International exchange became more active year by year. If we look to London, we see Johann Christian Bach at work, helping to give form to the Sonata; we observe Haydn and Pleyel in vigorous rivalry for the favour of the public; we see the virtuoso Clementi from Italy setting up a clavier-school. In Petersburg meanwhile lives the Englishman, Field, one of the chief nocturne-romancists, and Klengel and Berger, the Germans, all three brought out by Clementi. Next we see there also J. W. Hässler, the ex-hatter, who has left behind such agreeable works that Bülow regarded him as a good intermediary between Mozart and Beethoven. In Paris the opera is the favourite agent of musical pleasure. With Gluck the old quarrel between the Italian and the northern manner is renewed. Chamber-music retreats into the back-ground. Schobert and Eckard, decorative musicians, are hardly known beyond the border; and Adam and Kalkbrenner, who restore the fame of French clavier-technique, leave productive art on one side.
In Vienna there is a swarm of prominent figures. Gradually the city is preparing itself for the state of things which in 1820 W. C. Müller thus describes in one of his “Letters to German Friends”: “It is incredible how far the enthusiasm for music, and especially for skill on the piano, is now being carried. Every house has a good instrument. The banker Gaymüller has five by different makers; and the girls especially play a great deal.” Indeed, a glance at the society of Vienna at that time shows us innumerable ladies, ranging from the merest amateurs to the maturest artistic performers, thronging round the great and the mediocre alike. Even Beethoven, the misanthrope, sees himself surrounded by them; he cannot keep from them, nay, he often does not choose to do so. The Baroness Ertmann, Julia Guicciardi, Nanette Streicher, are some of the actual persons of the fair sex, who, amid innumerable legendary beings, hovered about the Master. As usual where social life forms the basis of culture, the ladies come to the front. Invitations fly in bewildering profusion; the great houses exchange their guests; new compositions are made known in the salons before they find a publisher; and when they are published, old acquaintances become subscribers. This narrow circle gives a great opportunity for the advance of chamber-music. An accurate observer will notice how the modern international musical public slowly develops itself from this old-fashioned, close corporation.
The names of the best teachers are in every mouth. Czerny, who was destined to raise Vienna technique to its height, and to become the teacher of a Liszt, tells us in his Memoirs who were known as the best teachers in Vienna at the commencement of the century: “Wölffl, distinguished by his bravura-playing; Gelinek, universally popular for his brilliant and elegant execution; Lipawsky, a great sight-player, renowned for his performance of Bach’s fugues. I still remember how Gelinek once told my father that he was invited out for an evening to break a lance with a foreign player. ‘We mean to hew him in pieces,’ said Gelinek. Next day my father asked Gelinek how the fight of yesterday had gone. ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘I shall remember yesterday’s fight. The young man has a devil. I never heard such playing. He improvised fantasias on an air I gave him, as I never heard even Mozart improvise. Then he played compositions of his own, which are in the highest degree wonderful and grand, and he brings out of the piano effects the like of which we never heard of!’ ‘Ah,’ said my father, astonished, ‘what is this man called?’ ‘He is,’ said Gelinek, ‘a little, gloomy, dark, and stubborn-looking young fellow, and he is called Beethoven.’”
Beethoven was discontented. He knew what lay within him, and yet could not help seeing how the crowd preferred to shout itself hoarse over the brilliant exponents of technique, then beginning to swarm over Vienna. He was brought into a contest not only with Gelinek, but with Wölffl, who was renowned for his abnormally long fingers. Such contests are a mark of the times. As yet the division of labour between composers and interpreters had not been introduced. Playing and invention had a more intimate association. The following is the programme of the “Academy,” which Mozart performed in 1770 at Mantua: “First, a symphony of his own composition; secondly, a pianoforte concerto, which he will play at sight; thirdly, a sonata just placed before him, which he will provide with variations and afterwards repeat in another key. Then he will compose an aria to words given to him, sing it himself, and accompany it on the clavier. Next, a sonata for the cembalo on a motive supplied him by the first violin[111]; a strict fugue on a theme to be selected, which he will improvise on the piano; a trio, in which he will take the violin part all’improviso; and, finally, the last symphony of his own composition.” No sharper contrast can be conceived than this performance offers to the modern concert. Almost all is here arranged for sight-playing and improvisation, or for the instantaneous exertion of inventive or executant skill. There is in this still a good deal of the earlier notion of music, in which the conception and visible development of a theme was preferred to the performance of a completed work. Later, the demand for such instantaneous performances gradually disappears. In Mozart the cadenza at the conclusion of the concerto-movements remained as the last refuge of the improviser in the written-out piece. Beethoven insisted that his E flat major concerto should be performed without an improvised cadenza.
At a period in which instantaneous performances were so popular, contests of the kind mentioned above were not misplaced. But Beethoven had more to suffer in them than others, since his genius had already outgrown them. He was a poet who loved to live apart and to offer his gifts in a more intimate fashion. How wonderfully did that very deafness, which turned his genius inward, preserve him in later years from public playing and conducting! But, before, he had been forced to enter the lists not only with Wölffl, with Gelinek, with the renowned technist Hummel, but actually with so contemptible an artist as Steibelt. This Steibelt was one of the disgraces of the age. Bespattered with praise, he rushed through Europe with his trashy compositions, his battles, thunder-storms, Bacchanals, which he played ad libitum, while his wife struck the tambourine in concert with him. The populace was enraptured, for Steibelt and Madame tickled their nerves with sparkling shakes and tremolos. At the house of the Count von Fries he fell in with Beethoven. A quintett of Steibelt’s and the B flat major trio of Beethoven’s (Op. 11) were played. In the latter occur the variations on a theme of Weigl, from the opera L’Amor Marinaro. Beethoven was out of humour and would not play. A week later the same company met again. On this occasion a quintett by Steibelt is again played, and to it Steibelt adds a series of wild clattering variations on the same theme of Weigl. Such “Leit-motive” attacks are familiar in these contests. It is well known that underlying Mozart’s Zauberflöte overture is a theme which Clementi had already used in his B flat major Sonata. Clementi had played it in a contest with Mozart, who did not care much for the Italian “mechanical” artist. But Beethoven this time avenged himself bitterly on Steibelt. After a long persuasion from his friends he stepped negligently to the piano, struck with one finger a few notes from the just-played quintett, and twisted it in and out until he had produced a fantasia; but Steibelt, before the conclusion of the piece, left the room and never came near him again.
Thus Beethoven lived in a world with which he had no sympathy. It is true that there were some houses in which the higher class of music was openly cultivated. Such a house was that of Van Swietens, where Beethoven often played to a late hour from Bach’s Wohltemperiertes Klavier. But the multitude, whose musical horizon was bounded by the Italian opera, occupied itself with the glitter and splash of the executants. In such a city old Diogenes might have sought long for a man. A composer of the best class, Friedrich Wilhelm Rust, who in the midst of his capriccios in the style of Philip Emanuel often showed features reminding us of Beethoven, died at Dessau in 1796 alone and inglorious. A Franz Schubert lived close by Beethoven, but no one knew of his existence. Those who are heard of are virtuosos and writers for the pianoforte. Dussek, however, is of importance not only from the technical point of view, but from that of true art. He is noteworthy also as the first musician to compose almost wholly for the piano, with or without accompaniment. How distant are the times when we could feel surprise when a piece appeared written for piano alone! And this man, within the limits of his genius, made the poetry of the piano into a life-work. It is as if for the first time an anticipation of Chopin rose before us; but the likeness is after all only in externals. Dussek is the bourgeois romancist, when he spends his whole year in the country with his lady-love; but he is the true son of the eighteenth century when he in turn attaches himself to successive princely patrons. Especially devoted was he to the musical Prussian Prince Louis Ferdinand, on whose death at Saalfeld he wrote a suitable composition. His style would seem to have been noble and full, and his pieces are more charming than was usual at the time. Unlike Hummel he was very partial to the pedal; and it is in his pages, perhaps, that we find it for the first time accurately employed. His works themselves are of all kinds and degrees of merit. When, led by his national temperament (he was a Czech), he gives full play to the dance forms in the last movement, he strikes a fine and fresh note. He was one of the first to use syncopations effectively. But he has also written a final movement, that of the E flat major sonata in 6/8 time, which has a true and solid worth over and above its dance-form. He is less attentive to his first movements, and his most famous sonata, that in A flat major, which he entitled “Retour à Paris,” disappoints in this regard our expectations. In his second movements he is quicker to light on tones which, by their tender character, linger in the memory; as above all in the slow movement of the D major in 2/4 time.
After all, if Dussek does not stand among the immortals, he yet, in intellect and power of invention, ranks among the lesser stars[112] to whom we owe the full elaboration of the popular forms. His style is soon grasped. We know one of his sonatas already as soon as we hear the first bars. A broad first theme gives us a good tune; then it goes smoothly flowing through grateful passages to the second theme in the dominant or relative key. Other runs give the fingers some further opportunity for bravura; perhaps a third scrap of melody peeps out, and we are at the landmark of the first double bar. Next some suitable free fantasia is arranged, which sounds more scholastic than it is; we pass with it through a series of related keys—until a motive already known, the first theme, brings us back again with a smooth glide to the beginning, from which point the movement practically repeats itself. In the following movements there is a longer melody adorned with variations. In the third a seductively familiar theme tickles our fancy, which at times spreads itself out in bravuras, or gives itself effect in a very poor imitation of a fugue.
Dussek.