O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait.
DR. ARNE (SKETCH BY BARTOLOZZI)
Old style of playing, for new style see [Frontispiece]
In Bach's time, and long afterwards, people never played vigorously. They could not. If they had attempted to do so the piano would have collapsed at once. They were very delicate instruments, unfitted for any but the most tender treatment—which, indeed, is all they ever had.
Playing must have been anxious work in those days. There was no pedal to swell the sound, or cover up defective technique. The note died away immediately after it was struck, making—what distressed Mozart so much—"cantabile playing" an impossibility. The touch of the keyboard was something like that of a harpsichord, the keys jumping up and down with a little jerk; and when the instrument went out of tune it was a serious matter.
By the beginning of the nineteenth century all this had changed. The mechanism was so much improved that it had developed into a responsive medium worth the trouble of studying. Clementi was the first who composed specially for the piano; for Mozart and Haydn, concerning themselves little with its mechanical resources (what they wrote serving equally well for the clavichord or harpsichord), treated it merely as a vehicle for the expression of their ideas, well suited to the inspiration of the moment. Clementi—whose inspirations were few and far between—regarded it from an entirely different standpoint. He was interested in the instrument itself; he experimented with it, tried what effects could be got out of it, and composed to introduce these effects rather than for any other reason. He considered the pianist more than the musician, and, in so doing, became the founder of a school of playing that regarded mechanical skill as a study in itself.
By degrees the piano and its players, developing side by side, diverged into two distinct styles—the English and the Viennese. The English school grew up, so to speak, of the masculine sex, the Viennese of the feminine—their respective instruments being in a large measure responsible for the heavy, vigorous qualities of the one, and the delicacy and lightness of the other. As long as Mozart lived, the Viennese held to their old-time gentleness and quaint dignity, but after his death they became more and more brilliant; so that, in his "Music in Germany," Dr. Burney could write of them as the "most remarkable people for fire and invention" (by which he probably meant improvisation) that he had ever heard. In spite of this reputation, the manner of performance in those days, tried by present standards, would have seemed very dry indeed. Correct, accurate, redolent of propriety and good manners, the goal of perfection exemplified by such men as Herz, Hunten, and Steibelt, cannot have been very interesting. Clementi himself, though no doubt angular and stiff, did try to some extent to shake off prim custom. At any rate, his was a wider mind, genuinely interested in striving to infuse some warmth and colour into his art. He pioneered his cause to the utmost, talking about it, writing studies for it, and setting every one else doing the same. His ideas were worked out still further by his pupils Field and Cramer, who, having a faint inkling of the mysteries of "tone-effects," tried to "make the piano sing"—as Field's compositions show.
As yet no one had in the least realised what the instrument could be made to do. Quantity of notes, not quality, was the chief concern; fluency, not beauty of tone, the aim of a good player. The perpendicular finger of the Bach era—a relic of the clavichord touch—was still fashionable; indeed, up to this time, there was no reason why it should not be so, for the music of the day called for nothing more forcible. But there were signs that this dull code of dry formulæ was soon to become too narrow, and the complaisant pedagogue to be driven from his throne. There was need of a change, and the man destined to effect it was at hand.
Wiping out their stiffness, poking fun at their propriety, it was Beethoven who broke through their foolish little rules and gave them something deeper and more vital to think of. Full of dramatic power, of orchestral effects, of changing moods, his music outstretched their limits entirely. It created a new element and offered them a new problem: the study of tone. He demanded of the piano what had never been demanded of it before; both the instrument and its players were forced to change. Henceforward the art of pianism stood on an entirely different level. A new school was growing up.
Weber, who was an immense admirer of Beethoven, and a great influence in the musical world, went into the question with enthusiasm—indeed, some of his own Sonatas showed a faint dramatic tendency, new figures, and a more complicated technique.