Liszt’s piano style was not born ready made. Although he captured Paris as an infant prodigy when he first went there, he had an immense amount of maturing and developing to do. ‘It is due in great measure to the example of Paganini’s violin playing that Liszt at this time, with slow, deliberate toil, created modern piano playing,’ says Dr. Bie. ‘The world was struck dumb by the enchantment of the Genoese violinist; men did not trust their ears; something uncanny, inexplicable, ran with this demon of music through the halls. The wonder reached Liszt; he ventured on his instrument to give sound to the unheard of; leaps which none before him had ventured to make, “disjunctions” which no one had hitherto thought could be acoustically united; deep tremolos of fifths, like a dozen kettle-drums, which rushed forth into wild chords; a polyphony which almost employed as a rhythmical element the overtones which destroy harmony; the utmost possible use of the seven octaves in chords set sharply one over another; resolutions of tied notes in unceasing octave graces with harmonies hitherto unknown of the interval of the tenth to increase the fullness of tone-color; a regardless interweaving of highest and lowest notes for purposes of light and shade; the most manifold application of the tone-colors of different octaves for the coloration of the tone-effect; the entirely naturalistic use of the tremolo and the glissando; and, above all, a perfect systematization of the method of interlacing the hands, partly for the management of runs, so as to bring out the color, partly to gain a doubled power by the division, and partly to attain, by the use of contractions and extensions in the figures, a fullness of orchestral chord-power never hitherto practised. This is the last step possible for the piano in the process of individualization begun by Hummel and continued by Chopin.’
The earliest of Liszt’s published études, published in 1826, are now difficult to obtain. They were the public statement of his pianistic creed, the ultimatum, so to speak, of the most popular pianist of the day to all rivals. They seemed to represent the utmost of pianistic skill. Then, in 1832, came Paganini to Paris, and Liszt, with his customary justice toward others, recognized in him the supreme executant, and, what was more significant, the element of the true artist. Inevitably the experience reacted on his own art. He adapted six of Paganini’s violin caprices for piano, achieving a new ‘last word’ in pianoforte technique. These studies still hold their place in piano concerts, especially the picturesque ‘Campanella.’ In 1838 Liszt sought to mark the progress of his pianism to date by publishing a new arrangement of his earliest études, under the name of Études d’exécution transcendante. These, while primarily technical studies, are also the work of a creative artist. The Mazeppa was a symphonic poem in germ (later becoming one in actuality). The Harmonies du Soir, experimenting with ‘atmospheric’ tone qualities on the piano, is an ancestor of the modern ‘impressionistic’ school. The Étude Héroique foreshadows the Tasso and Les Préludes. The significant thing in this is the way in which Liszt’s creative impulse grew out of his mastery of the piano.
A predominant part of Liszt’s earlier activity has in recent times passed into comparative insignificance. We are nowadays inclined to sneer at his pompous arrangements of everything from Beethoven symphonies and Bach preludes to the popular operas of the day. But these arrangements, by which his pianistic method chiefly became known, were equally important in their effect on pianism and on musical taste. The name and fame of Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique went out among the nations chiefly through Liszt’s playing of his arrangement of it. Schubert’s songs, likewise, which one would suppose were possible only for the voice, were paraphrased by Liszt with such keen understanding of the melodic resources of the piano, and such pious regard for the intentions of Schubert, that Liszt’s piano was actually the chief apostle of Schubert’s vocal music through a great part of Europe. Liszt was similarly an apostle of Beethoven’s symphonies. It is eternally to his credit that Liszt, though in many ways an aristocrat in spirit, was never a musical snob; his paraphrases of Auber’s and Bellini’s operas showed as catholic a sense of beauty as his arrangements of Beethoven. He could bow to the popular demand for opera potpourris without ever quite descending to the vulgar level of most pianists of his day, though coming perilously near it. His arrangements were always in some degree the work of a creative artist, who could select his themes and develop them into an artistic whole. They were equally the work of an interpretive artist, for they frequently revealed the true beauties and meanings of an opera better than the conductors and singers of the day did.
As Liszt travelled about the world on his triumphal tours, or sojourned in the company of the Countess d’Agoult in Switzerland, he sought to confide his impressions to his piano. These impressions were published in the two volumes of the ‘Years of Pilgrimage,’ poetic musical pictures in the idiom of pianistic virtuosity. The first of these pieces was written to picture the uprising of the workmen in Lyons, following the Paris revolution of 1830. Thereafter came impressions of every sort. The chapel of William Tell, the Lake of Wallenstein, the dances of Venice or Naples, the reading of Dante or of Petrarch’s sonnets—all gave him some musical emotion or picture which he sought to translate into terms of the piano. The musical value of these works is highly variable, but at their best, as in certain of the grandiose Petrarch sonnets, they equal the best of his symphonic poems. In these works, too, his experiments in radical harmony are frequent, and at times he completely anticipates the novel progressions of Debussy—whole-toned scale and all. Along with the ‘Years of Pilgrimage’ may be grouped certain other large compositions for the piano, such as the two ‘Legends’ of St. Francis, the six ‘Consolations,’ the brilliant polonaises, the fascinating ‘Spanish Rhapsody,’ and the grandiose Funerailles. All of these works are still frequently played by concert pianists.
The two grand concertos with orchestra—in E flat major and A major—are of dazzling technical brilliancy. In the second in particular the pianistic resource seems inexhaustible. The thematic material is in Liszt’s finest vein and the orchestral accompaniment is executed in the highest of colors. In the second, too, Liszt not only connects the movements, as was the fashion of the day, but completely fuses them, somewhat in the manner that a Futurist painter fuses the various parts of his picture. Scherzo, andante, and allegro enter when fancy ordains, lasting sometimes but a moment, and returning as they please. In the same way is constructed the superb pianoforte sonata in B minor, a glorious fantasy in Liszt’s most heroic style. It is commonly said that as a sonata this work is structurally weak; it would be truer to say that as a sonata it has no existence. It is the nobility of the work, in its contrapuntal and pianistic mastership, that carries conviction.
The Hungarian Rhapsodies, perhaps Liszt’s most typical achievement, are universally known. They were the outcome of his visit to his native land in 1840, and of the notes he made at the time from the singing of the gypsies. His book, ‘The Gypsies and Their Music,’ is well worth reading for any who wish to know the real impulse behind the Rhapsodies. Liszt, beyond any of his time, understood the æsthetic and ethical import of folk-music, and knew how to place it at the foundation of all other music whatsoever. Without such an appreciation he could not have caught so accurately the distinctive features of Hungarian music and developed them through his fifteen rhapsodies without ever once losing the true flavor. In them the gypsy ‘snap,’ the dotted notes, the instrumental character, the extreme emphasis on rhythm, and the peculiar oriental scales become supremely expressive. Liszt is here, as he aspired to be, truly a national poet. The Lassan or slow movement of the second, and every note of the twelfth, the national hymn and funeral march which open the fourteenth, are a permanent part of our musical heritage. On the other hand, their real musical value is unhappily obscured by virtuoso display. They are, first and foremost, pieces for display, however much genuine life and virility the folk melodies and rhythms on which they are based may give them. As such they find their usual place at the end of concert programs, to suit the listener who is tired of really listening and desires only to be taken off his feet by pyrotechnics; as well as to furnish the player his final opportunity to dazzle and overpower.
VI
The romantic age produced many works in the quieter forms of chamber music, but, perhaps because these forms were quieter, was not at its best in them. Nearly all the German composers of the period, save Liszt, wrote quantities of such music. The string quartet was comparatively under a cloud after Schubert’s death, suffering a decline from his time on. But no quartets, save those of Beethoven, are finer than Schubert’s. He brought to them in full power his genius for melody. Moreover, he showed in them a genius for organization which he did not usually match in his other large works. In the best of his quartets he escaped the danger to which a lesser melodist would have succumbed—that of incontinently putting a chief melody into the first violin part and letting the remaining instruments serve as accompaniment In no musical type are all the voices so absolutely equal as in the string quartet; the composer who unduly stresses any one of the four is false to the peculiar genius of the form. But Schubert feels all the parts: he gives each its individuality, not in the close polyphonic manner of Bach, but in the melodist’s manner of writing each voice with an outline that is distinctive. In these works the prolixity which so often beset him is purged away; the musical standard is steadily maintained. The movements show steady development and coherence. The instruments are admirably treated with reference to their peculiar possibilities. Often the quartets are highly emotional and dramatic, though they never pass beyond the natural limitations of this peculiarly abstract type of music. In his search for color effects, too, Schubert frequently foreshadows the methods and feelings of modern composers, but these effects, such as the tremolo climax, are not false to the true nature of the instruments he is using. Some of Schubert’s chamber works still hold their place in undiminished popularity in concerts. A few make use of the melodies of some of his best songs, such as ‘The Wanderer,’ ‘Death and the Maiden,’ and Sei mir gegrüsst. The best are perhaps those in A minor, G major, and D minor. To these we must add the great C major quintet, which uses the melody of ‘The Trout’ in its last movement.
Contemporary with Schubert, and outliving him by a number of years was Ludwig Spohr (1784-1859), whose quartets number as many as those of Mozart and Beethoven put together. The only one which still holds its place in concert programs is that in G minor, opus 27. His quartets have the personal faults and virtues of their composer, being somewhat tenuous and mannered, and inclined to stress solo virtuosity. Schumann’s early quartets, especially the three in opus 41, show him very nearly at his best. These, written in the early years of his married life, after a deliberate study of the quartets of Beethoven, are thoroughly workmanlike, and are eminently successful as experiments in direct and ‘aphoristic’ expression. They rank among the best in string quartet literature. Not so much can be said for those of Mendelssohn. They were, of course, immensely popular in their time. But, though their style is polished, their content is not creative in the finer sense. And, strangely enough, their composer frequently committed in them faults of taste in his use of the instruments. The best to be said of them, as of much of the rest of Mendelssohn’s music, is that they were of immense value in refining and deepening the musical taste of the time, when the greater works of every type were caviar to the general.
In addition to the quartets of the romantic period we should mention the vast quantity of chamber music written for various combinations of instruments. Spohr in particular was very prolific, and his combinations were sometimes highly unusual. For instance, he has to his credit a nonet, four double quartets, a ‘nocturne’ for wind and percussion instruments, a sextet for strings and a concerto for string quartet with orchestral accompaniment. Mendelssohn’s octet for strings, opus 22, is fresh and interesting, especially in the scherzo, where the composer is at his best. And, to follow the great trios (piano, violin, and 'cello) of Beethoven, we have two trios, D minor and C minor, by Mendelssohn, and three trios, in D minor, F major, and G minor, by Schumann, of which the first is the best. The later Schumann sonatas for violin show only too clearly the composer’s declining powers.