F. W. Marpurg, Theoretician and Clavier
Teacher. 1718-1795.
Like the princes in the seventeenth century, or the middle classes in the nineteenth, it was the nobles in the eighteenth who played the part of Maecenas; and under their patronage appears, for the first time, a precisely marked musical society. Here too, in music, the nobility became an invaluable link between the artistic court and that public interest in art which, it would seem, is the necessary condition of all future advance. Even in the didactic musical romance which old Kuhnau wrote in 1700 under the title of “The Musical Quack,” we miss the type of the amateur Maecenas. In the background, invisible, stands the prince who keeps the chapel; in the foreground there are only musicians and quacks. The amateur who is not a quack, the genuine dilettante, first attains importance in the beginning of the century; but very shortly the concerts which are given in the salons of the Fürnbergs, Esterhazys, and Schwarzenbergs, do more for the beneficial advancement of art than even the devotion of a keenly musical court such as that of Frederick the Great at first was. The greater courts, like Dresden and Munich, begin somewhat to decline, while the smaller advance, and in England, Italy, and elsewhere, the nobility, who are not unlike small sovereign princes, aid the spread and development of music. The nobility are soon followed by the gentry; but it was not till the Revolution had shattered the nobles that the bourgeois Maecenas steps upon the scene. In this displacement of old relations it was inevitable that the clavier should play its important part; in accordance with its social nature it advanced more and more from an accompanying or supplementary instrument into an independent centre of drawing-room existence, as well as of bourgeois evening parties. Thus, in the attractive and successful pieces of the generation from 1750 to 1800, its popularity was for the first time established. Old Bach had as yet been the most serious professional musician who had yielded to “galant” impulses; and his concessions to the popular taste were only by the way. The distinction between public improvisation on set themes, and public interpretation of written works, was not yet sharply defined. The player was at his highest when he extemporised variations or fugues on a given subject. Such had been the improvisations of Sebastian Bach; but the spirit of improvisation, as it lives in the works of Philip Emanuel, is something quite different. In him the hand directly follows the inner feeling, constructs easily and simply, and plays for the sake of the playing, not for the sake of the art. Before the clavier had become a social instrument, this division of labour between composers and players had become imperative; reproduction was bound to diverge into a separate branch. The amateur, on whom more and more the art depends, is incapable of composing, but he will, on his clavier, hear the works of the masters, which are now so numerous, or even play them himself. He desires to have acts of operas, arrangements of concertos, or many dainty short pieces. The old clavier-books, which we can trace from the Elizabethan Virginal Book to the volumes of Bach’s children, now gradually disappear. Instead of copying with its personal character, the press is more and more in requisition, and the musical treasury is more and more thrown open to the public. The engraving of notes, during the eighteenth century, rapidly improves, and the clefs and types become more simple. The ornamental devices become constantly more fixed, and the player has less and less liberty in his use of them. And whereas, in earlier times, the instruction-books did not always distinguish between composition and playing, now, since Couperin’s time, the instruction-book of pure playing became constantly more common; while Philip Emanuel, to whom, perhaps with justice, we trace the systematisation of the principles of modern clavier-playing, wrote a book on playing, and then waited eight years before publishing a second part on the thorough bass.
The extension of musical interest led further to such a multitude of musical magazines as even to-day is not to be found. For the most part they disappear after a few years, but we have, as a matter of fact, in a year’s issue of such a paper, a very fair picture of musical tendencies. I have before me a volume of the last of these, published in 1762, by George Ludewig Winter, in Berlin. It is well printed, with dainty rococo borders. Very amusing and characteristic is the sanguine Preface, in which also is to be discerned the inability of the German tongue to restrain itself while talking of our classics. “Music,” says the publisher, “serves either to delight with its mere art the professor, whether he be such by nature or by cultivation—as a well-built house, or a well-laid out garden, satisfies the connoisseur; or, on the other hand, it is the language of emotion. Then roar forth tones teeming with revenge, sorrow glides over the strings, passion frantically beats the air, joy revels in the blue æther, friendship and love sigh forth on the delicate notes, praise and thankfulness well from a full heart on the vigorous melody, or rise, cleaving the clouds on the tongues of men, to the very throne of the Almighty.”
The good man, with his fearful fluency, declares that he is going to bring forward much of the lighter kind—meaning what we call the dilettante class of music. The numbers appeared week by week, and the continuation was always postponed for the next, often at the most thrilling passages—in the approved style of the clever magazine. The authors’ names are only given when they are very well known. Among these distinguished men are many whose names have not remained in the memory of history—fashionable composers, such as every epoch has in plenty. But there are also Philip Emanuel Bach, Kirnberger, and many others of the great Bach School. Most of it is clavier-music. Operatic airs, which occasionally appear, are so arranged that the voice part, under which the words are printed, is played by the right hand, and the completing orchestral notes are written small in the upper staves. There are also popular songs in abundance. A French spirit breathes through these pages; a fashionable spirit of enjoyment. The short character-pieces, which the French loved so dearly to introduce with significant titles, are mingled plentifully with sonatas and rondos, arranged in the Italian manner. Under the character-pieces, in the appropriate places, as in the biblical stories of Kuhnau, the explanatory programme-text is printed. Thus in a piece called “La Spinoza,”[98] the developments are marked as being philosophic reflections on a certain theme. Two pieces, called “Wonderment” and “Youthful Joy,” easily explain themselves. In one piece entitled, “Two friends grumbling over their wine,” by the arrangement and form of the two voices, in right and left hands, is represented how they converse, console each other, gain courage, and wait for a friendly glance of fortune. The most humorous is a short clavier-piece, “A Compliment,” which, usually in two voices, exhibits the following spirited contents: “If you are well, I am charmed.” “Rather I am glad that I see you so well” (Repeated). “I have heard that you have been poorly: I am sorry to hear it.” “Heaven be praised I am recovered.” “But I am ashamed”—“allow me”——They quarrel who shall bring the chair, and finally sit down. “I recommend myself”—“and I recommend myself”—“to your friendship.”
It was precisely at this period, when the clavier first became truly popular, that its construction was rapidly and constantly improved. It was then that the separation of the two systems of mechanism—the so-called English, and the Viennese—took place. The names mean nothing, for both systems alike arose in Germany proper. The distinction lies in the fact that in the English the hammer rests on a separate bracket from which the key strikes it, while in the Viennese the hammer rests directly, though loose, on the end of the key-lever.[99]
Although Germany was so partial to the clavichord with its intimate intellectuality—a quality which even to-day we can only reproduce in its fulness by reproducing the clavichord—yet it was the German pianoforte which for a long time took the lead. It was one of the first triumphs of German manufacture, and perhaps precisely because so little manufacture lay in it. In Italy the invention of Cristofori had vanished without leaving a trace. So utterly indeed was it forgotten, that when Italy decided, though very tardily, to replace the Gravicembalo by the pianoforte, instruments of this construction were preferably brought out there with the notice, “built in the Prussian manner.” Alongside of the Silbermann pianofortes, those of Friederici of Gera—which were known as “Fort Bien” and were still built largely on the clavichord model—and those of Spath of Regensburg, enjoyed a great renown in the second half of the century. But soon, chiefly through emigration, the best manufactories were transported to foreign parts, and it is only in the latest advance of German industry, especially by the labours of Bechstein and Blüthner, that pianos built in Germany itself have again achieved a world-wide repute.
The great French, English, American, and Austrian piano-factories can almost all be traced back to Germans. The three great Parisian houses, those of Erard, Pleyel, and Pape, were founded by Germans. Steinway emigrated from Brunswick to build in America those pianos which are to-day regarded as the best. Johann Zumpe carried the hammer-clavier to England,[100] where it was played by German executants, and brought into repute. It was, however, English houses, with that of Broadwood at their head, that effected the improvements which have resulted in the appropriation of the name “English” to the mechanism of Silbermann.
Factories alone, however, would never have brought about the final victory of the piano if there had been no virtuosos to play them. Clementi in England, Mozart in Germany and Austria, were the workers who won the decisive triumph of the piano. Even Philip Emanuel Bach had much preferred the clavichord to the newer instrument. But Mozart, the first world-virtuoso, the idol of the concert hall, thinking solely of sound-effects in the great halls, never hesitated for a moment between clavicymbal and piano. In 1777, at the age of twenty-one, he made, at Augsburg, the acquaintance of Silbermann’s disciple, Stein, the inventor of the Viennese mechanism. This received the name of “Viennese” when Stein’s children came to Vienna, and there, along with Streicher, the well-known friend of Schiller, established the world-renowned business. Here in this family for the first time appears a new phenomenon in musical society. Round the king of clavier-builders and his musical wife, young Streicher and Nanette Stein, there moves a brisk circle of musical spirits. It is a type which in our time has further gained in importance. With the greater popularity of the art, the social standing of the piano manufacturer has risen; and nothing contributed more to the introduction of the piano into middle-class houses than the reputation of this much-envied Viennese coterie.
Old Stein and young Streicher are two clearly-marked types. The latter is a romantic spirit, raves over the just-played “Robbers” of his school-fellow Schiller, forms the plan of going to Hamburg to perfect himself in clavier-playing under Philip Emanuel Bach, but never gets there, since he spends all his time running from town to town with the restless Schiller. Then he gives music lessons; next he meets Nanette Stein, marries her, goes to Vienna, becomes manager of the factory, and makes the invention associated with his name, in which the hammers strike from above. Finally, he becomes a centre of Viennese musical life. What a contrast is this modern industrial prince to the old Stein, working like a mediæval crafts-master there in Augsburg at his claviers, and giving equal devotion to every single part! He has been sketched by Mozart in a well-known letter; and I reprint this picture of the last of the old patriarchal clavier-builders, because it is not less interesting as showing the type than as showing the condition of technique at that time.