One work may be signalized as marking a keen instinct for pianistic effects, as really pointing to some such treatment of the keyboard as Chopin, by reason of his immortal fancy, made unsurpassable, perfect. This is the concerto in A minor. Here, as we should expect, he indulged himself in weaving elaborate show-figures over an orchestral groundwork of little or no musical value. But the show-figures are often brilliantly effective. For example, after the piano has played the second theme in the first movement, there follows a long quasi-solo passage of mixed double and single notes, which, trivial as it may be as music, gives what one might call a lot of jolly good fun. Notice the wide spacing here and there, the frequent expeditions into the highest registers, the marches from bottom to top and the oily trickling back to middle again. Then in the development section there is good fun too; and there is a coda which demands the wrist of a virtuoso such as Chopin or Liszt, instantaneous skips of the arm, runs for both hands in thirds, all remarkably fluent and all sprung right from the nature if not the soul of the instrument.
The adagio is, of course, flaccid worthlessness; but the final rondo has no little musical charm, and, as far as treatment of the pianoforte goes, is not at all unworthy of Liszt. The triplet rhythm is in itself brilliantly maintained; there are series of fourths and sixths, triplet figures very widely spaced, and again single and double notes mixed in the same group, runs in thirds, chromatic thirds, double trills, a profusion, in fact, of most of the virtuoso’s stock in trade, all gracefully and brilliantly displayed.
It will be noticed that the best of it is sheer figure work, without pianoforte accompaniment, or lightly supported by the orchestra. And this may point to one of the marks of its mediocrity as a whole, one of the reasons why it sounds, after all, laughably old-fashioned in many measures. This is no other than the lack of variety, of skill, and of taste in accompaniment figures. In one of the unquestionably effective passages already referred to—the first solo passages for the piano in the first movement, after the second theme—the right-hand work is modern; but the left hand has only the vapid, commonplace tum-tum scheme of single note and chord. Not only is this formula repeated flatly, without attempt at variety, in blissful ignorance of its unworthiness; even the very notes are repeated as far as it is possible to go without changing the harmony.
Here the question may arise as to whether this monotonous device is more contemptible than the Alberti bass. The answer is that the Alberti bass is essentially a harmonic formula. Its use makes a certain series of harmonies vibrate under a melody. Its outline need not, should not, be clear-cut, its notes must not be played evenly and unvaryingly. Here, over this tum-tum figure, we have no melody, but a series of effects; and the tum-tum figure does not serve primarily to furnish harmony, but to keep up a commonplace rhythm to which the figures add no diversion. And, whereas the Alberti bass is a flexible device, this is rigid. It can be lightly played, but, even if unobtrusive, is necessarily commonplace.
But Hummel on the whole contributed considerably to the technique that belongs specially to the pianoforte, and most of his contributions have a grace that makes them pleasant even while his inspiration is perhaps often lower than mediocre. He was by many regarded as the equal of Beethoven, a delightful proof of the power of pleasant, lively sound to intoxicate.
A contemporary of Hummel highly praised by Beethoven was J. B. Cramer, son of a well-known German musical family. He was another of Clementi’s pupils. He, too, had the clear and even touch; but his compositions are less effective than Hummel’s, probably because he had a more serious ideal of music. Both as a pianist and as a composer he was famous in his day; now he has but little fame left him except what still hangs over the Studies he wrote. In the words of A. Marmontel,[31] we salute in him the eldest son of Clementi, the direct representative, the authorized furtherer of his school. He wrote, among other things, one hundred and five sonatas. They are of the past; but the studies, particularly the first sixteen, are still useful, not only in training the fingers, but in inculcating some sense of good style into the brain of the student.
John Field is still another pupil of Clementi, the favorite pupil according to well-founded tradition. He was born in Dublin in 1782 and died in Moscow in 1837. His addiction to good wines and whiskey, and a consequent corpulence, broke down his health and his art. But he was at one time one of the most beloved of pianists. With him it was not only clearness and evenness of touch; there was poetry, tenderness, and warmth as well. He was, of course, of the sentimental school, the foremost of the professional pianists of that day in power of expression. On a concert tour to Italy, undertaken toward the end of his life and culminating in a long, miserable illness, he met with little success; but elsewhere in Europe he exerted a charm upon audiences which was almost hypnotic. His playing was wholly unperturbed by signs of violent emotion, dreamy and indolent, yet of most unusual sweetness and delicacy. He had enormous success as a teacher, especially in Russia, where a great part of his life was spent; and the mark he left upon the art of playing and of composing for the pianoforte has never been wholly obliterated.
Most of his compositions have been neglected, or forgotten. They include seven concertos, four sonatas, numerous rondos, sets of variations, dances, and twenty or more little pieces to which he gave the title of Nocturnes. These nocturnes are a new and a conspicuous appearance in music. By them he is still remembered, by them a fairly distinct style and form of pianoforte music were introduced. They were indolently composed, negligently published, scattered here and there over Europe; but they made an indelible impression upon men and women of that day, especially upon those who had heard him play them himself, and must be recognized as the prototype of the countless ‘nocturnes,’ ‘songs without words,’ ‘reveries,’ ‘eclogues,’ and ‘idylls’ which have since been written.
Just what distinguishes them from earlier works for the pianoforte it is not easy to say exactly. The form, for one thing, seems new. They are for the most part short, often not more than two pages long. They consist of three sections, a long flowing melody, a contrasting section which is for the most part melodious too, and a return to the opening melody, commonly elaborated. There is in most of them a little coda as well. Most short pieces of the day, and even of an earlier time, were in the well-known forms of rondos or simple dances, from which these are obviously quite distinct. But as far as form goes they are not very different from the aria, except in that the middle section generally maintains the accompaniment figures of the first section and essentially the same mood as well, so that there is little appreciable sense of demarcation. Other short pieces to which one looks for a possible origin, such as those of Couperin and the preludes of Bach, are far more articulate and far less lyrical. The sonatas of D. Scarlatti and the Bagatelles of Beethoven are mostly pieces in two sections, each repeated. The same is true of the Moments musicals of Schubert. In the nocturnes of Field no distinct feature of form is obtrusive. The intellectual element is wanting. There is no attempt at crispness of outline, or antithesis or balance. They seem to be an emanation of mood or sentiment, not a presentation of them. Hence they represent a new type in music, one which has little to do with emotions or ideas, with their arrangement or development, but lets itself flow idly upon a mood.
In style they are wholly lyrical. The accompaniment is usually monotonous and unvaried, but always flexible. Here, then, one looks to find the Alberti bass; and here it presents itself most clearly in the second stage of its development. The harmonic stream on which the melody floats along is a series of chords broken into their constituent parts so that they may be kept in a constant and gentle vibration. But, whereas the Alberti bass in its first stage was a device applied to the harpsichord and for that reason was always close within the span of the hand, here in its second stage, now adapted to the pianoforte, it has been expanded. The pedal can now be counted upon to blend the relatively wide figures into one harmonic whole. Therefore, instead of the original close grouping, we now find this wider one: