I can perhaps better indicate the course to be pursued by giving some illustrations in my own experience. The following will serve: During a trip in New York State I was asked whether Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” suite was founded upon any legend or story, and if so, what. Though familiar with the composition in question, I had never played it myself, nor given it any particular attention, and in point of fact was as ignorant on the subject as my interrogator, and obliged to confess as much. This was before the composition had become familiar in this country and before the drama on which it is founded had been translated into English. Being, however, convinced, from the names attached to different parts of the suite, of the probability of its foundation upon some literary or historic subject, I determined to investigate. I first read several biographical sketches of Grieg, but found no special mention of the “Peer Gynt” suite; then everything I could secure on the subject of Norwegian music in general and Grieg’s compositions in particular, without avail. As I knew Grieg to be, with the possible exception of Chopin, the most intensely national and patriotic of all composers, I inferred that if he had taken any legend or story as the basis of this work, it was undoubtedly Norwegian in character. I read, therefore, several articles on the history of Norway, the Norsemen, and the Norwegian language and literature, watching carefully for the name of Peer Gynt, but in vain. I next undertook some of the sagas or ancient Norse traditions, with the same result. Having exhausted my resources in this direction, I began to investigate modern Norwegian literature. Here, of course, I encountered, in large type, the names of Björnson and Ibsen, and almost at the outset I found among the works of the latter the versified drama of “Peer Gynt,” and my search was at an end. Having procured a German translation of this drama, I found scenes and characters to correspond exactly with those which figure in Grieg’s music, and a reference in the preface to an orchestral suite, by this composer, founded upon “Peer Gynt.”
Now had I been as well informed as I recommend all my readers to be, I should have known at the outset of this Norwegian drama, and been at once upon the right track. But being only familiar with those prose dramas of Ibsen which have been translated into English, I was obliged to undertake all this extra labor, to ascertain a single fact; which only proves once again, that the more the musician’s memory is stored with miscellaneous facts and ideas, even such as do not seem to have any connection with music, the lighter and more successful will be his labors in his profession.
The second main source of information concerning musical works is found among musicians themselves. There is a vast amount of tradition, suggestion, and knowledge appertaining to the masterpieces in this art, which has never got into print, and lives only by passing from mouth to mouth, much as the early legends of all countries were orally handed down among minstrels and skalds from generation to generation. Every great interpreter and every great composer becomes, with the passage of years of a long and active life, a vast and valuable storehouse of all sorts of hints, facts, and ideas on the subject of various compositions, which usually die with him, except such portions as have been orally transmitted to pupils and associates. In this respect the late Theodor Kullak was worth any three men I have ever known, and those of his pupils who had tastes and interests similar to his own, and were of retentive memory, have all derived from him no mean portion of their material. To cull from every musician and musically informed person all the odds and ends of information in his possession is a valuable, though perhaps selfish habit. And here let me emphasize to all students the importance of not allowing the memory to get into that very prevalent bad habit of refusing to retain anything which is not presented in print to the organ of vision. The ear is as good a road to the brain as the eye, and every one should possess the faculty of acquiring information from conversations, lessons, and lectures, as readily as from books.
The third resource of the seeker after truth of this nature is to be found within himself. The musician should early accustom himself to grasp clearly the essential essence, the vital principle, of an artistic moment, a dramatic situation. For some such moment, mood, or situation, however vague or veiled, underlies every true art work; and unless the performer can perceive and comprehend this inner germ of meaning clearly enough to express it intelligibly, though it may be crudely, in his own words, he will find that many a hint has been lost upon him, and many a bit of knowledge, that might have been his, has escaped him. This is not a musical faculty merely; it is a mental peculiarity. Every person, whatever his profession, should train himself to catch, as quickly and clearly as may be, the real drift of a book, of an argument, of a chain of circumstances, of a political situation, of history, of character, and to place his finger instinctively upon the germ upon which all else centers.
The power to feel instinctively the real mood and meaning of a musical composition is by no means confined to the musical profession; indeed, is often strongly marked in those ignorant of the very rudiments of the art. I remember once playing to a rough old trapper, of the early pioneer days in Wisconsin, who had drifted back to civilization to “die in camp,” as he expressed it, the Revolutionary Etude of Chopin, Op. 10, No. 12, already cited in illustration, written on receipt of the knowledge that Warsaw had been taken and sacked by the Russians. “What does it mean?” I asked when it was finished. He sprang from his chair in great excitement. “Mean?” he said; “it means cyclone in the big woods! Indian onslaught! White men all killed, but die hard!” His interpretation, I need not say, was not historically correct, but for all artistic purposes it was just as good, though expressed in the rough backwoods imagery familiar to him. He caught the tone of rage and conflict, of desperate struggle and dark despair, which sounds in every line, and he had truly understood the composition, to the shame of many a well-educated musician, whose comment would probably have been, “How difficult that left hand part is! De Pachmann plays it much faster, and with such a beautiful pianissimo!”
This particular study is simply a vivid mood picture. It is not in any sense what is called descriptive or program music; yet it has a distinct meaning which can be more or less adequately expressed in words, for the aid of those who do not readily grasp its expression. I wish to reiterate here what I have before stated, that I would not be understood to hold that all music has or should have some story connected with it. I merely believe that every worthy composition is the musical setting of some scene, incident, mood, idea, or emotion. Long practice in perceiving and grasping what may be termed the “internal evidence” of the music itself will develop, in the musician, a susceptibility to such impressions, which will often lead him to a knowledge elsewhere sought in vain, and greatly lessen his labors in arriving at knowledge elsewhere to be found.
I have now thrown all the light in my power upon the modus operandi of obtaining information and ideas relating to musical compositions, and have, I think, demonstrated the difficulty of such an undertaking. For my own Lecture Recital programs I often select works about which I happen to be well informed, and have more than once spent an entire summer in reading and research concerning others which I wished to include. It will be seen from the nature of the case, that because one possesses full information in regard to a certain ballade or polonaise, it by no means establishes a certainty, as is sometimes inferred, that he will be equally enlightened concerning all others. There never was and never will be any one man who can furnish information on the subject of all compositions, and it is equally impossible that any glossary or cyclopedia will ever be compiled which can refer the student to books containing points in regard to any musical work one may chance to be practising, or wish to perform.
Traditional Beethoven Playing
How often of late years we hear this expression: Will some one who claims to know kindly tell us what it means? For one, I confess myself, after a decade of careful, thoughtful investigation, utterly unable to find out. We hear one pianist extolled as a wonderful Beethoven player, as a safe, legitimate, trustworthy champion of the good old classical traditions; and another equally eminent artist condemned as wholly unworthy to lift for the public the veil of awe and deep mystery enshrouding the sublimities of this grandest of tone-Titans. The late von Bülow, for instance, was well-nigh universally conceded to be the representative Beethoven player of the age, for no better reasons, so far as I can discover, than that he was generally admitted to be a failure in the presentation of most works of the modern school, and that cold, calculating, cynical intellectuality was the predominant feature of his personality and his musical work, which made him the driest, most unideal, uninteresting pianist of his generation, in spite of his phenomenal technic, memory, and mental power.