The poetic thread or suggestion underlying many of his pieces is very slight. Nevertheless, it is not without value. Take, for instance, the beautiful "Marche de Nuit," a piece which opens with six lines of introduction, amounting practically to an excellent study of crescendo, the idea being to show the effect of the march-music in the extreme distance and its gradual approach. At length we come to the march itself, and it is a pleasant and agreeable melody, and the difficulty of the whole is no more than is now well within the powers of a pupil in the early fifth grade. The famous "Last Hope" is well known to all, and is one of the most persistent melodies which any American composer has produced in instrumental music. The introduction and the coda are both much too long, and can only be saved by a certain distinction in the manner of performing them. Mr. Wolfsohn said that such was the charm of Gottschalk's personality and touch that everything he played impressed itself and you remembered it a very long time. Dr. Mason tells me that in these pianissimo runs in alt, which abound in so many of his works, Gottschalk's fingers were like little steel hammers, the tone being perfectly clear and like a bell, but not pianissimo in the true sense of the term.
It seems puerile now that in his concerts Gottschalk could have made an effect with his famous piece "The Banjo," which is a very realistic transcription of a negro banjo performance, the banjo effect on the piano, in his case, I think, having been accomplished by the touch, whereas many others find themselves obliged to lay a sheet of music on the strings in order to impart to the vibrations the peculiar twang of the original.
Another and more favorable example of his talent is in the beautiful "Slumber Song," which can be had for voice or for piano alone. There is another class of pieces by Gottschalk which seem very peculiar at the present time. They are the rather loud and somewhat difficult concert fantasies called the "Bamboula," or "Negro Dance," and "Jerusalem," the latter being made upon certain melodies in Verdi's "I Lombardi." Another piece of his which made a great effect in his concerts and was a general favorite of students was the "Aeolian Murmurs," a pleasant melody with a lot of fine pianissimo work to represent the murmurs. Speaking of the misleading effect of the Gottschalk performances, I will mention that the well-known piece, "The Dying Poet," was played by him many and many a time in public, to the great pleasure of the audience; yet before we gather up stones to throw at the American concert audiences of the early '60's, let us not forget that within the past few years audiences have shown themselves equally vulnerable to the charm of Paderewski's "Minuet," a work in no respect superior to the slightest of our American pianist. In this case, as in the former, it is a question of the personality and appealing nature of the performer.
WILLIAM MASON.
The other American pianist born in the year 1829 had a totally different heredity, environment, and education. William Mason also showed his talent at an early age, and was seriously taught the piano under the direction of his father, the late very distinguished and eminent Dr. Lowell Mason, who at that time and for about twenty years later exerted a most commanding influence in Boston and the country at large. Mason's advance was so rapid that by the time he was thirteen or fourteen, or a little later, he appeared in public with orchestra in Boston, playing the Mendelssohn G minor concerto, and I think he had played the Weber "Concertstück." In the season of 1846 and 1847 he played the piano part in the chamber concerts given by the Harvard Musical Association. In 1849 he went to Leipsic and became a pupil in theory of the distinguished Moritz Hauptmann. Upon Hauptmann's death he went to Prague for a year with Dreyschock, and then to Liszt at Weimar. This was in 1851, or thereabouts, and here he remained some time. Returning to America in 1854 he removed to New York, and took the commanding position which he has almost ever since occupied as teacher and as concert pianist. While there are traces of American training in the musical compositions of Dr. Mason, these traces are very few, the general character of his work being distinctly German. His musical talent was strong upon the harmonic side, but upon the melodic side his imagination was not so free. He has produced several volumes of compositions, probably about one hundred in all, almost every one being elegantly written and well made, and many of them of a classical elegance of style. His reputation as a composer has suffered from his limiting his work always to the field of the salon, and especially to the piano. I believe he has never composed an original song, although he has arranged several which have been very useful indeed. It is as a composer for the piano that we have to speak of him.
The most sensational of the Mason pieces is his famous "Silver Spring," which was composed shortly after the late Scandinavian pianist, Haberbier, had visited Weimar and had played many brilliant effects of running work upon the piano, in which the hands were used "inter-locking," as it is called; that is, the left hand taking now and then one or two notes of the run. This method of dividing up a run has the effect of imparting a certain amount of arm element to the touch, whereby the tone becomes considerably heavier and more brilliant. It was thought at Weimar at that time that piano playing would very likely take this direction in future, and that the day of running work in the fingers of one hand alone had practically passed. Accordingly, Mason experimented in these new effects which Haberbier had suggested, and worked out this piece, "The Silver Spring." As he told me, he first had to find out an accompaniment figure which pleased him, and then to discover in which chords it would go most easily, because the location of the black keys with reference to the white plays a very important part when the hand has to fall in its place in rapid motion. When he had ascertained these points, he then had to consider what key would afford the greatest number of chords of this character, and so at last he came to the key of A and the chords he has in "The Silver Spring." When he had arrived at this point it was necessary to provide a melody, and, as the melody had to fit the accompaniment, the melody was made last, and in this way he arrived at the seeming "impromptu" of "The Silver Spring." This is his own story to me many years ago, and it may have had a humorous exaggeration in it, not to be taken too seriously. I mention it because somewhere about the same time when Mason told it to me I had been talking with Dudley Buck one day, and we were speaking of Mason with very great admiration, especially for the elegance of his style as illustrated in some of his then recently composed works, such as his "Cradle Song," his two impromptus, "At Evening" and "In the Morning," his "Romance Étude" and the like, and Buck said, "If Mason ever had an inspiration it was in that beautiful melody in 'The Silver Spring.' I have arranged a church tune from it and my choir sings it with never failing delight. It will not do to undervalue Mason's gift for melody when he has produced a piece like that."
With reference to the trend of piano playing in the direction of this interlocking work, there were several years when it looked as if the Haberbier suggestions would bear no fruit, but latterly in the Tschaikowsky concerto, to some extent, and in the Schytte concerto in C-sharp minor, to a very great extent, the interlocking principle is employed.
One of the first of Mason's pieces which attained anything like persistent popularity was the "Danse Rustique," which, by the way, is one of the best finger studies for piano students in the fourth grade of which I have any knowledge. It is one of those pieces which can always be learned even by a pupil who is not very smart, provided he will practise it carefully and earnestly enough. It is a piece which can not be played well without very careful practice, and which, when well played, produces a good effect. Hence it has a remarkable pedagogic value if the teacher knows when to put it in and how to handle it when it is once there. While this piece makes no very important figure in the esthetic world, it is by no means a composition to be treated with disrespect. There is a great deal of energy in it and the second subject is very pleasing indeed, and the modulating work in the middle of the piece, where the elaboration would naturally stand in a serious work, is of considerable range and ingenuity, and thoroughly characteristic of the author.
One who wishes to know Mason should study some of the lighter aspects of his productions; and first of these, since it is more nearly related to what I have just now been mentioning, is the "Romance Étude" in G minor. This is a pretty melody, often in thirds, in G minor, lying in the convenient soprano range of the piano. Long runs cross this melody, in Thalbergian manner, from one end of the keyboard to the other, and at times the scale business gives place to charming arpeggios, figures which transfer themselves from one hand to the other. The scale is a curious minor scale with a sharp fourth, and is therefore anything but inviting to the fingers at first. The effect of the whole, when well played, is very charming, although it is more the effect of a study than of a poem.
Still lighter in their characteristics are his charming and half-jocose variations on the old French air, "Ah vous dirais-je maman," better known in school circles of my time as "Haste thee, winter, haste away." There is a very playful effect in these variations, and in the title Mason calls them "Variations Grotesques"; but when he sent a copy to Liszt, that amiable critic replied that the word "grotesque" had no place in piano playing—that they should properly be called jocose, or something of that sort.