It is necessary for the understanding of what is to follow that we should here part company, for a time, with the travellers. Before introducing Johannes to the great musical world which he is to enter before long, we must glance at the party questions by which it was agitated in the early fifties, and which had hitherto been unknown or unheeded by our young musician in the inexperience of his secluded life.
The musical world of Leipzig, the city raised by the leadership of Mendelssohn to be the recognised capital of classical art, had become split after the death of the master in November, 1847, into two factions, both without an active head. The Schumannites, whilst receiving no encouragement from the great composer whose art they championed, decried Mendelssohn as a pedant and a phrase-maker, who, having nothing particular to say, had covered his lack of meaning by facility of workmanship. The Mendelssohnians, on the other hand, declared Schumann to be wanting in mastery of form, and perceived in his works a tendency to subordinate the objective, to the subjective, side of musical art. The division soon spread beyond Leipzig throughout Germany, and, in the course of years, to England, with the result that Mendelssohn, once a popular idol, is now rarely represented in a concert programme.
Meanwhile Franz Liszt, perhaps the greatest pianoforte executant of all times, and one of the most magnetic personalities of his own, had exchanged his brilliant career of virtuoso for the position of conductor of the orchestra of the Weimar court theatre, with the avowed noble purpose of bringing to a hearing such works of genius as had little chance of being performed elsewhere. He declared himself the advocate of the 'New-German' school, and, making active propaganda for the creeds of Hector Berlioz and Richard Wagner, succeeded in attracting to his standard some of the most talented of the younger generation of artists, amongst whom Joachim, Raff, and the gifted and generous Hans von Bülow, were some of the first converts. There were, therefore, three different schools of serious musical thought in the year 1853, each of which boasted numerous and distinguished adherents.
The purists of Leipzig held sacred the memory of Mendelssohn, clung to the methods as well as the forms of classical tradition, and declined to recognise as legitimate art anything that savoured of progress.
The Schumannites believed it possible to give musical expression to the world-spirit of the time by expanding their methods within the old forms—i.e., by free use of chromatic harmonies, varied cadences, mixed rhythms, and so forth.
The Weimarites, rejoicing in the potent leadership of Liszt, declared they would no longer be hampered either by old methods or old forms, which they regarded as worn out and perishing of inanition.
The party disputes as to the respective merits of Mendelssohn and Schumann, were as nothing beside the violent controversies which raged for years around the theories professed by the founders of the so-called 'music of the future.' For some time the battle was fought chiefly between the 'academics' of Leipzig and the 'revolutionists' of Weimar. The classical-romantic art of Schumann had points of contact with that of each of the extremists. Animated by new impulse and instinct with modern thought, it was by no means coupled by the leaders of the new party with that of Mendelssohn, but was accepted by them for some years with more than toleration, and some of the master's works, as 'Genoveva' and 'Manfred' were performed at Weimar under Liszt's direction. Schumann himself, however, whilst warmly appreciating the great qualities of Wagner's musicianship, was well aware that any relationship between his own works and that of the new school was merely superficial. He was second to none in his reverence for the forms of the great masters, upon which he based his compositions, and, though it is probably the case that the originality of his art-methods did not attract the sympathy of Mendelssohn, he clung to the memory of this departed friend as that of a beloved comrade in arms.
Schumann, who had long since retired from his labours as editor of the Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, of which he was the founder, lived quietly at Düsseldorf, where he had, in 1850, succeeded Ferdinand Hiller as municipal conductor. The success achieved by him there, during the first season of his activity as director of the orchestral subscription concerts and the choral society, was only transient. His reserved nature, and the progress of the malady that threatened him, unfitted him for the position, and he was subject to the constant annoyance that resulted from differences with his committee. To this was added the serious disappointment of knowing that the periodical to which he had devoted untiring energy during some of the best years of his life, had become, under the editorship of Franz Brendel, the organ of the New-German party, from whose principles he felt increasing alienation. These vexations probably augmented his nervous condition, and his habitual silence and reserve increased. His chief pleasure was found in the absorbing work of composition, and in his generous sympathy with a group of young musicians who regarded themselves as his disciples. Perhaps feeling that the best part of his own career was already behind him, he lived in the constant hope that someone would appear of creative genius sufficiently decisive to indicate him as the worthy successor to the prophet's mantle of classical art.
Many of our readers are aware that Joseph Joachim was born on June 28, 1831, at Kittsee, a village near Presburg in Hungary; that at the age of twelve he had learnt all that the distinguished violinist Böhm, of the Vienna Conservatoire, master of many famous pupils, could teach him; and that he lived at Leipzig, well known at the conservatoire, though not its pupil, for the next six years, happy during the first four of them in the affection of Mendelssohn, to whom he was passionately attached, and who lost no opportunity of furthering his protégé's genius and of laying the foundation of his future career.
It was not until after Mendelssohn's death that either of the party questions to which we have referred became acute, and Joseph grew up an unquestioning believer in the principles of musical tradition, which he reverenced with something of religious fervour. The loss of Mendelssohn left him, at the age of sixteen, lonely and disconsolate, in spite of his being himself already a distinguished personality and a universal favourite. The peculiar place in his life which the master had occupied could not again be filled, and for more than two years he was unable to regard anyone as even the partial successor to his best affections. It happened, however, that two events of the year 1850, awakened in his heart something of the personal enthusiasm which had made his early happiness. A week spent by the Schumanns at Leipzig in the month of March, convinced him of his sympathy with the composer and his art; and a visit which he paid to Weimar in August, on the occasion of the first performance of Wagner's 'Lohengrin,' stirred him so strongly that by the end of the year he had resigned his position in Leipzig and taken up his residence in Weimar as concertmeister in Liszt's orchestra.[15]