II
As there were soldiers of fortune who, like Herz, made up by an abundance of shrewd and witty sense, what they lacked in refinement, there were others, like Sigismund Thalberg, whose outstanding quality was elegance. Von Lenz called Thalberg the ‘only correct “gentleman rider” of the piano.’ This may be taken to refer to his playing rather than to his compositions. It was most beautiful playing, according to all testimony, perfectly smooth, clear, sonorous, liquid, singing, enriched by every quality, in fact, which may be derived from a perfect and delicate mechanism governed by a fine ear. As a player he was by many preferred to Liszt. This was a purely sensuous preference, based entirely upon the qualities of sound which the two men were able to win from the piano. In this regard Liszt and Thalberg may be considered rivals of an equal endowment.
We must, however, limit ourselves to the quality of Thalberg’s compositions, for astride of these he rode into the general pianistic fray. He published eighty-three pieces or sets of pieces. Three-quarters of these are variations or fantasias. As in the list of Herz’s compositions, we find in that of Thalberg’s variations on popular songs of many nations: on ‘God Save the King’ and ‘Rule Britannia,’ on Viennese airs, and Styrian melodies, on ‘Home, Sweet Home,’ ‘The Last Rose of Summer,’ and ‘Lily Dale.’ Then there are fantasias and grand fantasias on two dozen or more operas: Norma, Sonnambula, La Muette de Portici, Oberon, Der Freischütz, Guillaume Tell, Robert le Diable, Don Pasquale, La Fille du régiment, Un Ballo in Maschero and many others. The original works are of no particular merit except that of being amiable and pleasingly written for the piano. The most successful of the grand fantasias seems to have been that on airs from Rossini’s Moïse, over which we may pause to find evidence of his purposes and his style.
This was indeed one of the grand pieces of the century. A glance through the pages is enough to show that Thalberg was a master of the stupendous. Herz had nothing to show like the colossal climax and close of this fantasia on ‘Moses.’ On the other hand, it seems that nowhere in this grandiose composition is there any writing so fine as that of the first variation of Herz’s we have just discussed.
But Thalberg is much more of a musician, or is more willing to show himself one, than Herz. There are touches of good part-writing, of skillful imitation, and of the combining of two melodies. There is an introduction, beginning as quietly as Moses slept in the rushes, which Thalberg builds up more solidly, if not more effectively, than Herz built up his. The accompaniment to the first theme, simple enough as it is, shows a touch of flesh—is not the skin and bones of the ‘tum-tum.’ On the whole the left hand part is more varied throughout. There is an episode in D-minor in which the left hand figures are flexible, and upon the taking up again of reminiscences of the first broad theme in the right hand, the left hand plays with phrases of the theme of the section to come.
There is little unity in the piece, hardly a perceptible architecture. We have now a section in B-flat minor, and here we have many a tum-tum-tum in the left hand. Rossini’s melody in the right, however, is interesting enough in itself to carry the music along. This section is extended by variants of the theme and a great deal of rapid finger work—single notes for the most part. The last section begins after a fermata with a few ponderous introductory measures in broken chords, rather thickly scored, but portentous. The stalwart melody is played by the right hand, crossed over the left or mixed in with it. And now watch Thalberg, and see how the man can ride.
This is a march theme, simply started at first, then played with the thumb of the right hand, which has time between its separate notes to scamper up and down the keyboard. Notice, too, that when the right hand is soaring too high to be brought back in time for the thumb to perch again on its melody, the thumb of the left hand jumps into the breach and saves the line. Right thumb, left thumb, left thumb, right thumb, either will do. And so the hands are free to jump and run and fly. This emancipation was said to be Thalberg’s accomplishment; but instances of dividing the melody between the two hands may be found in the work of Beethoven, Schubert, and Weber. It were needless to mention Bach in this connection. However, it is just the sort of thing Thalberg needs, and he uses it skillfully and successfully.
Meanwhile, the accompaniment grows apace. There are runs of thirds for the right hand, which can thus indulge itself, knowing it need not be home before dark, so to speak, that the left hand thumb can wind the clock and keep the fire burning. There is next a suggestion of pounding chords, but this gives way to a strange shivering run of repeated notes—one remembers how Kuhnau told the story of the frightened Israelites two hundred and fifty years before, there are growing agitation, shrieks of the rising wind, dreadfully raucous repeated octaves, now on E and, with a flash, on F, and a pounding left hand that marches and rushes. It is like the shriek of the approaching locomotive above the roar of its thundering speed. And just as it should crash into view, or into something, there is the sudden stillness of infinite night, and then our march theme, spun like a thread of silver through flying runs. From thumb to thumb it winds, and always pianissimo. The effect must have been one to make a listener breathless with amazement. Little by little crescendo, a change from B-flat major to G-major, a substitution of full chords or octaves for the single thumb notes, and an extension of the runs into the clouds, these bring about the close, a last page where left and right hand together pound out the theme in repeated solid chords, with tutta la forza. Sheer noise it is, here; and with all this overpowering bombast the fantasia on ‘Moses’ comes to an end.
Such a work is well worth considering. We may not flatter ourselves that even at this day we could resist its power under the hands of a virtuoso. It would not by any means sound flat. But the instinctive response to such sonority would perhaps be a cause for shame to those who were conscious of even a little musical learning. The word trash comes quickly to the lips, and the more readily when we know our sensational heart has beat a trifle faster in spite of our better reason. It is not, then, that the music is feeble or unsuccessful, but that we distrust sensationalism and cherish a professional shame of it.
The paraphernalia of the sensationalist composer is necessarily limited, and Thalberg’s fantasias and variations suffer principally because of these limitations. He has a great knowledge and control of the pianoforte, but can find only scant variety of use for them. He must depend most upon speed and upon noise, and both are what we may call cumulative effects. In other and less elegant words, he must use lots of speed and lots of noise. His runs are masses of notes, very frequently no more than arpeggios or chromatic scales. He throws a run up from a melody note as you throw a ball into the air. It covers its distance and drops. It is no more the style of Chopin than your ball is like the flight of a bird. But the very fact that it goes up and down with no more freedom of movement than the ball that is thrown in the air, is what makes it purely sensational, purely a matter of speed in a mass of sound. If it went otherwise than upon its automatic way, your ears would be pricked from feeling into listening.
In the matter of noise the effect must still be massive. The sensationalist composer must always write for the feeling, not the listening ear, and he can best overpower the former by repeating chords rapidly; for in doing this he not only makes a very mountain of noise but adds the mountain of movement upon it. Of all the tricks of the pianist this is the most vulgarly sensational; and yet, when it comes to a matter of noise how else can he accomplish his purpose? In no other way can he make such a din, and if he tries any other he shocks the ear into listening.
So in many a way Thalberg is a slave to his purpose. The ear that has been trained to listen cannot but be wearied or outraged; but forget our recently acquired habit of listening (for even among many of the exalted it is only half acquired) and Thalberg may still today become what Schumann called him more than half a century ago,—a god—at the piano. Rubinstein, by the way, was hardly the man to call him a grocer, even though he dealt, as we have had to admit, with masses of notes. There was a splendor about him, something fine and grand as well; but like gods in general he was not to be, or may not now be approached, else he loses his godhead, which resolves into an agitation of the ear. There is no splendor in his music but the splendor of sensation.
If we examine the fabric of his music with a more technical eye we shall find that he makes relatively little use of double notes, relatively little demand upon the left hand as far as broad figures are concerned, but much upon the lightness and freedom of the wrist in both hands. There is, besides, the dividing of the melody between the thumbs of both hands, already mentioned.
He had a very unusual power over melody on the piano. For this we have the word of his none too amiable rival, Liszt, that Thalberg alone could make the piano sing like the violin. He was invited to publish an instruction book on L’art du chant, appliqué au piano. This is composed of a few introductory paragraphs, and a dozen transcriptions of melodies upon which the student was expected to work out the precepts he had just read. The remarks may still be of some interest to the pianist, but surely the transcriptions will be more so. The day for that sort of music has gone by, but one may still delight in the skill with which Thalberg was able to write melody, originally conceived for voices or violin, with orchestral accompaniment, upon the piano. None of these is so pretentious as some of the big transcriptions of symphonies and overtures made by Liszt; but from the point of view of workmanship all are quite equal to Liszt. The eighth—on a scene from Meyerbeer’s Il Crociato—is tremendously effective in places. The ninth—on a ballade from Preciosa—is exceedingly well done. The tenth is a wholly charming transcription of one of the Müller-Lieder.
We may speak, in passing, of a nocturne in E major, opus 28, as representative of the best of his original compositions. It is by no means great music either in the sense of inspired emotion or of richly varied workmanship; but it is well adapted to the piano, sweet in melody, and not too sweet in mood. The obbligato treatment of the left hand in the middle section is worthy of note as a sign of considerable technical ability, the development of which probably atrophied under the close pressure of a constant adulation. This Nocturne seems on the whole rather above the average of Mendelssohn’s ‘Songs without Words,’ by virtue of the treatment of the piano in it; and may, with other of his original works, be gently slid into the company of Liszt’s ‘Consolations’ and ‘Love Dreams.’
Most of the music of Herz and Thalberg has been forgotten, and that which might still be successfully played, is now banished from the concert stage as trash. It is true not only that one finds a great sameness in it, but also that in the light of a longer familiarity with the instrument and of strides in executive skill on the keyboard little of it presents what may seem to us today even ingenuity. Yet to estimate its value as well as its significance in the world of pianoforte music one must not forget the purpose for which it was written; namely, to display the composer’s skill as a performer, and the brilliant and powerful resources of the instrument, and at the same time to win a livelihood from the world by stirring its inhabitants to a frenzied delight. The aim to succeed with the public, no matter what the means, has something of the heroic in it, and in music which has been the means of such success there must be some element of bigness. This bears no relation to the greatness of service to an ideal which is sacred. It is in every way profane. Yet it is at the same time a force always to be reckoned with, the more so as the development of society gives the power to the mass of people to assert its own tastes and demand its own enjoyments. To such a development the universal success of Herz and Thalberg is related. It is because of still further development that their wonders have become commonplaces, not because either their purpose or their music is intrinsically contemptible. Both these are respectable as manifestations of energy and great labor; and that the two great players achieved a victory which won the applause of the whole world, indicates a streak of the hero in the cosmos of both.