Ludwig Berger. Pupil of Clementi; founder
of a widely influential piano-school at
Berlin. Lithograph by Wildt.
But it is not possible to draw a sharp line between the two groups. A Moscheles serves not less the spirit of Clementi than that of Hummel. The simplicity of Cramer, the counterpoint of Klengel, the plainness of Ludwig Berger, the intensity of Field, belong to the circle of Clementi’s influence. Berger’s pupils, Greulich, Heinrich Dorn, Wilhelm Taubert, Albert Löschhorn, whose studies still live, carry this style down to our own time. The teaching of Hummel lived on in Ferdinand Hiller, Benedict, Wilmers, Baake, Ernst Pauer, the Viennese Pixis. While Beethoven left behind him as actual pupils only the Archduke Rudolf and Ferdinand Ries, a respectable imitator, his temporary pupil Czerny passed over into the wake of Hummel, and brought the Viennese style to a final victory. Kalkbrenner, Moscheles, Weber, Liszt, Thalberg, Döhler, Madame Oury, Madame Pleyel, Theodore Kullak, Pollini, of whom many belong externally to Clementi’s school, passed as apostles of Viennese technique to all lands from St Petersburg to London, from Paris to Milan.
Certain traditions of musical coteries and centres of instruction exhibit with this international character some more or less important local groups. In Prague men adored Tomaschek, the composer of Eclogues and Rhapsodies; Dionysius Weber, the first director of a Conservatorium there; and his successor Kittl. From Tomaschek’s school proceeded Alexander Dreyschock, the specialist of the left hand; Ignaz Tedesco, the “Hannibal of octaves”; and Schulhoff, the fashionable composer. In the middle of the century the Prague tradition was upheld by Proksch.
In Frankfort lived Vollweiler, who enjoyed a widespread renown as a teacher, and later went to St Petersburg; and Aloys Schmitt, whose delicate Études have been taken up by Bülow into his great collection of educational pieces.
Vienna alternates, but never loses in wealth. Berlin and St Petersburg as yet produced no fixed or permanent school. Leipzig takes its colour from the foundation of the Conservatorium with Mendelssohn and Moscheles and their fellow-citizen Schumann. England, from Clementi to Moscheles, imported a constant succession of Continental artists. The influence of the Conservatorium runs far and wide. A Strassburger named Hüllmandel, who took up his abode in Paris in 1776, had started clavier-instruction there. His pupil Jadin was director of the piano at the new Conservatoire. For forty-six years after 1797, Adam, whose name we remember because of his improved piano-school, carried on his labours in Paris. He was a tasteful professor, and brought the Parisian renown to its height. Kalkbrenner, the acrobat, succeeded him. Adam’s colleague, Pradher, was the teacher of those worst of fashionable composers, Herz, Hünten, Rosellen, shallowest and emptiest of musicians. Within the same walls was a Chopin!
The life of the great virtuosos is a reflection of the unrest inseparable from their calling. It is indeed no longer a life of adventure, as with Marchand and Froberger; there is method in the madness. The life of the executant, no less than the execution, has found its form. The concert-campaigns are the foundation; the warrior returns to his home at greater and greater intervals; until at last, when delight in recitals has waned along with the pliancy of the fingers, some resting-place or other is found—a share in a piano-manufactory or a steady round of instruction. During the campaigns instruction also takes a kind of locomotive form; devoted pupils follow the master, and leave him at fitting places, to pitch their tents there and make room for other peregrinating pupils. Or, on the other hand, pupils swarm from all parts of the earth to a place which the Master is always leaving, but to which he constantly returns—like the summer students of German universities—a type of professional existence of which Liszt’s Weimar period gives perhaps the most famous exemplification.
John Field, 1782-1837.
Steel engraving by C. Mayer.
Muzio Clementi (1752-1832) was the first to exhibit this form of virtuoso-life on the great scale. Born in Italy, he found a home in London through the support of a wealthy Englishman; but he was far from showing the sedentary character of a Bach, a Couperin, or a Beethoven. Virtuosity impels to travel, as composition keeps a man at home. The difference which we observed between the sensitive anchorite Bach and the cosmopolitan popularity-hunter Handel, appears again between Beethoven and these executants. Mozart was too many-sided, and besides he died too young, to become a universal teacher of the piano; but Clementi lived almost three generations, during which half Europe grouped itself round him and his pupils. Down to 1780 he was still “cembalist” at the London Italian opera; during the next ten years he undertook two great tours, one to Vienna, the other to Paris. Meanwhile he became partner in an English piano-firm, which failed, whereupon he founded one of his own along with Collard. He set out for St Petersburg with his pupil Field; left him there; but on the way gained two new pupils, Berger and Klengel, whom also he established in St Petersburg. On one of his tours at Berlin he married, only to lose his wife shortly after. In 1810 he made another circular tour through Vienna and Italy. He spent another whole winter in Leipzig, and married a second time. His last years, when the world had outgrown him, he spent quietly in London.