A Canonic Impromptu, by J. N. Hummel,
from the original edition of his Pianoforte School.
The concerto pieces of Hummel stand in respect of intrinsic value below the solo pieces. His great concerto fantasia, “Oberon’s Magic Horn,” is a banal piece of bravura with artistic references to Oberon. The part of it demanding most execution is the great storm with its thunder and lightning on the piano—a somewhat different performance from the tame storm in the Fitzwilliam Virginal Book. But the solo pieces also are of unequal merit. Fashionable compositions, like the Polonaise “La Bella Capricciosa,” which was then eagerly heard, are no longer tolerated. Hummel at his best, as we know him in his immortal Sextet, lives in certain delicate turns, such as are common enough in Wagner’s earlier operas, but were then a style of the time, making use of the melody both of Mozart and of modern days. The better Hummel is also seen in certain Schumann-like movements, full of fire and feeling, such as the fresh pulsating Scherzo “all’antico” of Sonata Op. 106, or the concluding movement of Fantasia Op. 18. Perhaps the Bagatelles (Op. 107) are his most interesting clavier-piece. Even to-day they show no sign of age; there is not a dead note in them. In them the pupil of Mozart is seen in the dainty melodic lines, such as an Audran has revived in our day; but the forerunner of Liszt is equally visible. In the last Bagatelle, the “Rondo all’Ongarese,” he stands precisely between the two epochs. The true spirit of nationality, as Dussek so happily applied it in his sonatas, mingles with classical reminiscences, as the concluding phrase clearly shows. Fugato episodes, derived from tradition, are interwoven with surprising anticipations of that method of variation which works by diatonic movement—a method very familiar to us from Liszt’s Rhapsodies. Hummel then is a kind of Janus.
Czerny. Lithograph by Kriehuber, 1833.
Much more simple was Czerny, king among teachers, whose life and work were taken up with the enforcement of one great principle. Every piece must be played in that manner which is most natural and applicable to the case in hand, and which is fixed partly by the notes before us and partly by the execution. His genius for teaching was so cultivated that in a moment he could devise the right study for a student who exhibited any defect. How precisely he worked in such matters a glance at his “Higher Steps in Virtuosity” will show. The themes of the Études in the third volume are called: (1) seven notes against two or three; (2) five against three; (3) five against three in another manner; (4) passing of the fingers over the thumb; (5) passing under of the thumb with a quick alternation of the stretching and retraction of the fingers; (6) motion of certain fingers while the others remain stationary; (7) broken octaves legato. This is not the grammar of Hummel with its theoretical chess-play of possibilities; it is the method of Toussaint-Langenscheidt, which invents its exercises from the data of experience. In the great Piano School the exercises are always continued in the course of the instruction. The scales are recommended for daily preliminary practice, and duet-playing is drawn into the circle of regular exercise. It is, of course, impossible to review the whole enormous crowd of his works. In addition to the numerous general practice-pieces, which appeared in manifold combinations, there are the special pieces also: the school of velocity, of legato and staccato, of ornaments, of the left hand, of fugue-playing, of virtuoso-performance; the art of preluding, the introduction to fantasia playing, octave-studies, the practice of the full common chord and of the chord of the seventh in broken figures; and everything besides. It is a mighty arsenal of mechanical appliances. His works are numbered up to Op. 856; but all except the Studies are lost in oblivion; they are mere hack-work. Even the greater Studies are, in musical value, inferior to Cramer’s. Czerny’s great collections from previous masters are the work of a practical historian. Such are the arrangement of the Wohltemperiertes Klavier, the edition of Scarlatti, the arrangements of Beethoven, Mozart, or Mendelssohn for two or four hands; and the innumerable selections of the most brilliant passages from the works of masters from Scarlatti and Bach to Thalberg and Liszt. His practical History of Piano-playing—the first that ever appeared—was thrown into a didactic form and appended to the great “Art of Execution.” Every composer is treated from the point of view of playing, under six heads. Clementi is to be played with a steady hand, firm touch and tone, distinct and flowing execution, precise declamation; Cramer and Dussek cantabilmente, without glaring effects, with gentle legato and the due use of the pedal; Mozart with less pedal, clearly, staccato, with spirit and vigour; Beethoven and Ries characteristically, passionately, melodiously, with a view to the tout ensemble; Hummel, Meyerbeer, and Moscheles brilliantly, rapidly, and gracefully, with definition in the proper parts, and intelligent but elegant declamation. Thalberg, Liszt, and Chopin, the great innovators, form a class apart. Czerny’s astonishing genius for instruction embraces the whole field of the clavier, with a many-sided capacity that seems almost more than human. A greater teacher there never was than he. He gathers all into his net, even the works of his own pupils; he practises everything, even setting it for three or four pianos; he arranges everything, even isolated passages of great masters; he composes everything, even penny variations and Chinese rondos.
In Kalkbrenner we see the lowest type of the time. Externally a fine gentleman and artistic man of the world, he is inwardly hollow and vapid. It is hard even to give an idea of this extreme emptiness; but it is well illustrated in such a piece as the “Charmes de Berlin.” This great virtuoso won his triumphs in the worst kinds of salon-music as well as with all sorts of Études, Concertos, and Sonatas. Le Rêve, Le Fou, La Solitude, Dernières Pensées Musicales, La Mélancolie et La Gaité, La Brigantine, are some of these detestable compositions. But his opera fantasias touch the very nadir. Here a sort of sanction is given to an utter want of taste. After largo introductions, full of feeling, he slices favourite melodies into passages, till the contour of the air is utterly destroyed, and the commonest cadenzas are flung higgledy-piggledy into their artistic forms, and so we rush off into a sweep-dance. The fantasia, once the freest outcome of the musical soul, becomes a wretched conglomeration of fragments of Études. Kalkbrenner once remarked, as Ferdinand Hiller tells us, “Ze Tance is a tream, a referie; it begins with lofe, passion, despair, and it ends wid a military march.” The story is true enough.