Merely as regards pianoforte technique the period was a transitional one. Even the Beethoven sonatas as late as opus 27 were published for either harpsichord or pianoforte. Both Mozart and Beethoven were influenced by men who, in a narrow sense, seem far more than they to belong to a modern development. Clementi, for example, deliberately burned his harpsichords and clavichords behind him in the very year Beethoven was born, and from then on gave up his life to the discovery of new possibilities and effects upon the pianoforte, by which his pupils Cramer and Field paved the way for Chopin.
Yet, all signs to the contrary, the Viennese period remains a period of full fruition, and this because of the extraordinary genius of the men whose works have defined it. Each was highly and specially gifted and poured into forms already made ready for him a musical substance of rare and precious quality. In considering keyboard music we have to deal mostly with this substance, in fact with the musical expression of three unusual and powerful personalities.
It is to be regretted that Haydn and even Mozart have been in no small measure eclipsed by Beethoven. This is especially true of their keyboard music. It may be questioned whether this be any more just for being seemingly natural. There are many reasons to account for it. The most obvious is the more violent and fiery nature of Beethoven, his explicit and unusual trials. These, wholly apart from his music, will for ever make the study and recollection of him as a man of profound interest. Haydn can urge but a few young years of hardship for the human sympathy of generations to come. Mozart’s disappointments, so sickening to the heart that puts itself in tune with him, have after all but the ring of hard luck and merit disregarded, to which the weary world lends only a passing ear. But Beethoven’s passionate nature, his self-inflicted labor of self-discipline, his desperate unhappiness and the tragic curse of his deafness, are the stuff out of which heroes are made.
So his music, reflecting the man, is heroic in calibre. Even its humor is titanic. It will impress by its hugeness and its force many an ear deaf to more engaging and more subtle language. Its poignancy is unmistakable, nearly infallible in its appeal; so that Beethoven is a name with which to lay even the clod under a spell.
But another reason why Mozart and Haydn lie hidden or but partly perceived in the shade of Beethoven, is more recondite, is, in fact, paradoxical. This is no other than the extreme difficulty of their music. Clara Schumann, writing in her diary of the music of Richard Wagner, which she rejected in spite of the world’s acclaim, conceived that either she or the world at large had gone mad. To one who writes of the difficulties of Haydn’s and Mozart’s sonatas a similar idea is likely to occur. At the present day they are put into the hands of babes and sucklings, in whose touch, however, there is no wisdom. Yet if ever music needed a wise hand, it is these simple pieces; and a lack of wisdom has made them trivial to the world.
The art of the pianist should be, as Emanuel Bach declared, that of drawing from his instrument sounds of moving beauty, beautiful in quality, in line and in shading. His tools are his ten fingers which he must train to flexibility, strength and security. It is right that as soon as he can play a scale or shake a trill, he should put his skill to test upon a piece of music. So the teacher lays Haydn and Mozart under the clumsy little fingers of boy and girl. ‘Stumble along there on your way to great Beethoven, whom you must approach with firm and tested stride.’ That is the burden of the pædagogic lay. It echoes in the mind of riper age, Haydn and Mozart have been put aside, like the perambulator, the bib and the high table chair; or, like toys, are brought out rarely, to be smiled upon.
If they are toys, then maturity should bring a sense of their exquisite beauty and meaning, and may well shudder at the destruction youth made imminent upon them. This it all too rarely does, because only ten fingers in ten thousand can reveal the loveliness of these sonatas, and because, also, ears are rare that now delight in such a revelation. You must give to fingers the skill to spin sound from the keyboard that is like the song of birds, or, if more vocal, is more like the voice of fairies than the voice of man. It is easier to make thunder; and even mock thunder intimidates. So your player will pound Beethoven, and lightning will flash about his head as the sarcastic Heine fancied it about Liszt’s. Some will scent sacrilege and cover their ears from the noise. But let the soulless man play Mozart and his hearers will cover their mouths, as all well-bred people are trained to do when boredom seeks an outlet.
Technically Haydn and Mozart may be held to have condemned their music to the sort of galley-service it now performs. Both wrote perhaps the majority of their sonatas for the use of their pupils. Bach wrote the ‘Well-tempered Clavichord’ with what seems to be the same purpose; but Bach’s aim was constantly to educate and to expand the power of the students under his care; whereas both Haydn and Mozart may be often suspected of wishing rather to simplify their music than to tax and strengthen the abilities of their high-born amateurs. There is something comical in the fact that even with this most gracious of intentions both were occasionally accused of writing music that was troublesome, i.e., too difficult. Haydn may have been grieved to be found thus disagreeable. Mozart’s letters sometimes show a delicate malice in enjoyment of it. But one can hear Beethoven snort and rage under a similar reproach.
Yet the wonder is that sonatas so written should be today full of freshness and beauty. This they undoubtedly are. Composed perfunctorily they may have been, but the spirit of music is held fast in most of them, no less appealing for being oftener in smiles than tears. And if to evoke this spirit in all her loveliness from a box of strings chance to be the ideal of some player, let him take care to bring to the sonatas of Haydn and Mozart the most precious resources of his art and he will not call in vain.