The First Romantic Composers.
In music, as in other arts, periods overlap. We have seen that during Bach’s life Scarlatti in Italy was laying the foundations of the harmonic system and shaping the outlines of the sonata form which was to develop through Philipp Emanuel Bach, Haydn and Mozart and find its greatest master in Beethoven. Likewise, 111 even while Beethoven was creating those works which are the glory of the classical period, two of his contemporaries, Carl Maria von Weber, who died one year before him, and Franz Schubert, who survived him by only a year, were writing music which was destined to turn the art into new channels. Weber (1786-1826) is indeed regarded as the founder of the romantic school through his opera “Der Freischütz.” It seems to me, however, that Schubert (1797-1828) contributed quite as much to the new movement through his songs, while the contributions of both to the pianoforte are important. Weber was a finished pianist, had an enormous reach (he could stretch a twelfth), and besides utilizing the facility thus afforded him to add to the brilliancy of pianoforte technique (as in his well-known “Concert Piece for Piano and Orchestra”), he deliberately, in some of his compositions, ignored the sonata form and wrote a “Momento Capriccioso,” a “Polonaise,” a “Rondo Brilliant,” a “Polacca Brilliant” and the fascinating “Invitation to the Dance.” The last, even in its original form and without the elaborations in Tausig’s version of it, and the “Concert Piece” still are brilliant and effective numbers in the modern pianoforte repertoire. Considering the age in which they were composed, their freedom from pedantry is little short of marvelous.
Schubert’s Pianoforte Music.
Schubert was not a virtuoso and passed his life almost in obscurity, but we now recognize that, although he lived but thirty-one years, few composers wrought 112 more lastingly than he. Of course, the proper place for an estimate of his genius is in the chapter on song, but as a pianoforte composer he is, even to this day, making his influence more and more felt. Living in Vienna, Beethoven’s city, and a fervent admirer of that genius, it was natural that he should have composed sonatas, and there is a whole volume of them among his pianoforte works. Nevertheless, so original was his genius and so fertile, that, in addition to his numerous other works, he composed eight impromptus, among them the highly poetic one in G flat major (Opus 42, No. 2), usually called “The Elegy”; another in B flat major (Opus 142, No. 3), which is a theme with variations, some of them brilliant, others profoundly expressive; and the beautifully melodious one in A flat major; six dainty “Moments Musicals”; the exquisite little waltz melodies from which Liszt fashioned the “Soirées de Vienne”; the “Fantasia in G,” from which the popular minuet is taken; and the broadly dramatic “Fantasia” on a theme from his song, “The Wanderer,” for which Liszt wrote an orchestral obbligato, thus converting it into a highly effective and thoroughly modern fantasy for pianoforte and orchestra. These detached compositions are as eloquent in their appeal to-day as if they had been written during the last ten years instead of during the first quarter of the last century. They are melodious with the sustained melody that delights the modern ear. There is not, as in the sonata form or, for that matter, in all the classical music that Schubert heard around him, the brief giving out of a theme, then an episode, then another brief theme and so on, all couched in the formulas in which the classicists delighted, 113 but instead of these postulates of formality, melody fully developed and wrought out by one who reveled in it and was willing that his hearers should revel in it as well. To distinguish between the classicists and this early romantic composer, whose work survives in all its freshness and beauty to this day, it may be said that their music was thematic—based on the kind of themes that lent themselves to formal working out as prescribed by the sonata formula; whereas these detached pieces of Schubert are based on melodies—long-drawn-out melodies, if you wish, and be grateful that they are—that conjure up mood pictures and through their exquisite harmonization exhale the very fragrance of romanticism.
Naturally, the sonatas from his pen are more set. Nevertheless, so long as it seems that we must have sonatas on our recital programs, the neglect of those by Schubert is shameful. I am willing to stake his sonata No. 5, in A minor, against any sonata ever written, and from several of the sonatas single movements can be detached which I should think any pianist would be glad to add to his repertoire. Among these is the lithesome scherzo from the sonata No. 10, in B flat major, and the beautiful slow movement (Andante sostenuto) from the same work.
Schubert also wrote many valuable pianoforte duets, among them several sets of marches and polonaises and an elaborate and stirring “Divertissement à l’Hongroise,” which last seems to foreshadow the “Hungarian Rhapsodies” of Liszt. In these and the detached pianoforte solo pieces a special value lies in that they do not appear to have been 114 composed as a protest against the sonata form, but spontaneously and without a thought on Schubert’s part that he was doing anything in any way remarkable. They are expressions of musical feeling in the manner that appealed to him as most natural. The “Moments Musicals” especially are little mood pieces and impressionistic sketches with here and there a bit of realism. Who, for example, is apt to forget Essipoff’s playing of the third “Moment” in Hungarian style, with a long crescendo and diminuendo (the same effect used by Rubinstein, when he played his arrangement of the “Turkish March” from Beethoven’s “Ruins of Athens”), so that it seemed as if a band of gypsies approached from afar, danced by, and vanished in the distance? Thoroughly modern is Schubert, a most modern of the moderns, whether we listen to his original pianoforte compositions, or to the Schubert-Liszt waltzes, or “Hark, Hark, the Lark,” “To Be Sung on the Water” (barcarolle) and other songs of his which have been arranged for the pianoforte by Liszt.
Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words.”
Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, the musical idol of his day and now correspondingly neglected, contributed to the romantic movement his “Songs Without Words,” short pieces for the pianoforte and aptly named because their sustained melody clearly defined against a purposely subordinated accompaniment gives them the character of songs, in the popular meaning of the word. Mendelssohn was a fluent, gentlemanly composer, whose music was readily understood and therefore attained 115 immediate popularity. But the very qualities that made it popular—its smoothness and polish and its rather commonplace harmlessness—have caused it to lose caste. The “Songs Without Words,” however, still occupy a place in the music master’s curriculum, forming a graceful and easily crossed bridge from classical to romantic music. I can remember still, when, as a lad, I received from my music teacher my first Mendelssohn “Song Without Words,” the G minor barcarolle, how it seemed to open up a new world of music to me. Many of these compositions, which are unique in their way, still will be found to possess much merit. That they are polished little pieces and poetic in feeling almost goes without saying. The “Spring Song” may be one of the most hackneyed of pianoforte pieces and the same may be true of the “Spinning Song,” but it is equally true that the former is as graceful and charming as the latter is brilliant and showy. A tender and expressive little lyric is the one in F major (No. 22), which Joseffy frequently used as an encore and played with exquisite effect. A group of Mendelssohn’s “Songs Without Words” is never out of place on a pianist’s program. At least half a dozen of them, I think, are apt to survive the vicissitudes of many years to come. Mendelssohn wrote three sonatas, a “Sonata Ecossaies” (Scotch), several capriccios and other pieces for the pianoforte, besides two pianoforte concertos, of which the one in G minor is the stock selection of conservatory pupils at their graduation exercises and later at their début. With it they shoot the musical chutes.