Of all musical instruments the pianoforte is the most intimate and at the same time the most public—“the favorite of the lonely mourner and of the solitary soul whose joy seeks expression” and the tie that unites the circle of family and friends. Yet it also thrills the great audience of the concert hall and rouses it to the highest pitch of enthusiasm. It is the king of instruments, and the reason for its supremacy is not far to seek. Weitzmann, the author of the first comprehensive account of the pianoforte and its literature, speaks of its ability “to lend living expression to all phases of emotion for which language lacks words”; its full, resonant tone; its volume vying with that of the orchestra; its command of every shade of sound from the gentlest pianissimo to the most powerful forte; and its mechanism, which permits of the most rapid runs and passages, and at the same time of sustained singing notes and phrases.
Music Under One’s Fingers.
But this is not all. There is an overture by Weber entitled “The Ruler of the Spirits.” Well, he who commands the row of white and black keys is ruler of the spirits of music. He has music, all that music can give, within the grasp of his two hands, under his ten fingers. The pianoforte can render anything in music. Besides music of its own, it can reproduce the orchestra or the voice with even greater fidelity than the finest engraving renders a painting; for only to the eyes 32 of one familiar with the painting does the engraving suggest the color scheme of the original, whereas, through certain nuances of technique that are more easily felt than described, the pianoforte virtuoso who is playing an arrangement of an orchestra composition can make his audience hear certain instruments of the orchestra—even such characteristic effects as the far-carrying pizzicato, or the rumbling of the double basses or their low growl; the hollow, reverberating percussions of the tympani; sustained notes on the horns; the majestic accents of trombones; the sharp shrill of piccolos; while some of the most effective pianoforte pieces are arrangements of songs.
Moreover, there are pianoforte compositions like the Hungarian rhapsodies of Liszt which, while conceived and carried out in the true spirit of the instrument (“pianistic,” as they say), yet suggest the tone colors of the orchestra without permitting these to obtrude themselves too much. This is one of the many services of Liszt, the giant of virtuosos and a giant among composers, to his art. It has been said that Liszt played the whole orchestra on the pianoforte. He did even more. He developed the technique of the instrument to such a point that the suggestion of many of the clang tints of the orchestra has become part of its heritage. This dual capacity of the pianoforte, the fact that it has a tone quality wholly peculiar to itself, so that when, for example, we are playing Chopin we never think of the orchestra, while at the same time it can take up into itself and reproduce, or at least suggest, the tone colors of other instruments, is one of its most remarkable characteristics.
Quite as remarkable and as interesting and important is the circumstance that these tone tints are wholly dependent upon the player. There is nothing peculiar to the make of the strings, the sounding-board, the hammers, that tends to produce these effects. They are due wholly to the player’s subtle manipulation of the keys, so that we get the added thrill of the virtuoso’s personal magnetism. The pianoforte owes much of its popularity, much of its supremacy, to the fact that a player’s interpretation of a composition cannot be marred by any one but himself. It rests in his hands alone, whereas the conductor of an orchestra is dependent upon a hundred players, some of whom may have no more soul than so many wooden Indians. Even supposing a conductor to be gifted with a highly poetic and musically sensitive nature, it is impossible that so many men of varying degrees of temperament as go to make up an orchestra, and none of them probably a virtuoso of the highest rank, will be as sympathetically responsive to his baton as a pianoforte is to the fingers of a musical poet like Paderewski; for the fingers of a great virtuoso are the ambassadors of his soul.
Melody and Accompaniment on One Instrument.
This personal, one-man control of the instrument has been of inestimable value to the pianoforte in establishing itself in its present unassailable position. Moreover, in controlling it the pianist commands all the resources of music. With his two thumbs alone he can accomplish what no player upon any other instrument 34 in common use is capable of doing with all ten fingers. He can sound together the lowest and the highest notes in music, for all the notes of music as we know it simply await the pressure of the fingers upon the keys of the pianoforte. It is the one instrument capable of power as well as of sweetness and grace which places the whole range of harmony and counterpoint at the disposal of one player. A vocalist can sing an air, but can you imagine a vocalist singing through an entire programme without accompaniment? After half a dozen unaccompanied songs the singing even of the greatest prima donna would become monotonous for lack of harmony. The violin and violoncello, next to the pianoforte the most frequently heard instruments in the concert hall, labor under the same disadvantage as the singer. They are dependent upon the accompaniment of others.
The pianist, on the other hand, has the inestimable advantage of being able to play melody and accompaniment on one instrument at the same time—all in one. While singing with some of his fingers the tender melodic phrase of a Chopin nocturne, he completes with the others the exquisite weave of harmony, and reveals the musical fabric to us in all its beauty. Moreover, it is the pianist himself who does this, not some one else at his signal, which the intermediary possibly may not wholly understand. When Paderewski is at the pianoforte we hear Paderewski—not some one else of a less sensitive temperament whom he is directing with a baton. A poet is at the instrument and we hear the poet. A poet may be at the conductor’s desk—but in the orchestra that is required for the interpretation 35 of his musical conceptions poets usually are conspicuous by their absence. Even great singers suffer because their accompaniments are apt not to be as sensitive of temperament as they are; and it is a fact that the grace and beauty of Schubert’s “Hark, Hark, the Lark” never have been so fully revealed to me by a singer as by Paderewski’s playing of Liszt’s arrangement of the song, because the pianist is able to shade the accompaniment to the most delicate nuances of the melody. How delightful, too, it is to go through the pianoforte score of a Wagner music-drama and, as you play the wonderful music—all placed within the grasp of your ten fingers—watch the scenic pictures and the action pass in imagination before your eyes in your own music room without the defects inseparable from every public performance, because the success of a performance depends upon the co-operation of so many who do not co-operate. Yes, the pianoforte is the king of instruments because it is the most independent of instruments and because it makes him who plays upon it independent.