My Musical Life

by Walter Damrosch

HANS VON BÜLOW

In 1856 my father and Hans von Bülow, pianist, were struggling to gain recognition and a livelihood in Berlin. Both were idealists and enthusiastic followers of the “new school” in music, of which Berlioz, Liszt, and Wagner were the great representatives. Bülow’s letters of that period show that they gave many chamber-music concerts together, both in Berlin and elsewhere, and it is interesting to note that at one of them, together with the violoncellist, Kossman, they performed a trio by “César Franck of Liège,” about thirty years before this father of the modern French school of composition became generally known and recognized. It was through Bülow that my father and his achievements as a violin virtuoso and composer became known to Liszt, who invited him, in 1857, to become violinist at the first desk of the Weimar Opera Orchestra, then under Liszt’s direction.

The friendship between Bülow and my father remained intimate and fine during my father’s entire life, and even beyond, as this chapter will show.

My first recollection of Bülow goes back to 1876, when he came to America at the invitation of the Chickering Piano firm to inaugurate their new Chickering Hall on Fifth Avenue and 19th Street, and to give piano recitals all over the country.

When my father and mother went to Berlin in the sixties for a joint concert with Bülow, they stayed with him and his wife, Cosima. Since then much had happened. Cosima had run away with Wagner, Bülow’s most adored friend, and Bülow had nearly died with the shame and misery of it. One evening during dinner at our house my mother asked him about his children, whom she had not seen since those early days, and I can still hear the punctilious courtesy with which he answered: “They are where they should be, and in the best possible hands—with their mother.”

The fine intellectuality of his playing, the quality of his phrasing, especially in Bach and Beethoven, created a deep impression on our public which was not minimized by certain eccentricities in his appearance and behavior. He always appeared on the stage for his afternoon recitals attired in the traditional black double-breasted frock coat and very light-gray trousers, his hands incased in light-brown gloves and holding a high silk hat which was carefully deposited under the piano before he took off his gloves and began to play.

For one of his recitals a young and highly talented soprano, Miss Emma Thursby, had been engaged. She was a protégée of old Maurice Strakosch, an impresario of the old school, shrewd, polished in his manners, who very cleverly advertised the high personal character of the young singer and especially her great “purity,” vowing that acquaintance with her, hardened old sinner that he was, had made him a better man.

At the Bülow recital her singing of some German songs by Schubert and Schumann, I think, was received with such enthusiastic applause that she gave an encore, a rather trivial song by Franz Abt. When Bülow, in his dressing-room, heard this “desecration” of a programme composed of works of great masters only, his rage knew no bounds, and when he came out on the stage to continue his own programme, he deliberately took out his handkerchief and carefully wiped the keys of the piano up and down in a noisy glissando scale and then began to improvise on the recitative from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, “O friends, not these tones. . . .”

Another time he gave a chamber-music concert with my father and they played, among other things, the “Kreutzer Sonata” of Beethoven. Just before going on the stage he turned to my father and said:

“Let us play it by heart.”

“With pleasure,” answered my father and laid down his music.

“No, no,” said Bülow, “take it on the stage with you.”

After they had taken their places on the stage Bülow ostentatiously rose, took my father’s music from the stand and his own from the piano and laid them both under the piano.

His memory, not only for music, but for all things that interested him, was prodigious and to me uncanny. But it was, after all, human and not infallible, and on this occasion he did lose his place in the last movement of the sonata and my father had to improvise with him for a few bars until, with quick ingenuity, he found the thread again.

I have spoken elsewhere of the terrible responsibilities which were placed upon my shoulders because of the sudden death of my father, and as the years went by I seemed to miss him more and more, not only his wonderful companionship, but the wise counsel with which he used to help me solve my musical riddles. I worked hard and made progress, I think, for my circle of friends and followers grew larger and larger. But I knew no one in this country to whom I could turn in the same way as to my father, or who would have given me of his wisdom so freely and generously as he. Seidl, my associate at the Metropolitan, was not friendly and was completely wrapped up in himself, and besides, he had, to my thinking, only one specialty, the Wagner music-dramas. As a symphonic conductor he was completely without experience when he first came to America and his interpretation of the classics lacked foundation and real penetration, in spite of the noisy acclaim which a certain part of our public gave him because of his undoubted genius as a Wagner conductor.

A lucky chance brought me a clipping from a German newspaper announcing that Hans von Bülow would spend the summer of 1887 in Frankfort, where he would teach a class of advanced pianists and devote the entire receipts toward building a monument to his old friend, Joachim Raff, who had spent his last years in Frankfort as director of the conservatory.

I immediately determined to go to Germany and ask Bülow if, in view of his old friendship with my father and my need of the help of some great musician, he would be willing to let me study with him the interpretation of the Beethoven Symphonies in especial, and such other works as it would interest him to analyze for me.

Bülow was at that time considered the foremost conductor of Germany. He had taken a little mediocre orchestra of fifty, belonging to the Grand Duke of Meiningen, and through his supreme genius had galvanized it into a marvellous instrument. Under his guidance this little orchestra had created a sensation all over Germany and Austria and a special tour de force was their playing of certain symphonies entirely by heart without any music before them.

When I arrived in Frankfort I found that Bülow was living at the Schwan Hotel, and with much trepidation I told him what I wanted of him. He seemed very much touched and claimed that it was the first time in his experience that a musician who, as he put it, “was already prominent in opera, symphony, and oratorio” thought he could learn anything from him. In the warmest, I may say most affectionate terms, he promised me every possible help and advised me to take rooms in the same hotel. This I did, and I can truthfully say that the entire summer during which I was with him in closest companionship, not only in his rooms and during the lesson hours for the pianists, many of which I also attended, but on long walks to the museums, the parks, and the suburbs of Frankfort, his almost paternal kindliness, his wisdom, and his comments on things artistic, literary, political, and personal were a revelation to me. So many stories were current about his biting comments and brusque behavior toward people who excited his enmity, that I was amazed to find him throughout so companionable and so gentle in all his relations toward me. He had a heart most tender and sensitive, but life had dealt this idealist so many hard knocks that he incased his heart in a shell with which to protect it from further onslaughts.

He went through all Beethoven’s nine symphonies with me, bar by bar, phrase by phrase, and I still have the scores in which he made certain notations of phrasing or illustrated changes in dynamics of certain instruments in order to bring out the undoubted intentions of Beethoven more clearly. He virtually analyzed the symphonies for me in the same way as in his edition of the piano sonatas, and at the close of our three months together he gave me a copy of his own score of the Ninth Symphony with all his own annotations, many of which were based on the analysis made by Wagner during his historic performance of that work at the corner-stone laying of the Bayreuth Fest-Spielhaus.

During these three months of intensive study I received so much from him that was new to me, such a wealth of ideas regarding interpretation and the technic of the conductor’s art, that it took me years to digest it properly and to learn how, instead of merely copying slavishly, I could make it my own and accept or reject parts of it, according to the methods of analysis taught me by him.

During our stay in Frankfort a little Prince of Hesse, whose mother, the Landgravine, was a “Royal Highness,” being a niece of the old Emperor William, invited von Bülow to give a Brahms recital at his palace. Bülow immediately insisted that I, too, must be invited, which accordingly I was. When I accompanied him he introduced me to the various exalted personages assembled, and the Landgravine asked me if I were not “the son of the great Doctor Damrosch.” I politely answered: “Yes, your Royal Highness.”

“Was he not a friend of Rubinstein?” she continued.

“Yes.”

“He played the viola, did he not?”

I said: “No, your Royal Highness, the violin.”

“No,” she said, “the viola.”

This taught me that royalty must never be contradicted, even if they know “facts” about your own father of which you are not aware.

The Prince of Hesse was blind and thought he had a gift for music, in fact he “composed” string quartets which, I presume, he more or less “dictated” to the court musician of his little princely household.

Just before the supper the Prince came up to Bülow with a huge laurel wreath, which enraged Bülow very much. He always called them “vegetables of Fame,” and he immediately shouted: “Is there no bust of Brahms here?” but as there was none, he laid the wreath on the piano.

During the very good supper which was served to their Royal Highnesses and von Bülow in one room and to the other guests in another, I found to my amazement that the blind Prince was led to my chair holding a champagne glass in his hand with which to toast me specially, “the American musician and conductor,” and two days later the Prince and his gentleman in waiting formally called on me at my hotel. An hour later the gentleman in waiting returned to inform me that the Prince would like to have me accept the position of musician in his household with “twelve hundred Thalers a year and free board at the palace.” I had to explain to him ever so politely and gratefully that I was then conductor at the Metropolitan Opera House, the New York Symphony Society, and the New York Oratorio Society, and that with high appreciation of this offer, I could not possibly give up these positions and my American career to come to Germany.

Bülow, when I told him of it, burst into loud guffaws of delighted laughter.

Bülow was in wretched health during the entire summer, suffering from headaches, sleeplessness, and general nervous collapse, but with an iron will he went through the summer’s programme, accepting no financial recompense for himself, solely to help gather money through his classes toward the completion of the Raff monument.

I remember one night returning to the hotel after the opera, and as I passed the door of his room to get to mine, which was on the same floor, I heard such loud and continued sobbing that I opened his door, after receiving no response to my knocking. I found him in his nightclothes, kneeling before his bed, his head buried in the mattress and sobbing so bitterly that it was heart-breaking. I rushed over to him, thinking that perhaps he was very ill, and it was a long time before I could quiet him. He kept reiterating that life was over for him, that he wanted to die, and it was only by continually telling him how much we all adored him and what his friendship meant for us that I was able gradually to quiet him and to put him to bed, where I sat holding his hands until early morning when he finally went to sleep.

Weak and ill though he was after the summer’s arduous work, he had promised the University of Marburg to give them two of his famous Beethoven recitals, and as his friend Steyl, the music publisher, and I were worried about his condition we decided to accompany him in order to look after him. The arrangements for the concerts which were to be held in the afternoon in the aula of the venerable university were in the hands of the professor of Greek, a typical old absent-minded gentleman who seemed overcome with the honor of having a visit from the great von Bülow and who also was nervously afraid of this brusque little man. I was worried over the whole affair. Bülow had been very weak all morning and Steyl and I wanted him to cancel the recital, but he would not hear of it and bravely went on the stage to begin his programme.

Unfortunately, owing to the summer heat, the windows of the aula were open wide, and during the music the cries of the children playing below, the rumbling of carts over the rough pavements of the mediæval streets, came up in constant clangor.

Bülow began, faltered, began again and stopped—ran from the stage and returned to begin again. But it was no use. The noise continued and the recital had to be called off, and after a nervous crisis accompanied by great weeping, we got him back to the hotel and to bed, Bülow heaping curses on the little professor on whom he blamed everything, the glaring sunlight, the cries of the playing children, and the noise of the carts. The recital for the following day was, of course, cancelled, and we arranged everything for taking Bülow back to Frankfort.

In the morning when I called at his rooms I found him punctiliously attired in his frock coat, high silk hat, and brown glacé gloves, and in answer to my evidently astonished gaze, he said: “We must not leave without paying our farewell call of ceremony on the Greek professor.” I trembled at the outcome, but a carriage with two horses and a liveried coachman was already waiting in the courtyard of the hotel to take us up the hill to the old mediæval tower of the university in which the professor lived.

We were ushered into a wonderful circular library, the books covering the entire inner wall of the tower, and while we were waiting for the professor, Bülow ran around the room like a dog on the scent, examining the titles of the various books on the shelves. Suddenly he pounced on one, pulled it out and began to turn the leaves quickly until he got to a certain page at which he held the book open just as the old professor entered, trembling from head to foot. I was rather apprehensive of the meeting between the two men, but to my astonishment, Bülow advanced, book in hand, and with a low bow handed it silently to the gentle amateur impresario, pointing to a certain place on the opened page. The professor read it, blushed, and looked with a kind of dumb apology at von Bülow, who then took up his hat and, with another low bow, left the room, followed by me, still completely mystified by this silent ceremonial, the meaning of which I could not understand.

During the drive back to the hotel, Bülow chirped up considerably. Now and then he chuckled and finally, as if the joke were too good to keep, he turned toward me and said:

“Do you know what quotation I gave to the Greek professor? It was from one of the Greek philosophers to the effect that ‘it is not wise for a man of learning to mix himself up in the practical affairs of life.’ ”

Perhaps some learned reader of this may be able to tell me who the Greek author was. Bülow never told me.

On our long walks Bülow would often reminisce about the past and would tell me enough stories to fill a book. Two of them I shall tell here.

Bülow was spending a winter in Florence and was invited to conduct a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with the local orchestra. In those days Italy had literally no symphonic orchestras, and the players, recruited from the opera-houses, had but little routine for concert music of symphonic importance. The men were willing and eager, but even such a routined conductor as Bülow found it difficult to make them understand certain rhythmic subtleties in this most intricate of all Beethoven’s works. In the scherzo there comes a place where the kettledrum has to enter rudely with a repetition of the first bar of the main theme:

This rhythm the kettledrum player simply could not grasp, no matter how patiently Bülow endeavored to instill it. He tried it slow, he tried it fast. Bülow got more and more excited and irritable, and finally, as a last resort, he fairly shouted to him on the rhythm of this theme the Italian word for kettledrum. At the top of his voice rose the word:

“Tym—pan—y! Tym—pan—y!”

A delighted smile broke over the face of the kettledrum player.

“Ah, capisco, capisco,” he shouted, and immediately proceeded to put his newly won knowledge to the practical proof.

Bülow told me that at one time he had adopted the habit of jotting down any strange or incongruous names that he found on the signs of shops in the various cities of the various countries that he visited. In a small little German town he found over a greengrocery, the name of “Seidenschwanz.” This appealed to him and he tucked it away in his memory, determined to find a given name to add that would, by its very contrast, fit it. For months he cudgelled his brains, but in vain, until one night in Venice he jumped up from his bed, shouting: “I have it. Caligula Seidenschwanz!” The name of the most cruel of Roman Emperors coupled with that of the little greengrocer!

Next morning he proceeded to an engraver and had visiting cards printed bearing the mysterious name of:

Caligula Seidenschwanz.

Shortly after, whenever Doctor Hans von Bülow paid a call on any one, instead of presenting his own card, he left that of Herr Seidenschwanz, thereby completely mystifying his friends.

I told this story years after while dining at the house of my dear friends, May Callender and Caro de Forest. Lilli Lehmann was one of the guests, and when I finished she jumped up and said:

“Walter, that is a very remarkable story, but it is absolutely true, as I happen to know. I was coloratura soprano at the Berlin Royal Opera at the time when Bülow paid us a visit one night when we performed Meyerbeer’s ‘Prophète.’ He was so disgusted with the performance that he wrote one of his indignant and cynical letters to a Berlin paper, in which he compared the Royal Opera to a circus, and then added insult to injury by apologizing to Herr Renz, owner of the greatest circus in Germany, saying that he meant no insult to him, as he had always been a great admirer of the Circus Renz. This letter aroused the old intendant, Baron von Hulsen, to such fury that he forbade Bülow further entrance into the opera-house and at the same time induced the old Emperor to withdraw the title of ‘Pianist to His Majesty, the King of Prussia’ from von Bülow.”

Lilli Lehmann then continued to narrate that the morning after the performance she received a large basket of flowers in which a card had been tucked, on which was written “To the only bright spot in yesterday’s performance. In admiration, Caligula Seidenschwanz.”

Until that evening, when I explained the origin of the name, Lilli Lehmann had not known that the flowers had been sent her by von Bülow.

At the close of the summer session Bülow invited me to go with him to the Cologne Musical Festival. He told me that he had written to Brahms about me and wanted me to meet him, and I would also hear a fine performance of the Brahms “Requiem.” Needless to say I jumped at such an opportunity.

My father, who with that wonderful liberal attitude of his did not share the narrow attitude of other Wagnerians who hated Brahms, had been among the first to introduce his music in America and had given the first performance of the Brahms Symphony No. 1 in C minor in America. Bülow had become a similar propagandist for Brahms in Germany. I considered him the last great composer of modern times, doubly interesting because the great genius of Wagner, whom he admired greatly, left him untouched as far as his own creative work was concerned, and he is, perhaps, the only great modern composer whose works can show no influence of the Wagnerian school. To conduct his symphonies is to me still one of the greatest joys of the winter, and I continue to marvel how little the years have aged them and how noble in conception and rich in subtleties of feeling they continue to express in an unbroken line the highest ideals of the Beethoven symphonies.

In the hurly-burly of a festival, I had but little opportunity to see much of Brahms, who was there only a very few days, and I was too young and unimportant to claim any attention from him; but I was grateful to Bülow for the opportunity of meeting him, and can still see his wonderful and kindly eye turned on me as Bülow told him some nice things about me.

During our stay in Cologne I had an experience so curious, so extraordinary, that I must especially assure my readers that it is true in every particular.

One morning Bülow announced to me that he was going to cross the river in the afternoon to visit the widow of an old friend of his, Madame B——, who lived in a villa in Deutz. He asked me to accompany him, and we accordingly called on a rather attractive young widow, attired in the deepest mourning, who welcomed us very graciously. Her husband, a Belgian pianist of distinction, had been professor of piano at the Imperial Conservatory in St. Petersburg and had there married a young Russian pupil of his.

After chatting awhile, she proposed that we go into the garden for a cup of tea, and we followed her, accordingly, to a small stone building in the middle of the garden that looked like a chapel, but which, to my horror, I discovered, as we entered, to be a mausoleum. In the centre stood a sarcophagus on the top of which reposed a coffin, with a glass top, in which lay the body of B——! A footman in livery followed us with a samovar and the teacups.

It seems that the lady had thus endeavored to demonstrate her love for her departed husband. I confess that I became almost ill and hurriedly left the mausoleum to smell the roses in the garden, but Bülow punctiliously and courageously stuck it out and had his cup of tea under these unique conditions.

Many years after I heard through Mrs. Franz Rummel, whose husband had been a favorite pupil of B——, that his widow was again happily married and that B—— had been properly buried underground.

In 1889 I induced Mr. Leo Goldmark, brother of the Viennese composer, who was interested in music and the musical affairs of New York, to bring von Bülow to America for another visit, and more especially to give his Beethoven sonata cycle.

Bülow brought his second wife with him and the visit was a great success in every way. She had been a young actress of talent at the Meiningen Court Theatre and he had married her while he was conductor of the orchestra there.

The Beethoven recitals were given at the Broadway Theatre which was crowded to the doors, and press and public greeted the old master with such friendly enthusiasm that he was very much touched and became very enthusiastic about America. He also conducted my orchestra in a memorable concert at the Metropolitan Opera House in which he demonstrated his marvellous powers as a conductor. Among the works on the programme was the “Tragic Overture” by Brahms. Just before beginning the rehearsal of this he called out to the orchestra librarian, Russell, by name: “Where is the contrabassoon? Why is there no contrabassoon engaged?”

In vain were Russell’s protests that he had not been told to engage a contrabassoon, but suddenly Bülow’s anger subsided and he began the rehearsal. During it, as was his custom, he conducted without any orchestral score before him. His memory of what the individual instruments had to play was indeed remarkable, although I always felt that he enjoyed showing it off a little at rehearsals. After the rehearsal was over he called Russell to his side and, slipping him a five-dollar bill, whispered: “Do not say anything; it was my mistake, there is no contrabassoon in the Brahms Overture.”