Chopin and Other Musical Essays

by Henry T. Finck

Jahn surmises, doubtless correctly, that the reason why Mozart habitually delayed putting down his pieces on paper, was because this process, being a mere matter of copying, did not interest him so much as the composing and creating, which were all done before he took up the pen. "You know," he writes to his father, "that I am immersed in music, as it were, that I am occupied with it all day long, that I like to study, speculate, reflect." He was often absent-minded and even followed his thoughts while playing billiards or nine pins, or riding. Like Beethoven, he walked up and down the room, absorbed in thought, even while washing his hands; and his hair-dresser used to complain that Mozart would never sit still, but would jump up every now and then and walk across the room to jot down something, or touch the piano, while he had to run after him holding on to his pigtail.

Allusion has been made to the fact that it was almost always in the open air that new ideas sprouted in Mozart's mind, especially when he was travelling. Whenever a new theme occurred to him he would jot it down on a slip of paper, and he always had a special leather bag for preserving these sketches, which he carefully guarded. These sketches differ somewhat in appearance, but generally they contained the melody or vocal part, together with the bass, and brief indications of the middle parts, and here and there mention of a special instrument. This was sufficient subsequently to recall the whole composition to his memory. In elaborating his scores he hardly ever made any deviations from the original conception, not even in the instrumentation; which seems the more remarkable when we reflect that he was the originator of many new orchestral combinations, the beauty of which presented itself to his imagination before his ears had ever heard them in actuality. These new tone-colors, as Jahn remarks, existed intrinsically in the orchestra as a statue does in the marble; but it remained for the artist to bring them out; and that Mozart was bound to have them is shown by the anecdote of a musician who complained to him of the difficulty of a certain passage, and begged him to alter it. "Is it possible to play those tones on your instrument?" Mozart asked; and when he was told it was, he replied, "Then it is your affair to bring them out."

Beethoven's way of mental composing appears at first sight to differ widely from Mozart's. But if we had as many specimens of Mozart's preliminary sketches as we have of Beethoven's, the difference would perhaps appear less pronounced, and would to a large extent resolve itself into the fact that Beethoven did not trust his memory so much as Mozart did, and therefore put more of his tentative, or rough sketches, on paper. He always carried in his pockets a few loose sheets of music paper, or a number of sheets bound together in a note-book. If his supply gave out accidentally, he would seize upon any loose sheet of paper, or even a bill of fare, to note down his thoughts. In a corner of his room lay a large pile of note-books, into which he had copied in ink his first rough pencil-sketches. Many of these sketch-books have been fortunately preserved, and they are among the most remarkable relics we have of any man of genius. They prove above all things that rapidity of work is not a test of musical inspiration, and that Carlyle was not entirely wrong when he defined genius as "an immense capacity for taking trouble." In the "Fidelio" sketch-book, for example, sixteen pages are almost entirely filled with sketches for a scene which takes up less than three pages of the vocal score. Of the aria, "O Hoffnung," there are as many as eighteen different versions, and of the final chorus, ten; and these are not exceptional cases by any means. As Thayer remarks: "To follow a recitative or aria through all its guises is an extremely fatiguing task, and the almost countless studies for a duet or terzet are enough to make one frantic." Thayer quotes Jahn's testimony that these afterthoughts are invariably superior to the first conception, and adds that "some of his first ideas for pieces which are now among the jewels of the opera are so extremely trivial and commonplace, that one would hardly dare to attribute them to Beethoven, were they not in his own handwriting."

On the other hand these sketch-books bear witness to the extreme fertility of Beethoven's genius. Thayer estimates that the number of distinct ideas noted in them, which remained unused, is as large as the number which he used; and he refers to this as a commentary on the remark which Beethoven made toward the close of his life: "It seems to me as if I were only just beginning to compose." And Nottebohm, who has studied these sketch-books more thoroughly than any one else, thinks that if Beethoven had elaborated all the symphonies which he began in these books we should have at least fifty instead of nine.

The sketch-books show that Beethoven was in the habit of working at several compositions at the same time; and the ideas for these are so jumbled up in his books that he himself apparently needed a guide to find them. At least, when ideas belonging together are widely separated he used to connect them by writing the letters VI over the first passage and DE over the second. He also used to write the word "better" in French on some pages, or else the figures 100, 500, 1,000, etc., probably, as Schindler thinks, to indicate the relative value of certain ideas.

When his mind was in a creative mood, Beethoven was as completely absorbed (or "absent-minded," as we generally say) as Mozart. This is illustrated by an amusing trait described by his biographers. "Beethoven was extremely fond of washing. He would pour water backwards and forwards over his hands for a long time together, and if at such times a musical thought struck him and he became absorbed, he would go on until the whole floor was swimming, and the water had found its way through the ceiling into the room beneath" (Grove). Consequently, as may be imagined, he not infrequently had trouble with his landlord. He was constantly changing his lodgings, and always spent the summer in the country, where he did his best work. "In the winter," he once remarked to Rellstab, "I do but little; I only write out and score what I have composed in the summer. But that takes a long time. When I get into the country I am fit for anything."

On account of his deafness, Beethoven affords a striking instance of the power musicians have of imagining novel sound effects which they never could have heard with their ears. In literature we blame a writer who, as the expression goes, "evolves his facts from his inner consciousness;" but in music this proceeding is evidence of the highest genius, because music has only a few elementary "facts" or prototypes, in nature. Beethoven was deaf at thirty-two. He never heard his "Fidelio," and for twenty-five years he could hear music only with the inner ear. But musicians are in one respect more fortunate than painters. If Titian had lost his eyesight, he could never have painted another picture; whereas Beethoven after losing his principal sense still continued to compose, better than ever. Mr. Thayer even thinks that from a purely artistic point of view Beethoven's deafness may have been an advantage to him; for it compelled him to concentrate all his thoughts on the symphonies in his head, undisturbed by the harsh noises of the external world. And that he did not forego the delights of music is obvious from the fact that the pleasure of creating is more intense than the pleasure of hearing; and is, moreover illustrated by the great delight he felt in his later years when he read the compositions of Schubert (for he could not hear them) and found in them the evidence of genius, which he did not hesitate to proclaim.

In considering Beethoven's deafness, it is well to bear in mind the words of Schopenhauer: "Genius is its own reward," he says. "If we look up to a great man of the past we do not think, How fortunate he is to be still admired by all of us; but, How happy he must have been in the immediate enjoyment of a mind the traces of which refresh generations of men." Schumann, Weber, and others, repeatedly testify in their letters to the great delight they felt in creating; and at the time when he was arranging his "Freischütz" for the piano, Weber wrote, more forcibly than elegantly, that he was enjoying himself like the devil.

I have already stated that Weber, like Beethoven, generally got his new ideas during his walks in the country; and riding in an open carriage seems to have especially stimulated his brain, as it did Mozart's. The weird and original music to the dismal Wolf's-Glen scene in the "Freischütz" was conceived one morning when he was on his way to Pillnitz, and the wagon was occasionally shrouded in dense clouds.

A curious story is told by a member of Weber's orchestra, showing how a musical theme may be sometimes suggested by incongruous and grotesque objects. He was one day taking a walk with Weber in the suburbs of Dresden. It began to rain and they entered a beer garden which had just been deserted by the guests in consequence of the rain. The waiters had piled the chairs on the tables, pell mell. At sight of these confused groups of chairs and tables Weber suddenly exclaimed, "Look here, Roth, doesn't that look like a great triumphal march? Thunder! hear those trumpet blasts! I can use that—I can use that!" In the evening he wrote down what his imagination had heard, and it subsequently became the great march in "Oberon."