercise-books. We might guess that in this diligent application of his thumb-technique to scales and broken chords, Philip Emanuel places in the forefront of his exercises certain scale figures which to-day could not correspond to the most pressing necessities of the piano-player. We should expect them to be a mere training of the hand, and no preparation for the real difficulties which appear in actual literature. A glance at the works of any great master will show us, however, that such is not the case. These very scales, chain-passages, and broken chords, which are the material of teaching, are also the figures of free composition. Some fashionable composers may have employed them extravagantly, because they were at the fingers’ ends of the players, but the most independent writers must use them, because they are, from the very nature of the clavier, the most fruitful in effect and most harmonious in sound. The old disruption of musical material into short passages of four or five notes was now antiquated. Performers practised the whole scale and the chord. And since Philip Emanuel carried through this natural training with methodical clearness, his teaching has been fruitful, and has not run merely alongside of the literature. In his book we can clearly see how the clavier has contributed not least to the formation of modern secular musical perception. In this its equal temperament, which was so urgently necessary, and its complete presentation of the tone-material, which so to speak we have only to read off, have largely aided.

The case is dissimilar with his treatment of the “manieren.”[102] On their employment he writes as follows: “No man, assuredly, hath doubted concerning the necessity of ‘manieren.’ We can observe it herefrom, that we meet them everywhere in great abundance. Everywhere are they indispensable, if one considers their use. They hang the notes together, and give them life; they give them, if it be necessary, a particular energy and weight; they make them pleasing and therefore awaken a peculiar attention; they assist to make clear what is their meaning, which may be sorrowful or glad or otherwise disposed, as it pleaseth, yet do they contribute of their own thereto; they give a notable part of opportunity and material to the true execution; a moderate composition can by them be aided, as without them the best air is empty and monotonous, and the plainest meaning must appear throughout obscure.” This is a judgment which surprises us in a man so intelligent and advanced as Philip Emanuel. He has not yet perceived that ornamentations were in his time only the relics of an earlier style. An appoggiatura, which takes away half or two-thirds of its note, and thus becomes a mere melodious retardation, or a double-shake which completely disintegrates its note, and requires to be expressed by an antiquated stenographic mark, is already a mere fossil in a period which gives such independence to the melody. It is not the notes which then appear which are fossil, but their arrangement as decorations. What had originally been truly decoration, in the heyday of figuration, had, in the course of the eighteenth century, long become an emancipated melodic phrase. The idea of the retardation, which earlier veiled itself under the name of appoggiatura with suspended main-note, was not allowed to step in openly; and the doppelschlag[103] or the trill could say plainly what they were, without masquerading as modest satellites of some main-note or other. Had Philip Emanuel but had the courage to discard the old signs, and to hear the customary ornamentations as independent music, he would have been able to spare himself much dead weight, to avoid much confusion, and to get rid of the trammels of many dead traditions, which have come down even to our day. He has in his book exhibited a stirring knowledge and an individual treatment of the “manners”; yet he was forced to maintain an arbitrary distinction between the “manners” and the other figurations, although between the turn and any other melodious line-curve there is no longer any essential difference whatever. He has not been able to introduce any system into the relation of the appoggiatura with its note; and, because he saw that the effect of the appoggiatura could be produced equally well without the little note, he has been obliged to take refuge in the sentence: “The appoggiaturas are partly written like other notes and thrown into the bar, and partly specially indicated by small notes; while the larger ones keep their full value to the eye, although in practice they lose something of it.” At this point he should have been able to see that a system of “manieren” as such was no longer possible.

From indications given by Philip Emanuel, it would seem that in these matters he was deliberately behind his time. He bemoans that the well-known marks in clavier-pieces were already beginning to be strange, and points to the careful way in which the French had always put in their marks. He delights as a rule in setting up the French as the masters of the clavier-exercise, and is vexed that people had an “evil prejudice” against their pieces, “which yet,” he says, “have always been a good school for clavier-players, forasmuch as this nation, by the smoothness and neatness of its playing, hath marked itself off specially from others.” Philip Emanuel’s love for the French is a very important point to keep in mind in appraising his works. Not only did he find in them the only great precedents for his “galant” style; he has also expressly continued the method of Couperin and Rameau by transcriptions, in the French manner and the French language. Nay, his endeavour, in his sonatas and rondos, to construct stiffer forms with reprises, appears as a mere continuation of the French rondo; and, however Italian the musical form may be, in more than one of his pieces, we inevitably think of the “Cyclopes” of Rameau. Possibly his whole book was suggested by Couperin’s “L’Art de toucher le clavecin,” and respect for this French tradition has hindered him from revolutionising the “manieren,” which still had their justification in France, so thoroughly as he did revolutionise the finger-exercise. It is thus very amusing to see how he himself challenges comparison with Couperin. He calls him “a teacher formerly so profound,” referring of course to the “manieren.” The “formerly,” of course, implies that Couperin had not yet learnt the thumb method, and had been too fond of changing the fingers on one note. In point of ornamentation it was he that was conventional; and in point of fingering—why, old Sebastian, lately dead, stood between him and Couperin.

“Fantasia-making without strict tempo,” says Philip Emanuel in one place of the Essay, “seems in the main to be specially adapted for the expression of the emotions, because every kind of barring brings with it a certain constraint.” In this verdict and in its application lies for us to-day, viewed externally, the greatest surprise which Philip Emanuel offers us. He has, as a matter of fact, written many fantasias which are almost designed without bars, and thus very logically give expression to the character of improvisation which they bear. They are great recitatives full of reflective melodies, of linked staccati, of sounding broken chords, which the player, when moved, knows how to unfold. They were the last free specimens of the unfettered forms of the older time.

Not only in these fantasias, but as a rule in his whole creative energy, especially in the Hamburg period, Philip Emanuel exhibits that extempore humour and freedom, which has at all times given to clavier-pieces their greatest charm. He has sufficient invention to be rarely at a loss; and the pieces from his earlier “Württemberger Sonaten,” which are still more contrapuntal than the later, or from the later six volumes “Für Kenner und Liebhaber,”[104] have all that variety and multiplicity in unity which was also a feature of the collections of John Sebastian. But the desire for caprice works in him more strongly than the fulness of invention. He is untiring in pulling a melody humorously to pieces, in surprises of pause or in remarkable transitions. Occasionally his language positively dances, and it is hard to be certain whether it is intentional distortion—a cloak for poverty—or the genuine caprice of the moment which leads him after the charms of eccentricity. In any case he belongs to those rare and subtle natures which in a moment give us the genuine artistic touch of brotherhood.

Even in his harmonies his freedom is clearly noticeable. He does not object to write separate movements in different keys, which he often connects by direct transitions. The third Sonata in the “Kenner und Liebhaber” stands in the first movement in B minor, in the second in G minor, and in the third in B minor once more. The fifth Sonata, which is set in F major, begins quietly with a phrase in C minor. In the first Rondo of volume V. we find the chord of the seventh (G, E, B, C sharp), set at the key-deciding place, in B minor; a chord at which some of our best memories of Wagner are revived. For such things he was severely censured by his comrades in the profession.

As to his melody, it is as delightful as is to be expected from “galant” music, and from that only. At one time it shows a charming sentimentalism, in which the stronger use of retardations has its share, now it is frisky and playful, toying with itself; in both cases anticipating Mozart. Specially characteristic of the author are numerous melodic phrases, the like of which have played an important part down to our own time. Philip Emanuel used them with the greatest depth and penetration in the F sharp minor movement of the A major sonata (No. IV. in Kenner und Liebhaber, vol. i). In all these points he manifests his independence; and in spite of his study of the French, it is but seldom that, as in the “Siciliana” of one of his sonatas in the “Musikalisches Allerley,” we catch an echo of a phrase from Couperin.

Like all the “galants,” he wrote much. A considerable number of his works were printed in his own time in the magazines or separately. Among these the sonatas to Frederick the Great to Charles Eugene of Württemberg, to Amalie of Prussia, and the “Kenner und Liebhaber,” take the first place. But yet more remained unprinted. Prosniz has counted four hundred and twenty of his clavier pieces, of which two hundred and fifty were printed. There is no modern comprehensive edition of his works, but the “Kenner und Liebhaber” has been very beautifully reissued by Krebs in the Berlin Academy collection of original editions. Apart from the first volume these are written exclusively for pianoforte.

The name of Philip Emanuel generally rises to our lips when we speak of the origins of the modern forms of chamber-music and symphony. This is correct enough if we are content to establish his claims as an agent in the crystallisation of the two main forms of classical composition—the Sonata and the Rondo. But the creator of these forms he was not; he found them very far advanced in France and Italy, and on the other hand he handles them so freely that their regulation cannot be said to have been completed till the days of Haydn and Mozart. Thus he is in these points also but an intermediary.

The strict sonata introduces first a main subject, then in an allied key an allied subject; next the middle section[105] in which these subjects are developed and completed; and lastly it repeats the exposition, transposing the subordinate subject, however, with a view to the finale, into the main key.

In the Rondo, on the contrary, there is one main theme and many subordinate motives. The main theme is chiefly melodious; the by-themes alternate in all kinds of forms among the repetitions of the melodic strophe.

To the Sonata and the Rondo all older dance and fantasia forms gradually gravitated. The Sonata is the more dramatic, the Rondo the more lyrical. The Rondo, considered as to logical content, is the more organic; but advance and climax are wanting to it. The Sonata on the other hand, is, because of its reprises, less intellectual than architectural; but it has the sobriety of greatness. Usually, in thinking of the forms of this musical age, our thoughts dwell on the Sonata—in which form as a rule the first movement was cast. But the Rondo was equally important, and is equally often used in the second or last movement. Purer dance-forms were always in use as intermezzos between the movements.

Mary Coswey with the Orphica, a portable clavier, which at
the beginning of this century had a certain vogue.

In Philip Emanuel, then, we see a preference for the types of the sonata and the rondo which prepares the way for their sole supremacy. He only needed to proceed eclectically. Not only the French Rondo but the Italian Sonata had led to the reprise form. Philip Emanuel did not advance far beyond these models. A second theme is not universal in his works; and only the modulation of the keys within the first half, to the dominant or relative major, is strongly stamped on them. The Sonata movement with him still admits of all tempi. In the third of the “Kenner und Liebhaber” Sonatas the peculiar sonata-form is not on the whole adhered to, but allegretto, andante, cantabile, follow each other in free fashion. On the other hand, in the following piece, the first and the last movements both show the sonata-form; but in the first of the “Württembergers” only the last movement has the stricter sonata-style. The third sonata of Volume II. of the “Kenner und Liebhaber” is actually written in a single movement. On the other hand the second Württemberger begins with a genuine sonata with double subject; and in the Kenner und Liebhaber, Vol. III. No. 2, the type of the modern sonata appears in full development. We see then from these examples that while Philip Emanuel uses the reprise of the first part almost universally, he is yet far removed from the classical model of the sonata. In a word, we shall find in him nothing that is not already to be found in Rameau, Scarlatti, or above all, his great father.

The Rondo was more in accordance with his genius. Here, where he had fully developed French models, it cannot be denied that with all his freedom in detail he has brought the form appreciably nearer to the classic type. Even Beethoven was often unable to improve on his alternations of intermediate movements, or the grace with which he returns to the air and makes his theme gently rock to and fro. He loves those simple popular rondo airs, which, as we listen, we all seem to have heard before. As couplets[106] he prefers to use technically brilliant figures, which in their turn offer a good contrast to the air. He is untiring in toying with the theme. He makes it now break off in the middle, now become sentimental; now it becomes questioning. As time goes on he develops his whole power of expression, so that he is far removed from a stiff alternation of theme with couplet. In a fantasia (K. and L. v.; last piece), which is perhaps his most charming composition, he blends the rondo-form most skilfully with the free style of an improvisation, and thus shows himself on his best side. Hardly less delightful is the last piece in Volume VI., a Fantasia-Rondo whose main theme is a kind of hunting-call. In this movement the hunt is interrupted by a beautiful romantic andante, then by emotional reveries in larghetto sostenuto, and in the conclusion the reflective style gains the upper hand.

The Rondo was so attractive to him because by its means he was able the more easily to bring his beloved “affettuoso” into expression. And his inner genius was not so much formal as lyrical. In his music there is even to-day a strong spiritual charm, to which the slight archaism adds a pleasant flavour. In his Rondos he comes very near to us, and not less in those little characteristic pieces which, written in dance-form, followed French models in the very style of the inscriptions. He uses for titles proper names, such as Hermann, Buchholz, Böhmer, Stahl; and such more general appellations as La Xenophone, La Sibylle, La Complaisante, La Capricieuse, L’Irrésolue, La Journalière, and Les Langueurs Tendres—names, it will be remembered, used also by Couperin. La Sibylle has a wonderfully beautiful melody; and Les Langueurs Tendres is such an unsurpassable air in two mournful voices, that it bears endless repetition. Nothing has ever been written to surpass this tender clavichord-sadness.

The great counterpoint of Bach is now forgotten with extraordinary rapidity. The ancestor of the following generation is Philip Emanuel. Wherever we look, to the London Bach, Johann Christian, to the Austrians—anywhere—we find the work influenced by his style. “He is the father and we the boys,” said Mozart.

Joseph Haydn.
Engraved by Quenedey.

Haydn knew well what he owed to Philip Emanuel, and was as little chary to acknowledge it as Mozart. In actual essentials Haydn made no advance in clavier-music. The stream is perhaps a little clouded, and it is not till Mozart’s time that it again becomes clear. Haydn’s genius lay in composing for the orchestra, not for the piano. He has of course written clavier sonatas—they number thirty-five—and other pieces in which the clavier takes part; as numerous and light as the works of all these “galant” musicians. But his trios are to be preferred to the sonatas for piano only; there is more depth in them; and the ideas are lit up more brightly by the instrumental combination. Only in the sonatas after 1790, as in the first in E flat major (Br. and H.) does something more noteworthy emerge—but by that time Haydn had studied Mozart.

Still further, in his pieces, Haydn is no great virtuoso. In his Trios he knows well how to make the most of the character of the clavier, by contrasting it with the strings, by means of arpeggios, all kinds of passages, full chords, and the beloved octave-melodies. But a more interesting virtuoso performance, such as that in the F minor variations, appears very rarely. The ornamental work is still extensive, but within limits; and much of it is written out in full, just as the cadenzas, which used to appear in small notes, are now preferably printed in the usual type. At the end of the century everything was taken away from the caprice of the player, except the great cadenzas at the conclusion of the concerto-movements. Philip Emanuel had taken a last important step, when, in his Sonata dedicated to the Prussian Princess Amalie, he wrote out exactly for the second time the ornamentations and alterations in the frequent repetitions of musical phrases of a few bars, instead of leaving them to the pleasure of the players. To judge by his preface, caprice in these matters must have flourished like a green bay-tree; and he takes great credit to himself for having been the first to offer accurately formulated “alternative reprises,” which run no risk of spoiling the whole aim and meaning of the piece. His point of view is interesting. It is, he says, not possible to avoid altering a musical phrase in repeating it. This conception is endorsed by all his contemporaries and successors in style, in their works: Haydn and Mozart cannot be conceived apart from this mannerism of altering a musical idea in repetition by slight turns and adornments. This method is the fixed law of movement of their musical ideas, and dictates their progress through long stretches in advance. Deep founded in the general delight in variation so characteristic of the time, it enables us to understand that great development which forms a whole branch of musical history—the development, namely, of improvised “manieren” into strict and firm melodies.

As far as form is concerned, the work already begun is continued by Haydn. The Sonata-form tends to limit itself more and more to the first movement; more and more clearly does the “second theme” crystallise itself; slow-drawn movements are preferred more and more in the second place, and graceful rondo-like movements in the third—without, however, any appearance of compulsion. The only relic of the traditional “suite” of dances, which Haydn retains in his sonatas or symphonies, is the “Minuet” which he is so fond of using as an intermezzo.[107] The old dance-forms, as dances, were so speedily forgotten, that in a certain trio a delicate slow waltz is marked as “allemande”—whereas the old allemande is not even written in the time of a waltz, apart from the difference in style.[108]

W. A. Mozart.
Engraved in 1793 by C. Kohl (1754-1807).

Haydn received more from the clavier than he gave to it. He transferred to the orchestra the clavier-forms of the time, and thus pointed out to it the path to the symphony. Without doubt the modern symphony, in the first instance, is to be traced to the clavier pieces of Philip Emanuel Bach; and Haydn, to whom fell the task of the intermediary, was the first to put the rich development of this chamber-music to practical use. Clavier and orchestra always advance in mutual rivalry, treading on each other’s heels. In Haydn it was the clavier that aided the orchestra; in Beethoven the orchestra aided the clavier; Mozart, standing between, gives to each its own.

Thus it is that Mozart has given much, and much of its special character, to the clavier. This equilibrium—and Mozart is always the very personification of equilibrium—is most striking in his piano-concertos, which justly enjoy the renown of having created an epoch in this class. Especially remarkable is the C minor concerto, in which the piano experienced one of its chief emancipations. On one side stood the orchestra, on the other the instrument, and yet neither of these two great rivals loses anything of its essential nature; rather, they owe to this very rivalry many of their best effects. When clavier and orchestra address and answer each other; when the clavier intertwines itself with the strings and the wood, and they in turn blend with the clavier; when in the running strife each sounds in its own style and gives birth to a natural variation of phrases and to delicate alterations of the constituent forms; all proceeds in accordance with that self-evident logic which, at such critical points in artistic history, naturally dispenses with internal laws.

Mozart is the great virtuoso who, even as a boy, was the astonishment of Europe. It is not to be expected that he should content himself with the intimate reflectiveness of the pianoforte; he drags it out into the great world; he needs the concerto-form just as he needs great concert halls. The new pianoforte, with its fuller and more subtly expressive tones, is precisely adapted to his aims, and he is the first to launch the pianoforte on its decisive career. With his triumphal progresses the popularity of the new instrument was not likely to decline. The great enchanter leaves the tiny victories of the spinet far behind; his public recitals in hired halls, which henceforward become more and more popular, demand new feats. He has to work on bold lines; he has to bring into use the special features of the instrument he adopted; the rippling scale-passage, the variety of tone, the forte, the pianissimo, the hundred gradations between these extremes, the altogether new possibilities of sentimental expression which were now at the disposal of the public performer. But amid all the intoxication of the concert hall, the virtuoso remains an artist; the idol of the hour retains his deeper feeling. As he was only truly himself when, after the furore of publicity, he touched the notes in solitude or before a few friends, so in his concertos, behind the external glitter, a romantic soul lies hidden. In the beautiful Romance in the D minor Concerto, for example, the soul looks out on us with a wonderful and never-to-be-forgotten intensity.

In almost all his pieces Mozart composes according to the bidding of the moment. He is an “occasional” composer. In the concertos the occasion was his own appearance on the stage. In the duets and double pianoforte pieces he found the occasion in his association with his sister. From this species of performance he drew new effects. The D major sonata for two pianos stands alone in the skilful and effective blending of the two instruments. His four-handed sonatas are astonishingly successful in the individualisation of the hands, and started a numerous class of clavier-pieces which have been too often misused. We shall not appreciate such duets, if we take the clavier as a diminutive orchestra.[109] But here again Mozart has been unwilling utterly to sacrifice combined effects to individual demands.

Beginning of Mozart’s A minor Sonata. Royal Musikbibliothek, Berlin.

Through the ravishing chamber-music in which, especially in the quintett for oboe, clarinet, horn, fagotto and pianoforte, the splendid treatment of the pianoforte with regard to the wind deserves notice; through all the melodious pieces for piano and violin, the trios, the quartetts; to the numerous smaller clavier-pieces, the fashionable variations, the relics of the suites, the scattered fugues, the fantasies so rich in variety; we follow Mozart to the eighteen pure piano sonatas, which are the very miniature mirror of his unfailing musical invention. We shall treat them in chronological order, for here for the first time we perceive a distinct development which renders such treatment the most natural and advantageous.

At first we meet the daring harmonies and enharmonic changes by which every innovator makes himself notorious, and which draw on him the first severe criticisms. But there is not yet the concentration of later works. A light counterpoint runs through the whole, a conscientious treatment of the themes, which bears witness to sound training. A striking feature is the unforced inventiveness in motives, which succeed one another in unfailing profusion. Intellectual themes, as for example in the B flat major, remind us of Philip Emanuel. The form becomes more distinct, the rules of sonata-arrangement more rigid. But it is not till we reach the A minor (1778) that the full brilliancy of form is seen. This piece has all that wonderful proportion and balance even in the smallest parts, which was, and remained, Mozart’s most peculiar characteristic. Proportion in the well-balanced opposition of themes in all three divisions, in the liveliness of the piquant semiquaver runs, which already leave Scarlatti far behind, in the brilliant and yet simple execution of the last movement—proportion, indeed, is everywhere.

After 1778 our impressions deepen. The D major is the creation of Mozart’s indestructible caprice. The motives become ever more tuneful, more speaking: in the C major we hear the phrases as though sung; we seem to hear words with pauses for breath, as from a distant exquisite opera. The melodies run after each other, and—what is so typical a feature of Mozart—it is by this that our attention is held rather than by any inner development of the themes.

Mozart at the age of seven, with his Father and Sister.
Engraved 1764, by J. B. Delafosse (b. 1721) after L. C. de Carmontelle (? about 1790).

The A major sonata is an excellent example of this melodic regularity. Its contours are of an unimagined loveliness, and its airs of a magic delicacy. The Turkish March stands out in variegated national colours, far removed from every triviality—if only we give to the Janissary rhythm its full due.

The airs become broader, the piquancies more daring, until the allegretto of the B flat major with its jubilant sevenths stands before us as a new peak of Philip Emanuel’s Rondo forms. Here is that bright laughter, which from Mozart’s lips has the most delightful of sounds.

This was in 1779. In 1784 Mozart has entered upon the second half of his life, the unhappy half, and the C minor sonata appears. New tones now strike upon our ear, harsh, strong, broad, intense. But all is still in proportion. The hand is freer, rushing more boldly from the heights of the piano to its depths; bolder also are the episodes which are the pivots of the thoughts. In all is the sweet intoxication in the bewildering sound of the pianoforte, and the air so full of soul, growing richer in retardations, and more and more taking the lines which Mozart decisively fixed for the beautifully-formed melody. A strange reserve, the reserve of maturity, characterises the last movement, otherwise so flowing; its expressive raggedness forbodes new things, the victory of matter over form—in a word, Beethoven; and then, in this period of Figaro and Don Giovanni, we meet the F major, the most sombre in content of all his writings (1788). With its two movements we are accustomed, not improperly, to connect the Rondo written in 1786. Counterpoint has slowly advanced to its old position—the sign of the mature man, who is seeking his fixed abode. This it is which stiffens the weft into what at times is a solidity worthy of Bach. The dominion over the world of tone is now absolute, the melodies sing heavenward, as for example in the theme of this andante, which came spontaneously from his soul.

We have reached the limit of the “galant,” over whose fields dark clouds are already gathering. But we are also at its highest point. In Mozart the ideal of popular music was more fully realised than its father, Philip Emanuel, could ever have dreamed. Mozart’s well-balanced nature preserved the clavier from superficiality; and he himself was saved by an early death from sacrificing this balance to the sombre thought of a new time. His sense for form brought the sonata into more typical shape, but the endless melody and the free intelligence of his music took all sharpness from the forms. No music can be less easily described in words than his; and therefore, as a great beautiful sound, it was the best content which the forms of the galant popular epoch could find. It is not till we have left youth behind that we see proportion and equilibrium in this repose; and it is then, as Otto Jahn says, that we are amazed at the wonderful wealth of this art and at ourselves for being so slow to feel it.

Upright Hammer-clavier (pianoforte), about 1800, called the “Giraffe.” Mahogany
and bronze, with open work in green moiré. Three pedals, forte, piano, and
“fagotto.” By Joseph Wachtl, Vienna. De Wit collection.

[96] Both these adjectives apply to decorative ornament. The general idea of “baroque” is “odd” or “outrageous.” “Rococo” implies an elaborate want of good taste.

[97] “Dux,” the leader, i.e. the “subject” of the fugue; “Comes,” the attendant, i.e. the “answer.” So called because the one follows the other as a matter of course, like master and servant.

[98] Meaning “The Philosophy of Spinoza,” i.e. an illustration of Spinoza’s method, given in musical notes.

[99] It is impossible to describe this action in words. See the diagrams in Grove’s “Dictionary of Music,” vol. ii. pp. 716 and 718.

[100] I possess a Zumpe pianoforte, date 1766, which is apparently the earliest surviving made by him in England. E. W. N.

[101] Such a judgment of Handel, which would be ungracious in the mouth of an Englishman, is not unfitting in a German. England alone, apparently, knows and cares about Handel, the athlete in choral music.

[102] i.e. the ornamentations, turns, appoggiaturas, etc.

[103] The doppelschlag was the “turn,” beginning with the note above.

[104] “For professors and amateurs.”

[105] Various names have been used for this “middle section” of the “sonata form,” e.g.—“Development,” “Fantasia,” “Free part,” “Durchführung, carrying through,” “Working-out.”

[106] The word “couplet” is here used as in Couperin, and other old French composers. It means the subsidiary themes or sections which alternate with the main subject in these ancient rondos. Call the main theme A, the subsidiary ones B, C, D, etc. Then the course of the movement is—A, B, A, C, A, D, A, etc., and B, C, D, etc., are called “couplets.”

[107] See, for instance, Haydn’s earliest string quartets, where he commonly has two minuets, one on each side of the “slow” movement.

[108] Does not “allemande” here simply mean “German” waltz?

[109] It is a great pity, and a great loss in every way, that the careful artistic playing of duets on one pianoforte has largely ceased. What Moscheles and Mendelssohn were not ashamed to do in public, surely is not an unworthy employment. It should be revived, if only to popularise Schubert’s beautiful works for four hands, the widespread ignorance of which is a simple disgrace to us all.

Beethoven at age of 31.