Nevertheless, he listened patiently for the thousandth time to the E flat concerto, as Steiniger played it. He then quietly called her attention to the fact that she had "no fingers," and she was in perfect despair. He saw that she was energetic and willing to work, and he at once took her in hand and began to drill her. She withdrew entirely from society and devoted herself to practicing, following his directions implicitly. She is now a beautiful artist, and he chalks out every step of her career. I don't doubt she will play in the Gewandhaus in Leipsic eventually, which is the height of every artist's ambition, and stamps you as "finished." Then you are recognized all over the world. Deppe does not mean to let her play here till she has first played in many little places and succeeded. As he said to me the other day, "When you wish to spring over tall mountains, you must first jump over little mounds (kleine Graben.)" He counsels me to take a lesson of this young lady every day for a time, so as to get over the technical part quickly.
As for Deppe's young protégée, Fannie Warburg, whom he has formed completely, everybody says that she is wonderful. Fräulein Steiniger says that when you hear her play you feel almost as if it were something holy, it is so perfect and so extraordinarily spiritual. She is only eighteen. Deppe showed me the list of compositions that she has already played in concerts elsewhere, and I was astonished at the variety and compass of it. Every great composer was represented.
Among other refinements of his teaching, Deppe asked me if I had ever made any pedal studies. I said "No—nobody had ever said anything to me about the pedal particularly, except to avoid the use of it in runs, and I supposed it was a matter of taste." He picked out that simple little study of Cramer in D major in the first book—you know it well—and asked me to play it. I had played that study to Tausig, and he found no fault with my use of the pedal; so I sat down thinking I could do it right. But I soon found I was mistaken, and that Deppe had very different ideas on the subject. He sat down and played it phrase by phrase, pausing between each measure, to let it "sing." I soon saw that it is possible to get as great a virtuosity with the pedal as with anything else, and that one must make as careful a study of it. You remember I wrote to you that one secret of Liszt's effects was his use of the pedal,[H] and how he has a way of disembodying a piece from the piano and seeming to make it float in the air? He makes a spiritual form of it so perfectly visible to your inward eye, that it seems as if you could almost hear it breathe! Deppe seems to have almost the same idea, though he has never heard Liszt play. "The Pedal," said he, "is the lungs of the piano." He played a few bars of a sonata, and in his whole method of binding the notes together and managing the pedal, I recognized Liszt. The thing floated!—Unless Deppe wishes the chord to be very brilliant, he takes the pedal after the chord instead of simultaneously with it. This gives it a very ideal sound.—You may not believe it, but it is true, that though Deppe is no pianist himself, and has the funniest little red paws in the world, that don't look as if they could do anything, he's got that same touch and quality of tone that Liszt has—that indescribable something that, when he plays a few chords, merely, makes the tears rush to your eyes. It is too heavenly for anything.
CHAPTER XXV.
Chord-Playing. Deppe no "Mere Pedagogue." Sherwood.
Mozart's Concertos. Practicing Slowly.
The Opera Ball.
BERLIN, January 2, 1874.
When I had got the principle of the scale pretty well into my head, what should Deppe rummage out but Czerny's "Schule der Geläufigkeit (School of Velocity)," which I hadn't looked at since the days of my childhood and fondly flattered myself I had done with forever. (We none of us know what stands before us!) After having studied Cramer, Gradus and Chopin, you may imagine it was rather a come down to have to take to the School of Velocity again! And to study it very slowly and with one hand only!! That was adding insult to injury. Deppe knows what he is about, though. He began picking out passages here and there all through the book, and making me play them, stretching from the thumb and turning on the fingers as often as possible. After I have mastered the passages I am to learn a whole study, first with each hand alone, and then with both together!
Deppe next proceeded to teach me how to strike chords. I had to learn to raise my hands high over the key-board, and let them fall without any resistance on the chord, and then sink with the wrist, and take up the hand exactly over the notes, keeping the hand extended. There is quite a little knack in letting the hand fall so, but when you have once got it, the chord sounds much richer and fuller.—And so on, ad infinitum. Deppe had thought out the best way of doing everything on the piano—the scale, the chord, the trill, octaves, broken octaves, broken thirds, broken sixths, arpeggios, chromatics, accent, rhythm—all! He says that the principle of the scale and of the chord are directly opposite. "In playing the scale you must gather your hand into a nut-shell, as it were, and play on the finger tips. In taking the chord, on the contrary, you must spread the hands as if you were going to ask a blessing." This is particularly the case with a wide interval. He told me if I ever heard Rubinstein play again to observe how he strikes his chords. "Nothing cramped about him! He spreads his hands as if he were going to take in the universe, and takes them up with the greatest freedom and abandon!" Deppe has the greatest admiration for Rubinstein's tone, which he says is unequaled, but he places Tausig above him as an artist. He said Tausig used to come to his room and play to him, and he took off Tausig's little half bow and way of seating himself at the piano and beginning at once, without prelude or wasting of words, very funnily! He would scarcely take time to say "Guten Abend (Good Evening)." Deppe thinks Tausig played some things matchlessly, but that in others he was dry and soulless. Clara Schumann, he says, is the most "musical" of all the great artists—and you remember how immensely struck I was with Natalie Janotha, who is her pupil, and plays just like her.
From my telling you so much about technicalities, you must not think Deppe only a pedagogue. He is in reality the soul of music, and all these things are only "means to an end." As he says himself, "I always hear the music the people don't play." No pianist ever entirely suited him, and this it was that set him to examining the instrument in order to see what was the matter with it. He made friends with the great virtuosi, and studied their ways of playing, and the result of all his observation is that "Piano playing is the only thing where there is something to be done." He declares that there is so much musical talent going to waste in the world that it is "lying all about the streets," and he has a most ingenious way of accounting for the fact that there are so many great pianists in spite of their not knowing his method:—"Gifted people," he says, "play by the grace of God; but everybody could master the technique on my system!!"
To show you that it is not alone my judgment of Deppe—four of Kullak's best pupils, including Sherwood! left him for Deppe, after I did. They got so uneasy from what I told them, that they went to see Deppe, and as soon as they heard Fräulein Steiniger play, they had to admit that she had got hold of some secrets of which they knew nothing. Sherwood, you know, is a positive genius, yet he is beginning all over again, too. In short, we are all unanimous, while Deppe, on his side, is much gratified at having some American pupils.—He flatters himself that we will introduce all his cherished ideas into our "new and progressive country."