III
Undoubtedly the most important contemporary of Brahms, following in tracks of Schumann, was Robert Volkmann. His acquaintance with Schumann was the predominating stimulus of his artistic career, and, since Brahms is too big and independent a genius to deserve the epithet, Volkmann may count as the Düsseldorf master's chief epigone. He was but five years younger than Schumann, being born April 6, 1815, at Lommatzsch in Saxony, the son of a cantor, who instructed him in piano and organ playing. He studied theory with Anacker in Freiberg and K. F. Becker in Leipzig. He taught in Prague (1839) and Budapest (1842), lived in Vienna 1854-58, and again in Prague, where he was professor of harmony and counterpoint at the National Academy of Music, and died in 1893.
His first published work, the 'Fantasy Pictures' for piano, appeared in 1839 in Leipzig. Unlike most other composers of this group, he managed to give his larger forms a permanent value; his two symphonies, in B major (op. 44) and D minor (op. 53) respectively, are still frequently played. Especially the last contains matter that is imbued with real feeling and effectively handled. His three serenades for string orchestra (opera 62, 63, and 69, the last with 'cello obbligato) are no less pleasing, and, in spite of the tribute which Volkmann pays to Schumann in all his works, even original. Of other instrumental music there are two overtures, the piano trio in B minor, which first made Volkmann's name more widely known, together with two string quartets in A minor and G minor, one other trio and four more quartets, a 'cello concerto, a romance each for 'cello and violin (with piano), a Konzertstück for piano and a number of small works for piano as well as for violin and piano. Among his vocal compositions two masses for men's voices and a number of secular pieces for solo voice with orchestral accompaniment are the most important.
Woldemar Bargiel (1828-97), Theodor Kirchner (1824-1903), Karl Grädener (1812-83), and Albert Dietrich (b. 1829) are all disciples of Schumann. The first, a stepbrother of Clara Schumann, is perhaps the most important. He worked chiefly with the orchestra and chamber combinations, his overture to 'Medea' and his trios being most noteworthy, but he contributed to choral and solo song literature as well. Kirchner is known for his finely emotional piano miniatures (some accompanied by string instruments) as well as for chamber music and songs. Grädener, too, composed in all these forms, and Dietrich, who was court kapellmeister in Oldenburg and was in close personal touch with Schumann in Düsseldorf, left symphonies, overtures, chamber music and songs altogether in the spirit of the great arch-romantic.
The composers so far discussed constitute what is sometimes called the Leipzig circle. While they can not in any sense be considered as radicals, and, indeed, were frequently attacked as conservative or academic by the followers of the more radical wing which made its headquarters at Weimar, they appear distinctly progressive when compared with the ultra-conservative group of composers centred in Berlin, who made it their particular duty to uphold tradition and to apply their energies to the creation of choral music of rather antique type. 'It may be that the attitude of certain Berlin masters,' says Pratt,[4] 'like Grell, Dehn, and Kiel, serve a useful purpose as a counterpoise to the impulsive swing of style away from the traditions of the old vocal counterpoint. They certainly helped to keep musical education from forgetting solid structure in composition amid its desires to exploit impressionistic and sensational devices. Probably this reactionary influence did good in the end, though its intolerant narrowness exasperated the many who were eagerly searching out new paths. It at least resulted in making Berlin a centre for choral music of a severe type, for able teachers of the art of singing, for musical theory and for scholarly investigators of musical history.' It may be added that the Royal Academy was the stronghold of this extreme 'right wing,' and that the chief institutions which helped to uphold old vocal traditions were the Singakademie, the Domchor, the Institut für Kirchenmusik (later merged into the Hochschule für Musik). The Conservatory, founded in 1850 by Marx, Kullak, and Stern, and the Neue Akademie der Tonkunst, established in 1855 by Theodor Kullak, also acquired considerable importance.
Eduard August Grell (1800-86) gave proof of his contrapuntal genius in a series of sacred works including a sixteen-part mass, an oratorio, and a Te Deum, besides many songs and motets. He assisted Rungenhagen in conducting the Singakademie from 1832, becoming sole conductor and teacher of composition at the Academy in 1851, and was a musician of very wide influence. Siegfried Dehn (1799-1858) is chiefly important as teacher of a number of the composers mentioned in this chapter and as the author of treatises. Friedrich Kiel (1821-85), whose requiem in F minor has been called among all later works of this class the most worthy successor of those of Mozart and Cherubini, has also written a Missa Solemnis, an oratorio Christus, and another Requiem (A minor)—works which attest above all the writer's polyphonic skill, and which prove the appropriateness of applying such a style to modern works of devotional character. Kiel's Stabat mater, Te Deum, 130th Psalm and two-part motets for women's voices, as well as his chamber music and piano pieces, are all worthy of consideration. Karl Friedrich Rungenhagen (d. 1851) and August Wilhelm Bach (d. 1869), both noted as composers of choral music, may complete our review of the 'Berlin circle.'
There remain to be mentioned those specialists who are concerned almost exclusively with the two most characteristic mediums of the romantic genre—the piano piece and the song. Schumann and Chopin had brought the miniature piano composition to its highest plane of expression and the most advanced technical standard, which even the dramatic imagination and the virtuoso brilliance of Liszt could not surpass. They and such milder romanticists as Mendelssohn and John Field had brought this class of music within the reach of amateurs, Schumann even within that of the child. Brahms, with no thought of the dilettante, had intensified this form of expression, making a corresponding demand upon technical ability. It remained for men like Adolf Henselt, Stephen Heller, and Theodor Kullak to popularize the new pianistic idiom, as Clementi, Hummel, and Moscheles had popularized that of the classics. These are the real workers in genre, monochrome genre, with their pictorial description, their somewhat bourgeois romanticism and sometimes maudlin sentimentality. Even their études are cast in an easy lyrical vein which was made to convey the pretty sentiment.
Henselt (1814-89) was an eminent pianist, born in Silesia, pupil of Hummel and Sechter in Vienna. After 1838 he lived in St. Petersburg. Pieces like the Poème d'amour and the 'Spring Song' are comparable to Mendelssohn's 'Songs without Words,' but they are more richly embroidered and of a fuller sonority. His F minor concerto is justly famous. Stephen Heller (1814-88) was also famous as a concert pianist. Of his compositions, to the number of 150, all for his own instrument, many are truly and warmly poetic in content. Though lacking Schumann's passion and Chopin's harmonic genius, he surpasses Mendelssohn in the originality and individuality of his ideas. In a number of his things, probably pot-boilers, he leans dangerously to the salon type of composition, with which many of his immediate followers flooded the market. We are all familiar with the album-leaf, fly-leaf, mood-picture, fairy and flower piece variety of piano literature, as well as the pseudo-nature study, the travel picture in which the Rhine and its castles and Loreley, the Alps and its cowbells, Venice with its barcarolles and Naples with its tarantellas figure so conspicuously.
Kullak (1818-82), already mentioned as the founder of the Neue Akademie of Berlin and famous both as pianist and teacher, wrote some 130 works, most of which is in the salon type or in the form of brilliant fantasias and paraphrases, less important, perhaps, than his études ('School of Octave Playing,' etc.). The piano technicians Henri Hertz (1803-88), Sigismund Thalberg (1812-71), Karl Klindworth (b. 1830), Karl Tausig (1841-71), Nicolai Rubinstein (1835-81), brother of Anton and founder of the Moscow conservatory, and Hans von Bülow, of whom we shall speak later, might all be mentioned in this connection, though their work as virtuosi, teachers, and editors is of greater moment than their efforts as original composers.
The song engaged the exclusive activity of numberless composers of this period, and perhaps to a great extent with as untoward results as the piano piece. But there are, on the other hand, men like Eduard Lassen (1830-1904), Adolf Jensen (1837-79), and Wilhelm Taubert (1811-91) whose work, in part at least, will take a place beside that of the great romantics. Robert Franz, by far the most important of these, has been treated in Volume II (p. 289). Taubert is to-day chiefly known for his 'Children's Songs,' full of ingenuous charm and sincere feeling. It should not be forgotten, however, that their composer wrote a half dozen operas, incidental music for Euripides' 'Medea' and Shakespeare's 'Tempest,' as well as symphonies, overtures, chamber, piano and choral works. Berlin, his birthplace, remained his headquarters. Here he conducted the court concerts, the opera and the Singakademie, and was the president of the musical section in the Senate of the Royal Academy.
Adolf Jensen, in Hugo Riemann's judgment, is much more than Franz entitled to the lyric mantle of Schumann. His songs, appearing in modest series bearing no special title, have in them much real poetic imagination. They are unmistakably influenced by Wagner. Books 4, 6, and 22, as well as the two cycles Dolorosa and Erotikon, are picked by Naumann as especially noteworthy. The popular Lehn' deine Wang is most frequently sung, but is one of the less meritorious of Jensen's songs. The composer has also been successful with pianoforte works, his sonata op. 25 and the pieces of opera 37, 38, and 42 being worthy essays along the lines of Schumann. An eminently aristocratic character and a profound subjective expression are their distinguishing features, together with the soft beauty of their melodic line. Jensen was a native of Königsberg (1837), and spent some years in Russia in order to earn sufficient money to live near Schumann in Düsseldorf, but the tragic end of the latter frustrated this plan. Hence he followed a call to conduct the theatre orchestra in Posen, later going to Copenhagen, Königsberg, Berlin, Dresden, and Graz. He died in Baden-Baden in 1879.
Lassen, another song-writer of distinction, came more definitely under the Liszt influence and will therefore be treated with the 'New Germans' in another section.
The degeneration of the song, corresponding to that of the small piano forms, is to be noted in the productions of such men as Franz Abt (1819-85) and Karl Friedrich Curschmann (1804-41). Abt is among song-writers the typical Spiessbürger, the middle-class Philistine dear to the Männerchor member's heart. His songs are of that popular melodiousness which at its best flavors of the folk-song and at its worst of the music hall. Of the former variety are 'Wenn die Schwalben heimwärts ziehn' and 'Gute Nacht, mein herziges Kind.' All of Abt's songs and vocal quartets are of the more or less saccharine sentimentality which for a time was such an appealing factor in American popular music. Indeed, when Abt visited the United States in 1872 he was received with extraordinary acclaim.
Curschmann's songs are perhaps slightly superior in musical value, and at one time were equally popular, but they are not as near to becoming folk-songs as are some of Abt's. Many others might be mentioned among the purveyors of this sentimental stuff. If, as Naumann says, Taubert and his kind are the musical bourgeoisie, these are the small middle class. Arno Kleffel (b. 1840), Louis Ehlert (1825-84), Heinrich Hofmann (1842-1902), Alexander von Fielitz (b. 1860) may be regarded as standing on the border line of the two provinces.
Much more worthy, from a purely musical standpoint, are the frank expressions of good humor and hilarity, the light rhythmic sing-song of the comic opera and the operetta represented by Lortzing and Johann Strauss (Jr.), respectively. Albert Lortzing (1801-51) revived or perpetuated in a new (and more engaging) form the singspiel of J. A. Hiller and Dittersdorf, the genre which, as we remember, had its origin in the ballad operas of eighteenth-century England. For all his lightheartedness and ingenuousness, and despite his indebtedness to Italy and the opéra comique, Lortzing belongs to the Romantic movement. Bie is of that opinion and says of him: 'He was at bottom a tender and lightly sentimental nature running over with music and winning his popularity in the genre of the bourgeois song and the heart-quality chorus.' Born as the son of an actor, travelling around from theatre to theatre, learning to play various instruments, appearing in juvenile rôles, becoming actor, singer and conductor by turns, Lortzing fairly absorbed the ingredients that go to make the successful provider of light amusement. Successful he was only in an artistic sense—economically always 'down on his luck.' He began to compose early and turned out operas by the dozen, all dialogue operas or singspiele, writing (or adapting) both words and music. Not till 1835 did he make a hit—with Die beiden Schützen. Zar und Zimmermann, Der Wildschütz, Undine (a romantic fairy opera), and Der Waffenschmied are the most successful of his works, and still live as vigorous an existence in Germany as the Gilbert and Sullivan operas do in England. He became more and more popular as time went on, for he had no successful imitator. No one after him managed to write such dear old songs, such funny ensembles, and such touching scenes of every-day life. No one, in short, could make people laugh and cry by turns with such perfect musical art. He is a classic, as classic in his form as Dittersdorf; but, as Bie says, Mozart, Schubert, and Weber had lived, and, for Lortzing, not in vain.
In this department, too, we must record a degeneration. It was accomplished notably by Victor Nessler (1841-90), whose Trompeter von Säkkingen still haunts the German opera houses, while its most popular number, Behüt dich Gott, is still a leading 'cornet solo,' zither selection, and hurdy-gurdy favorite.
Johann Strauss (1825-1899)[5] might be denied a place in many a serious history. But let us not forget that a large part of the public, when you say 'Strauss,' still think of him instead of Richard! And neither let us forget Brahms' remark about the 'Blue Danube' waltz—that he wished he might have written so beautiful a melody—was quite sincere. The 'Blue Danube' has become the second Austrian national anthem—or at least the leading Viennese folk-song. 'Artist's Life,' 'Viennese Blood,' 'Bei uns z'Haus,' 'Man lebt nur einmal' (out of which Taussig made one of the most brilliant of concert pieces)—these waltzes are hardly less beloved of the popular heart—and feet unspoiled by one-step or tango. In his operettas, too, whose style is similar to that of Offenbach and Lecocq (see II, p. 392 ff.), Strauss remains the 'waltz king': the pages of Die Fledermaus ('The Bat'), 'The Gypsy Baron,' and 'The Queen's Lace Handkerchief' teem with fascinating waltz rhythms. Strauss is as inimitable in his way as Lortzing was in his—to date he has no serious rival, unless it be the composer of Rosenkavalier himself. Karl Millöcker[6] (1842-99) with the 'Beggar Student' and Franz von Suppé (1819-1895) with Das Mädchen vom Lande, Flotte Bursche, etc., come nearest to him in reputation. The latter should be remembered for more serious work as well, and the still popular 'Poet and Peasant' overture. He was the teacher of the American Reginald de Koven.