I
In Germany the romanticism of Schumann, combined with the technique of Liszt, has about run its course. With the exception of Brahms, no composer of high order has there given his attention to the pianoforte. Starting with Stephen Heller (1814-88), the most lovable contemporary and friend of Chopin, the list of composers for the pianoforte touches upon Joachim Raff (1822-82), Adolf Jensen (1837-79), Philipp and Xaver Scharwenka, Maurice Moszkowski, Friedrich Gernsheim, for an instant on Richard Strauss and longer upon Max Reger.
One protests against the obscurity into which Stephen Heller’s music is rapidly falling. It is too charming to be let go. Yet it has too little strength to stand much longer against the fate that has already pushed Mendelssohn aside. Heller published over one hundred and fifty pieces or rather sets of pieces for the piano. Nearly all of these are in short forms; many of them are not more than a page long. Many of the sets are given fanciful titles. One finds several sets—opus 86, opus 128, and opus 136—of Woodland Sketches (Im Walde); two Promenades d’un solitaire, Nuits Blanches, Reise um mein Zimmer, and Thorn, Fruit and Flower pieces, after Jean Paul Richter. Besides these there are many sets of short studies, the most melodious simple studies that have ever been written, for which both student and teacher should still feel grateful; and there are numerous Preludes, Tarantelles and Dances.
Heller’s thoughts are fresh and winning, his style is remarkably clear and well adapted to the keyboard. Among the preludes in all keys, opus 81, the second, third, fifteenth, eighteenth, and twenty-second are far more effective than the majority of Mendelssohn’s ‘Songs Without Words.’ The Tarantelles, and one or two of the Promenades, are even brilliant. We mention these because they are before us. But on the whole Heller’s pianoforte style is not distinguished by anything except clearness. The parts for the left hand are monotonous, the accompaniment figures rarely more than commonplace. Perhaps these things are evident only by comparison of his music with Chopin or Schumann.
Unhappily there is another weakness besides these. His rhythms are unvaried, and his structures of phrases desperately regular. Here, we think, lies the secret of its softness, its lack of virility and power to stand against time. Heller repeats himself. He cannot take one step without (in most cases) going back to take it over again. The process is all the more distressing to the listener because Heller’s steps, or his strides, are so invariably of the same length, and so inexorably deliberate. His harmonies are very like Mendelssohn’s, and his melodies are often sweet.
In a way the world has dealt more hardly with Joachim Raff than with Heller; because not more than twenty-five years ago Raff was one of the most played of all composers. Not only his pianoforte works. His symphonies, especially Im Walde and Leonore, held quite as high and strong a place in the public favor as the symphonies of Tschaikowsky do at the present day. And now even his pianoforte works are discarded.
There is a great number of them, including all sorts of salon music, a concerto, and numberless transcriptions. His style is exceedingly brilliant, showing markedly the influence of Liszt, with whom Raff was on various occasions closely associated; but his ideas are almost never more than commonplace. Oskar Bie speaks of the unfortunate Polka de la reine. It is perhaps typical of Raff at his worst, yet there is elsewhere in his music suggestion enough of what this worst can be. It is hard to believe that the man who wrote eleven symphonies could have written the romance opus 126, No. 2.
On the other hand, a piece like that called La fileuse is in every way acceptable. It is beautifully scored for the piano, worthy of Liszt himself in that regard; and the treatment of the short motive which lies at the base of it all, like the harmonies and modulations, is all fresh and welcome to the ear. Among the shorter pieces there are many that are clean-cut in style and that have a sort of sturdy charm even today. Parts of a minuet in opus 126, and the gavotte in opus 125, prove that he could write rhythmical music much better than the Polka de la reine. On the whole one thinks of Raff as writing too easily for his own good. Of this sort of vain facility Heller’s music is quite free, and also of the false shine which in Raff’s music is so often the result.
Adolf Jensen was a man of far more sensitive cast than Raff. His music is finer, especially his songs. As a melodist he stands between Schumann and Robert Franz, and indeed must be considered as one of the best results of German romanticism in music. The influence of Schumann is perhaps strongest in his work; but that of Chopin, and even more that of Wagner in the later songs, can be detected. His style is not distinctive, but it is expressive. It is strange to read in the dedication prefixed to the Romantische Studien, a plea for fantastic, emotional and mysterious life in pianoforte music. The best of his keyboard music is the Wedding Music, opus 45, written for four hands. Other works are the Wanderbilder, opus 17, the Idyllen, opus 43, and the Eroticon, opus 44. There are besides these a sonata, opus 25, and a German suite, opus 36.
Xaver Scharwenka and Maurice Moszkowski are among the successful composers for the pianoforte of the last fifteen years or more. Scharwenka’s first concerto, opus 35, in B-flat minor has been highly praised. The second, third, and fourth have not made quite so good an impression. Moszkowski is master of a most brilliant and facile style on the keyboard. His waltzes, especially those in E major and that in A major, his concert-studies, especially the Etincelles, and the finished and brilliant Barcarolle have been played far and wide with delight to both pianist and audience. Yet neither Scharwenka nor Moszkowski has advanced pianoforte technique, nor has either of them been the discoverer of new effects. There are some charming pieces by Friedrich Gernsheim. One series, called Symbole, has just a touch of that impressionism which has given the music of the French composers its great charm.
The celebrated pianist Eugen d’Albert has composed pieces in almost severely classic style, which have a manly, vigorous ring. A few early works of Richard Strauss for the piano are hardly sufficient to suggest that he might have done for that instrument what he came to do for the orchestra. One looks in vain through the many pianoforte works of Max Reger for any new treatment of the instrument. His pieces are descended from Bach and Brahms, descended thence and passed through the shaping medium of a remarkable mathematical mind.
Here, perhaps, among the Germans mention may be made of Arnold Schönberg. He has written two sets of pianoforte pieces, the second of which is the more remarkable. His genius is polyphonic, therefore his music of this kind does not bring out the subtle qualities of the piano which appealed to Chopin and which Debussy has further revealed. His pianoforte compositions may be considered as a household arrangement and presentation of his extraordinary theories, hardly as music suggested by the instrument itself.
Evidently the Romantic movement in Germany, having expressed itself almost thoroughly in pianoforte music through Schumann, passed on to a new expression through Wagner, whose powerful genius, flying wide of the keyboard, has since presided over and shaped the future of German music. Only with Brahms, then, has the piano spoken a new word in its own tongue.