DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSES
OF PIANO WORKS

FOR THE USE OF TEACHERS,
PLAYERS, AND MUSIC CLUBS

BY

EDWARD BAXTER PERRY

PHILADELPHIA

THEODORE PRESSER CO.

LONDON, WEEKES & CO.

Copyright, 1902, by Theodore Presser

International Copyright

Printed in the United States of America

My Keys

I.

To no crag-crowning castle above the wild main,

To no bower of fair lady or villa in Spain;

To no deep, hidden vaults where the stored jewels shine,

Or the South’s ruddy sunlight is prisoned in wine;

To no gardens enchanted where nightingales sing,

And the flowers of all climes breathe perpetual spring:

To none of all these

They give access, my keys,

My magical ebon and ivory keys.

II.

But to temples sublime, where music is prayer,

To the bower of a goddess supernally fair;

To the crypts where the ages their mysteries keep,

Where the sorrows and joys of earth’s greatest ones sleep;

Where the wine of emotion a life’s thirst may still,

And the jewels of thought gleam to light at my will:

To more than all these

They give access, my keys,

My magical ebon and ivory keys.

III.

To bright dreams of the past in locked cells of the mind,

To the tombs of dead joys in their beauty enshrined;

To the chambers where love’s recollections are stored,

And the fanes where devotion’s best homage is poured;

To the cloudland of hope, where the dull mist of tears

As the rainbow of promise illumined appears;

To all these, when I please,

They give access, my keys,

My magical ebon and ivory keys.

Only an Interpreter

The world will still go on the very same

When the last feeble echo of my name

Has died from out men’s listless hearts and ears

These many years.

Its tides will roll, its suns will rise and set,

When mine, through twilight portals of regret,

Has passed to quench its pallid, parting light

In rayless night,

While o’er my place oblivion’s tide will sweep

To whelm my deeds in silence dark and deep,

The triumphs and the failures, ill and good,

Beneath its flood.

Then other, abler men will serve the Art

I strove to serve with singleness of heart;

Will wear her thorned laurels on the brow,

As I do now.

I shall not care to ask whose fame is first,

Or feel the fever of that burning thirst

To win her warmest smile, nor count the cost

Whate’er be lost.

As I have striven, they will strive to rise

To hopeless heights, where that elusive prize,

The unattainable ideal, gleams

Through waking dreams.

But I shall sleep, a sleep secure, profound,

Beyond the reach of blame, or plaudits’ sound;

And who stands high, who low, I shall not know:

’Tis better so.

For what the gain of all my toilsome years,

Of all my ceaseless struggles, secret tears?

My best, more brief than frailest summer flower,

Dies with the hour.

My most enduring triumphs swifter pass

Than fairy frost-wreaths from the window glass:

The master but of moments may not claim

A deathless name.

Mine but the task to lift, a little space,

The mystic veil from beauty’s radiant face

That other men may joy thereon to see,

Forgetting me.

Not mine the genius to create the forms

Which stand serenely strong, thro’ suns and storms,

While passing ages praise that power sublime

Defying time.

Mine but the transient service of a day,

Scant praise, too ready blame, and meager pay:

No matter, though with hunger at the heart

I did my part.

I dare not call my labor all in vain,

If I but voice anew one lofty strain:

The faithful echo of a noble thought

With good is fraught.

For some it cheers upon life’s weary road,

And some hearts lightens of their bitter load,

Which might have missed the message in the din

Of strife and sin.

My lavished life-blood warmed and woke again

The still, pale children of another’s brain,

Brimmed full the forms which else were cold,

Tho’ fair of mold.

And thro’ their lips my spirit spoke to men

Of higher hopes, of courage under pain,

Of worthy aspirations, fearless flight

To reach the light.

Then, soul of mine, content thee with thy fate,

Though noble niche of fame and guerdon great

Be not for thee: thy modest task was sweet

At beauty’s feet.

The Artist passes like a swift-blown breeze,

Or vapors floating up from summer seas;

But Art endures as long as life and love:

For her I strove.

Contents

DESCRIPTIVE
ANALYSES OF
PIANO WORKS

Introduction

The material comprised in the following pages has been collected for use in book form by the advice and at the earnest request of the publisher, as well as of many musical friends, who express the belief that it is of sufficient value and interest to merit a certain degree of permanency, and will prove of practical aid to teachers and students of music. A portion of it has already appeared in print in the program books of the Derthick Musical Literary Society and in different musical journals; and nearly all of it has been used at various times in my own Lecture Recitals.

The book is merely a compilation of what have seemed the most interesting and valuable results of my thought, reading, and research in connection with my Lecture Recital work during the past twenty years.

In the intensely busy life of a concert pianist a systematic and exhaustive study of the whole broad field of piano literature has been utterly impossible. That would require the exclusive devotion of a lifetime at least. My efforts have been necessarily confined strictly to such compositions as came under my immediate attention in connection with my own work as player.

The effect is a seemingly desultory and haphazard method in the study, and an inadequacy and incoherency in the collective result, which no one can possibly realize or deplore so fully as myself. Still the work is a beginning, a first pioneer venture into a realm which I believe to be not only new, but rich and important. I can only hope that the example may prompt others, with more leisure and ability, to follow in the path I have blazed, to more extensive explorations and more complete results.

Well-read musicians will find in these pages much that they have learned before from various scattered sources. Naturally so. I have not originated my facts or invented my legends. They are common property for all who will but seek. I have merely collected, arranged, and, in many instances, translated them into English. I claim no monopoly. On the other hand, they may find some things they have not previously known. In such cases I venture to suggest to the critically and incredulously inclined, that this does not prove their inaccuracy, though some have seemed to fancy that it did. Not to know a thing does not always conclusively demonstrate that it is not so.

To the general reader let me say that this book represents the best thought and effort of my professionally unoccupied hours during the past twenty years. It comes to you with my heart in it, bringing the wish that the material here collected may be to you as interesting and helpful as it has been to me in the gathering. The actual writing has mainly been done on trains, or in lonely hotel rooms far from books of reference, or aids of any kind; so occasional inexactitudes of data or detail are by no means improbable, when my only resource was the memory of something read, or of personal conversation often years before. With the limited time at my disposal, a detailed revision is not practicable, and I therefore present the articles as originally written. Take and use what seems of value, and the rest pass by.

The plan and purpose of the book rest simply upon the theory that the true interpretation of music depends not only on the player’s possession of a correct insight into the form and harmonic structure of a given composition, but also on the fullest obtainable knowledge concerning the circumstances and environment of its origin, and the conditions governing the composer’s life at the time, as well as any historical or legendary matter which may have served him as inspiration or suggestion.

My reason for now presenting it to the public is the same as that which has caused me to devote my professional life exclusively to the Lecture Recital—namely, because experience has proved to me that a knowledge of the poetic and dramatic content of a musical work is of immense value to the player in interpretation, and to the listener in comprehension and enjoyment of any composition, and because, except in scattered fragments, no information of just this character exists elsewhere in print.

It being, as explained, impossible to make this collection of analyses complete, or even approximately so, it has seemed wise to limit the number here included to just fifty, so as to keep the book to a convenient size. I have endeavored to select those covering as large a range and variety as possible, with the view of making them as broadly helpful and suggestive as may be.

It is my intention to continue my labors along this line so far as strength and opportunity permit, in the faith that I can devote my efforts to no more useful end.

Edward Baxter Perry.

Esthetic versus Structural Analysis

It has been, and still is, the general custom among most musicians, when called upon to analyze a composition for the enlightenment of students or the public, or in the effort to broaden the interest in their art, to think and speak solely of the form, the structure of the work, to treat it scientifically, anatomically—to dwell with sonorous unction upon the technical names for its various divisions, to lay bare and delightedly call attention to its neatly fashioned joints, to dilate upon the beauty of its symmetrical proportions, and show how one part fits into or is developed out of another—in brief, to explain more or less intelligently the details of its mechanical construction, without a hint or a thought as to why it was made at all, or why it should be allowed to exist. With the specialist’s engrossing absorption in the technicalities of his vocation, they expect others to share their interest, and are surprised and indignant to find that they do not. They forget that to the average hearer this learned dissertation upon primary and secondary subjects, episodical passages, modulation to related and unrelated keys, cadences, return of the first theme, etc., has about as much meaning and importance as so much Sanskrit. It is well enough, so far as it goes, in the classroom, where students are being trained for specialists, and need that kind of information; but it is only one side,—the mechanical side,—and the general public needs something else; and even the student, however gifted, if he is to become more than a mere technician, must have something else; for composition and interpretation both have their mere technic, as much as keyboard manipulation, which is, however, only the means, not the end.

Knowledge of and insight into musical form are necessary to the player, but not to the listener, even for the highest artistic appreciation and enjoyment, just as the knowledge of colors and their combination is essential to the painter, but not to the beholder. The poet must understand syntax and prosody, the technic of rhyme-making and verse-formation; but how many of his readers could analyze correctly from that standpoint the poem they so much enjoy, or give the scientific names for the literary devices employed? Or how many of them would care to hear it done, or be the better for it if they did? The public expects results, not rules or formulas; effects, not explanations of stage machinery; food and stimulus for the intellect, the emotions, the imagination, not recipes of how they are prepared.

The value of esthetic analysis is undeniably great in rendering this food and stimulus, contained in every good composition, more easily accessible and more readily assimilated, by a judicious selection and partial predigestion, so to speak, of the different artistic elements in a given work, and a certain preparation of the listener to receive them. This is, of course, especially true in the case of the young, and those of more advanced years, to whom, owing to lack of training and opportunity, musical forms of expression are somewhat unfamiliar; or, in other words, those to whom the musical idiom is still more or less strange. But there are also very many musicians of established position who are sorely in need of something of the kind to awaken them to a perception of other factors in musical art besides sensuous beauty and the display of skill; to develop their imaginative and poetic faculties, in which both their playing and theories prove them to be deficient; and the more loudly they cry against it as useless and illegitimate, the more palpably self-evident becomes their own crying need of it.

Esthetic analysis consists in grasping clearly the essential artistic significance of a composition, its emotional or descriptive content, either with or without the aid of definite knowledge concerning the circumstances of its origin, and expressing it plainly in a few simple, well-chosen words, comprehensible by the veriest child in music, whether young or old in years, conveying in a direct, unmistakable, and concrete form the same general impressions which the composition, through all its elaborations and embellishments, all its manifold collateral suggestions, is intended to convey, giving a skeleton, not of its form, but of its subject-matter, so distinctly articulated that the most untrained perceptions shall be able to recognize to what genus it belongs.

Of course, when it is possible, as it is in many cases, to obtain and give reliable data concerning the conception and birth of a musical work, the actual historical or traditional material, or the personal experience, which furnished its inspiration, the impulse which led to its creation, it is of great assistance and value; and this is especially so when the work is distinctly descriptive of external scenes or human actions. For example, take the Schubert-Liszt “Erlkönig.” Here the elements embodied are those of tempest and gloom, of shuddering terror, of eager pursuit and panic-stricken flight, ending in sudden, surprised despair. These may be vaguely felt by the listener when the piece is played, with varying intensity according to his musical susceptibility; but if the legend of the “Erlkönig,” or “Elf-king,” is narrated and attention directly called to the various descriptive features of the work,—the gallop of the horse, the rush and roar of the tempest through the depths of the Black Forest, the seductive insistence and relentless pursuit of the elf-king, the father’s mad flight, the shriek of the child, and the final tragic ending, all so distinctly suggested in the music,—the impression is intensified tenfold, rendered more precise and definite; and the undefined sensations produced by the music are focused at once into a positive, complete, artistic effect.

Who can doubt that this is an infinite gain to the listener and to art? Again, take an instance selected from a large number of compositions which are purely emotional, with no kind of realistic reference to nature or action, the Revolutionary Etude, by Chopin, Opus 10, No. 12. The emotional elements here expressed are fierce indignation, vain but desperate struggle, wrathful despair. These are easily recognized by the trained esthetic sense. Indeed, the work cannot be properly rendered by one who does not feel them in playing it; and they can be eloquently described in a general way by one possessing a little gift of language and some imagination; but many persons find it hard to grasp abstract emotions without a definite assignable cause for them, and are incalculably aided if told that the study was written as the expression of Chopin’s feelings, and those of every Polish patriot, on receipt of the news that Warsaw had been taken and sacked by the Russians.

Where such data cannot be found concerning a composition, one can make the content of a work fairly clear by means of description, of analogy and comparison, by the use of poetic metaphor and simile, by little imaginative word-pictures, embodying the same general impression; by any means, in short,—any and all are legitimate,—which will produce the desired result, namely: to concentrate the attention of the student or the listener on the most important elements in a composition, to show him what to listen for and what to expect; to prepare him fully to receive and respond to the proper impression, to tune up his esthetic nature to the required key, so it may re-echo the harmonious soul-utterances of the Master, as the horn-player breathes through his instrument before using it, to warm it, to bring it up to pitch, to put it in the right vibratory condition.

The plan of esthetic analysis, in more or less complete form, was used by nearly all of the great teachers, such as Liszt, Kullak, Frau Schumann, and others, and was a very important factor in their instruction. It was used by all the great writers on music who were at the same time eminent musicians, like Liszt, Schumann, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Wagner, Berlioz, Ehrlich, and many more. Surely, with such examples as precedents, not to mention other good and sufficient grounds, we may feel safe in pursuing it to the best of our ability, in print, in the teaching-room, in the concert-hall, whenever and wherever it will contribute to the increase of general musical interest and intelligence, in spite of the outcries of the so-called “purists,” who see and would have us see in musical art only sensuous beauty and the perfection of form, with possibly the addition of, as they might put it, a certain ethereal, spiritual, indefinable something, too sacred to be talked about, too transcendental to be expressed in language, too lofty and pure to be degraded to the level of human speech.

Who, I ask, are the sentimentalists—they, or we who believe that music, like every other art, is expression, the embodying of human experiences, than which there is no grander or loftier theme on this earth? Trust me, it is not music nor its subject-matter that is nebulous, indistinct, hazy; but the mental conceptions of too many who deal with it.

If art is expression, as estheticians agree, and music is an art, as we claim, then it must express something; and, given sufficient intelligence, training, and insight, that something—the vital essence of every good composition—can be stated in words. Not always adequately, I grant, but at least intelligibly, as a key to the fuller, more complex expression of the music; serving precisely like the synopsis to an opera, or the descriptive catalogue in a picture gallery. This is the aim and substance of esthetic analysis.

Musicians are many who see in their mistress

But physical beauty of “color” and “form,”

Who hear in her voice but a sensuous sweetness,

No thrill of the heart that is living and warm.

They judge of her worth by “perfection of outline,”

“Proportion of parts” as they blend in the whole,

“Symmetrical structure,” and “finish of detail”;

They see but the body—ignoring the soul.

She speaks, but they seem not to master her meaning,

They catch but the “rhythmical ring of the phrase.”

She sings, but they dream not a message is borne on

The breath of the sigh, while its “cadence” they praise.

Her saddest laments are “melodious minors”

To them, and her jests are but “notes marked staccato”;

Her tenderest pleadings but “themes well developed,”

Her rage—but “a climax of chords animato.”

In vain she endeavors to rouse their perceptions

By touching their brows with her soul-stirring hand

They measure her fingers, their fairness admire,

Declare her “divine,” but will not understand.

Away with such worthless and sense-prompted service;

Forgetting the goddess, to worship the shrine;

Forgetting the bride, to admire her costume,

Her garments that glitter, and jewels that shine:

And give us the artists of true inspiration,

Whose insight is clear, and whose brains comprehend,

To interpret the silver-tongued message of music

That speaks to the heart, like the voice of a friend;

That wakens the soul to the joys that are higher

And purer than all that the senses can give,

That teaches the language of lofty endeavor,

And hints of a life that ’twere worthy to live!

For music is Art, and all Art is expression,

The “beauty of form” but embodies the thought,

Imprisons one ray of that wisdom supernal

Which Genius to sense-blinded mortals has brought.

Then give us the artist whose selfless devotion

To Art and her service is earnest and true,

To read us the mystical meaning of music;

Musicians are many, but artists are few.

Sources of Information Concerning Musical Compositions

During my professional career I have received scores of letters from musical persons all over the country, asking for the name of the book or books from which I derive the information, anecdote, and poetic suggestion, concerning the compositions used in my Lecture Recitals, particularly the points bearing upon the descriptive and emotional significance of such compositions. All realize the importance and value of this phase of interpretative work, and many are anxious to introduce it in their teaching or public performances; but all alike, myself not excepted, find the sources of such information scanty and difficult of access.

First, let me say frankly that there is no such book, or collection of books. My own meager stock of available material in this line has been laboriously collected, without definite method, and at first without distinct purpose, during many years of extensive miscellaneous reading in English, French, and German; supplemented by a rather wide acquaintance among musicians and composers, and the life-long habit of seizing and magnifying the poetic or dramatic bearing and import of every scene, situation, and anecdote. If asked to enumerate the sources from which points of value concerning musical works can be derived, I should answer that they are three, not all equally promising, but from each of which I myself have obtained help, and all of which I should try before deserting the field. These are:

First, and perhaps the most important, reading. Second, a large acquaintance among musicians, and frequent conversations with them on musical subjects. Third, an intuitive perception, partly inborn and partly acquired, of the analogies between musical ideas, on the one hand, and the experiences of life and the emotions of the human soul, on the other. I will now elaborate each of these a little, to make my meaning more clear.

While there is no book in which information concerning the meaning of musical compositions is collected and classified for convenient reference, such information is scattered thinly and unevenly throughout all literatures,—a grain here, a nugget there, like gold through the secret veins of the earth,—and can be had only by much digging and careful sifting. Now and again you come upon a single volume, like a rich though limited pocket of precious ore, and rejoice with exceeding gladness at the discovery of a treasure. But unfortunately, there is usually nothing in the appearance or nature of such a book to indicate to the seeker before perusal that this treasure is within, or to distinguish it from scores of barren volumes. And the very item of which he may be in search is very likely not here to be found; so he must turn again to the quest, which is much like seeking a needle in a hay-mow, or a pearl somewhere at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.

Musical histories, biographies, and essays—what is usually termed distinctly musical literature—by no means exhibit the only productive soil, though they are certainly the most fruitful, and should be first turned to, because nearest at hand. Poetry, fiction, travels, personal reminiscences, in short every department of literature, from the philosophy of Schopenhauer to the novels of George Sand, must be made to contribute what it can to the stock of general and comprehensive knowledge, which is our ambition. I instance these two authors, because, while neither of them wrote a single work which would be found embraced in a catalogue of musical literature, the metaphysical speculations of Schopenhauer are known to have had great influence upon Wagner’s personality, and through that, of course, upon his music; while in some of the characteristics of George Sand will be found the key to certain of Chopin’s moods, and their musical expression. But even where no such relation between author and composer can be traced, I deem one could rarely read a good literary work, chosen at random, without chancing upon some item of interest or information, which would prove directly or indirectly of value to the professional musician in his life-work. And this is entirely apart from the general broadening, developing, and maturing influence of good reading upon the mind and imagination, which may be added to the more direct benefit sought, forming a background of esthetic suggestion and perception, against which the beauties of tone-pictures stand forth with enhanced power and heightened color.

I know of no better plan to suggest to those striving for an intelligent comprehension of the composer’s meaning in his great works than much and careful reading of the best books in all departments, and the more varied and comprehensive their scope the better. In the search for enlightenment concerning any one particular composition, I should advise the student to begin with works, if such exist, from the pen of the composer himself, followed by biographies and all essays, criticisms, and dissertations upon his compositions which are in print. If these fail to give information, he should proceed to read as much as possible regarding the composer’s country and contemporaries, and concerning any and all subjects in which he has become aware, by the study of his life, that the master was interested. The chances are that he will come upon something of aid or value before finishing this task. Still very often the quest will and must be in vain, because about many musical works there exists absolutely no information in print.

I can perhaps better indicate the course to be pursued by giving some illustrations in my own experience. The following will serve: During a trip in New York State I was asked whether Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” suite was founded upon any legend or story, and if so, what. Though familiar with the composition in question, I had never played it myself, nor given it any particular attention, and in point of fact was as ignorant on the subject as my interrogator, and obliged to confess as much. This was before the composition had become familiar in this country and before the drama on which it is founded had been translated into English. Being, however, convinced, from the names attached to different parts of the suite, of the probability of its foundation upon some literary or historic subject, I determined to investigate. I first read several biographical sketches of Grieg, but found no special mention of the “Peer Gynt” suite; then everything I could secure on the subject of Norwegian music in general and Grieg’s compositions in particular, without avail. As I knew Grieg to be, with the possible exception of Chopin, the most intensely national and patriotic of all composers, I inferred that if he had taken any legend or story as the basis of this work, it was undoubtedly Norwegian in character. I read, therefore, several articles on the history of Norway, the Norsemen, and the Norwegian language and literature, watching carefully for the name of Peer Gynt, but in vain. I next undertook some of the sagas or ancient Norse traditions, with the same result. Having exhausted my resources in this direction, I began to investigate modern Norwegian literature. Here, of course, I encountered, in large type, the names of Björnson and Ibsen, and almost at the outset I found among the works of the latter the versified drama of “Peer Gynt,” and my search was at an end. Having procured a German translation of this drama, I found scenes and characters to correspond exactly with those which figure in Grieg’s music, and a reference in the preface to an orchestral suite, by this composer, founded upon “Peer Gynt.”

Now had I been as well informed as I recommend all my readers to be, I should have known at the outset of this Norwegian drama, and been at once upon the right track. But being only familiar with those prose dramas of Ibsen which have been translated into English, I was obliged to undertake all this extra labor, to ascertain a single fact; which only proves once again, that the more the musician’s memory is stored with miscellaneous facts and ideas, even such as do not seem to have any connection with music, the lighter and more successful will be his labors in his profession.

The second main source of information concerning musical works is found among musicians themselves. There is a vast amount of tradition, suggestion, and knowledge appertaining to the masterpieces in this art, which has never got into print, and lives only by passing from mouth to mouth, much as the early legends of all countries were orally handed down among minstrels and skalds from generation to generation. Every great interpreter and every great composer becomes, with the passage of years of a long and active life, a vast and valuable storehouse of all sorts of hints, facts, and ideas on the subject of various compositions, which usually die with him, except such portions as have been orally transmitted to pupils and associates. In this respect the late Theodor Kullak was worth any three men I have ever known, and those of his pupils who had tastes and interests similar to his own, and were of retentive memory, have all derived from him no mean portion of their material. To cull from every musician and musically informed person all the odds and ends of information in his possession is a valuable, though perhaps selfish habit. And here let me emphasize to all students the importance of not allowing the memory to get into that very prevalent bad habit of refusing to retain anything which is not presented in print to the organ of vision. The ear is as good a road to the brain as the eye, and every one should possess the faculty of acquiring information from conversations, lessons, and lectures, as readily as from books.

The third resource of the seeker after truth of this nature is to be found within himself. The musician should early accustom himself to grasp clearly the essential essence, the vital principle, of an artistic moment, a dramatic situation. For some such moment, mood, or situation, however vague or veiled, underlies every true art work; and unless the performer can perceive and comprehend this inner germ of meaning clearly enough to express it intelligibly, though it may be crudely, in his own words, he will find that many a hint has been lost upon him, and many a bit of knowledge, that might have been his, has escaped him. This is not a musical faculty merely; it is a mental peculiarity. Every person, whatever his profession, should train himself to catch, as quickly and clearly as may be, the real drift of a book, of an argument, of a chain of circumstances, of a political situation, of history, of character, and to place his finger instinctively upon the germ upon which all else centers.

The power to feel instinctively the real mood and meaning of a musical composition is by no means confined to the musical profession; indeed, is often strongly marked in those ignorant of the very rudiments of the art. I remember once playing to a rough old trapper, of the early pioneer days in Wisconsin, who had drifted back to civilization to “die in camp,” as he expressed it, the Revolutionary Etude of Chopin, Op. 10, No. 12, already cited in illustration, written on receipt of the knowledge that Warsaw had been taken and sacked by the Russians. “What does it mean?” I asked when it was finished. He sprang from his chair in great excitement. “Mean?” he said; “it means cyclone in the big woods! Indian onslaught! White men all killed, but die hard!” His interpretation, I need not say, was not historically correct, but for all artistic purposes it was just as good, though expressed in the rough backwoods imagery familiar to him. He caught the tone of rage and conflict, of desperate struggle and dark despair, which sounds in every line, and he had truly understood the composition, to the shame of many a well-educated musician, whose comment would probably have been, “How difficult that left hand part is! De Pachmann plays it much faster, and with such a beautiful pianissimo!”

This particular study is simply a vivid mood picture. It is not in any sense what is called descriptive or program music; yet it has a distinct meaning which can be more or less adequately expressed in words, for the aid of those who do not readily grasp its expression. I wish to reiterate here what I have before stated, that I would not be understood to hold that all music has or should have some story connected with it. I merely believe that every worthy composition is the musical setting of some scene, incident, mood, idea, or emotion. Long practice in perceiving and grasping what may be termed the “internal evidence” of the music itself will develop, in the musician, a susceptibility to such impressions, which will often lead him to a knowledge elsewhere sought in vain, and greatly lessen his labors in arriving at knowledge elsewhere to be found.

I have now thrown all the light in my power upon the modus operandi of obtaining information and ideas relating to musical compositions, and have, I think, demonstrated the difficulty of such an undertaking. For my own Lecture Recital programs I often select works about which I happen to be well informed, and have more than once spent an entire summer in reading and research concerning others which I wished to include. It will be seen from the nature of the case, that because one possesses full information in regard to a certain ballade or polonaise, it by no means establishes a certainty, as is sometimes inferred, that he will be equally enlightened concerning all others. There never was and never will be any one man who can furnish information on the subject of all compositions, and it is equally impossible that any glossary or cyclopedia will ever be compiled which can refer the student to books containing points in regard to any musical work one may chance to be practising, or wish to perform.

Traditional Beethoven Playing

How often of late years we hear this expression: Will some one who claims to know kindly tell us what it means? For one, I confess myself, after a decade of careful, thoughtful investigation, utterly unable to find out. We hear one pianist extolled as a wonderful Beethoven player, as a safe, legitimate, trustworthy champion of the good old classical traditions; and another equally eminent artist condemned as wholly unworthy to lift for the public the veil of awe and deep mystery enshrouding the sublimities of this grandest of tone-Titans. The late von Bülow, for instance, was well-nigh universally conceded to be the representative Beethoven player of the age, for no better reasons, so far as I can discover, than that he was generally admitted to be a failure in the presentation of most works of the modern school, and that cold, calculating, cynical intellectuality was the predominant feature of his personality and his musical work, which made him the driest, most unideal, uninteresting pianist of his generation, in spite of his phenomenal technic, memory, and mental power.

On the other hand, Paderewski, with all his infinitely magnetic personality, his incomparable beauty of tone and coloring, his blended nobility and refinement of conception, is decried as a perverter of taste, a destroyer of traditions and precedents, because, forsooth, he plays Beethoven too warmly, too emotionally, too subjectively.

De grace, messieurs, what does it all signify? Are we then to accept perforce as final, in spite of our better instincts, the dictum of the long since petrified Leipsic School, which holds technic of the hand and head, not only as the supreme, but as the sole element in musical art—which relegates all emotion and its expression to the despised limbo of sickly sentimentality, and which epitomizes its highest encomium of an artist in the words “He allows himself no liberties”—that is to say, he plays merely the notes, with the faultless precision and soulless monotony of a machine? Is this, then, traditional playing of Beethoven, or any other composer? Is it art at all? If there is any such thing as an authentic, authoritative musical standard concerning any given composition, upon what does or should it rest? Surely either upon the way its composer rendered it, or desired it rendered, if that can be ascertained, or upon the way it was given by its first great public interpreter. Let us examine the scanty available data concerning Beethoven’s piano works from this point of view. How did Beethoven himself play his own works?

This question reminds one of the century-old dispute among scholars as to the propriety of the so-called English pronunciation of Latin, an absurdity on the face of it. Fancy talking of the English pronunciation of French or German! Of course, we do not know and have no means of learning exactly how the old Latins did pronounce their language in all the niceties of detail, but one thing we do know with absolute certainty, and that is that they did not Anglicize it, for the one good reason that our language did not come into existence until centuries after the Latin tongue was dead. Similarly, as there is no one now living who can remember and tell us just how Beethoven did play any given sonata, and as, unfortunately, the phonograph was not then invented to preserve for us the incalculably precious records of his interpretations, we have no means of ascertaining just what his conceptions were, even supposing they had been twice alike, which they probably were not. But this we may be sure of, beyond a question or a doubt: He did not play them according to von Bülow. Furthermore, there is no ground for believing that his performances were at all such as the conservative sticklers for classic traditions insist that our renditions of Beethoven must be to-day. We know this from a study of the life and characteristics of the man, from the internal evidence of his works, and from the reports given us by his contemporaries of his manner of playing them and their effect upon the hearer.

Beethoven was preëminently a romanticist, in the content, if not always in the form of his works; a man of pronounced, self-loyal individuality and intense subjectivity, who wrote, and consequently must have played, as he felt, and not in accordance with prescribed rules and formulas; a man who can reply without immodesty when criticized for breaking a preëstablished law of harmony, “I do it,” with the calm confidence in the divine right of genius to self-utterance in its own chosen way which always accompanies true greatness and has been the infallible compass of progress in all ages. The man who was the fearless, outspoken champion of artistic sincerity and profound earnestness, whose scorn of shallow, pedantic formulas was as uncompromising as it was irrepressible, whose watchword was universality of content, who believed that music could and should be made to express every phase of human emotion, who could venture on the unheard-of innovation of beginning a sonata with a pathetic adagio, and introducing a chorus into the last movement of a symphony, in open defiance of all established tradition, who was repeatedly accused by the critics of his day of being unable to write a correct fugue or sonata, and whose music was declared to be that of a madman by leading musicians even as late as the beginning of our century—this is surely not the man whose artistic personality can be fairly represented by a purely intellectual, stiffly precise, though never so scholarly reading of his printed scores. How is that better than the bloodless plaster casts of the living, breathing children of his genius? The printed symbols represent audible sounds and the sounds symbolize emotions. The mere sounds with the emotions left out are no more Beethoven’s music than the printed notes if never made audible.

Of his own playing, we are told that it lacked finish and precision, but never warmth and intensity; that, like his nature, it was stormy, impetuous, impulsive, at times even almost brutal in its rough strength and fierce energy; that he often sacrificed tone quality and even accuracy in his complete abandonment to the torrent of his emotions, but never failed to stir to their profoundest depths the hearts of his hearers. Is this the man, this hero of musical democracy, this giant embodiment of the Titanic forces of primitive Nature, this shaggy-maned lion, with the great, warm, keenly sentient human heart, whose nearest prototype among modern players is Rubinstein; is this the man with whom originated the severely classical school, the cold, prim, stately interpretations which we are told to reverence as traditional, in which the head is everything, the heart nothing—form all-important, and feeling a deplorable weakness? It is impossible, incredible!

I honestly believe that if Beethoven himself could revisit the world and appear incognito in the concert-halls of our musical centers to give us an ideal, authoritative rendition of his great works, one-half of his audience and nine-tenths of his critics would hold up their hands in holy horror at his untraditional and un-Beethoven-like readings, and would declare that while he was an interesting and magnetic artist, and an enjoyable player of the lighter, more emotional modern school, his renderings of the revered classics were dangerously perverting to the public taste and could not be sufficiently condemned.

But if not with Beethoven himself, with whom did these so-called traditions originate? Was it with the first great public interpreters of his works, who introduced them to the world of concert-goers and so earned the right to have their readings respected? Who was the first, most enthusiastic, courageous, and efficient champion of Beethoven’s piano works? Who did most to introduce them to the concert audiences of Europe, to force for them first a hearing, then a reluctant recognition? Who first and oftenest dared to present Beethoven’s serious chamber music to the frivolous sensation-loving Parisians, and to risk his unprecedented popularity with them upon the venture? Who but Franz Liszt! For nearly two decades, during the whole of his phenomenal career as a virtuoso, the vast weight of his musical influence and example, the incalculable force of his fervid, magnetic personality, and his inexhaustible resources as an executant, were all brought to bear in behalf of his revered Beethoven, in the effort to render his best piano works familiar and popular with the European public. It is safe to say that during that period Liszt introduced more Beethoven sonatas to more people than all other pianists combined. He then established such traditions as there may be regarding the proper interpretation of these works; and surely no one who heard him play, no one who is even slightly familiar with his life, characteristics, and art ideals, will think for a moment of classing him with the conservative school, with the inflexible, puritanical adherents to cut-and-dried theories and the cold dead letter of the law as represented by the printed notes.

But we are told that precisely these printed notes and signs should be our only and all-sufficient guide. We are commanded to stick to the text and not to presume to take personal liberties with so sacred a thing as a Beethoven composition. I wonder if the advocates of this idea, which does so much credit to their bump of veneration and so little to their artistic insight, ever took the trouble to examine the text of these same Beethoven compositions in the earliest editions, as they came first from his own hand; and if so, whether they noticed the conspicuous absence of marks of expression. When they urge that Beethoven probably knew best how his works should be rendered and that we ought to follow exclusively and religiously his indications, do they know how very few and inadequate these were? So few, in fact, that if only those given by the composer are to be observed, even the most rigid of our sticklers for classical severity are guilty of the most flagrant breaches of their own rule. Are we then to suppose that Beethoven wished his music played without varying expression, on one dead monotonous level? Not at all; but simply to infer that, like many great composers, he felt such indications to be wholly unnecessary, and was far too impatient to stop for such mechanical details. To him his music was the vital utterance of the intense life within. The meaning and true delivery of each phrase were vividly, unmistakably self-evident, needing arbitrary marks of expression as little as a heart-felt declaration of love or outburst of grief. He rightly assumed that to be played at all as it should be, such music must first be felt, and that visible marks of expression would be as needless to the player with intuitive comprehension, as they would be useless to the player without it. Just as Chopin omitted the indication “tempo rubato” from all his later works, declaring that any one who had sense enough to play them at all would know that it was demanded without being told.

True, Beethoven’s works have been edited well-nigh to death since his time, but of course without his sanction or revision; and as no two editions agree, who shall decide which is infallible? And why, I ask, is not the audible interpretation at the piano of a Liszt, a Rubinstein, or a Paderewski just as likely to be legitimate as the printed interpretation of a Bülow or a Lebert? Has not one artist as good a right to his conception as another? And in heaven’s name what possible reason is there for assuming, in regard to an intensely emotional composer and player like Beethoven, that the coldly, stiffly scholastic reading of his works is more in accordance with his original intention than a more warm and subjective one?

Moreover, even if there were a complete, corrected, authorized edition of Beethoven, carefully revised by the composer himself, any one who has ever written out, proof-read, and finally published the simplest original composition knows well by experience how utterly impossible it is to indicate definitely, with our imperfect system of marking, just how each strain should be rendered. A general outline of the whole effect desired can be given; but try as we may, all the more delicate shades, the finer details of accent and inflection, must always be left to the taste, insight, and temperament of the individual performer; just as the intelligent reading of a poem depends upon much besides an observance of the punctuation marks. It is not within the limits of human ability to edit a single period of eight measures so perfectly that no variations or mistakes in the interpretation are possible.

In view of these facts, I am bold enough to maintain that there is no such thing as an absolutely correct traditional rendering of any single Beethoven composition, one to be followed inflexibly. It might be said of Beethoven, and in fact of any great composer, as aptly as of Shakespeare, that he is always on the level of his readers. Those possessing neither natural nor acquired appreciation for the best music will find in Beethoven nothing but a series of unintelligible and more or less disagreeable noises, like Humboldt. Those who by nature, training, and habit of mind are fitted to perceive and enjoy only the physical and intellectual elements in tonal art,—its sensuous effect upon the ear, its rhythmic movement, its ingenious intricacies of structure and symmetry of form,—will seek and find, and, if they are players, will emphasize in Beethoven only these factors, and will vehemently protest that there is nothing else there, and that any attempt to find or to introduce anything else is presumptuous and morbid. But those to whom music is the artistic medium for the expression of the strongest, deepest, and best of human emotions, who demand that every strain shall come fresh and warm from the heart of the composer and speak directly and forcefully to the heart of the hearer; those to whom the brain, no less than the hand, is a servant to that higher, subtler ego we call the soul, and form and technic alike mere vehicles for soul utterance, will strive, with humble, self-abnegating fidelity, to read between the lines of the printed music that unwritten, unwritable spirit of their composer; will infuse for the moment their own pulsing, revivifying life into the symbolic forms until they glow with at least a faint suggestion of their original warmth and vitality, as when freshly born of the passion and the labor of genius. These alone can give us, in the light and truth of spiritual intuition, the only approximately traditional Beethoven playing.

Beethoven: The Moonlight Sonata, Op. 27, No. 2 (C Sharp Minor)

There is probably no composition for the piano of any real merit, by any writer, which is so universally known, at least by name, as this sonata. Every one has heard of it, read about it, and most persons are more or less familiar with the music, or at any rate with portions of it, especially the first movement, which is, technically, easy enough to be executed, in the literal sense, with the greatest facility by every school-girl.

According to strict requirements of the law of form it is, in reality, not a sonata at all, but a free fantasia, in three detached movements, of a very pronounced but widely diverse emotional character. There has been considerable questioning on the part of the public, and much discussion among musicians, as to the origin of its name, its relevancy to the music, and the true artistic significance of the work.

There is little, if any, suggestion of moonlight, or the mood usually associated with a moonlight scene, in any of the movements; but there are several more or less credited traditions concerning it afloat, legitimatizing the title and explaining its origin. Of these, the one that seems to the present writer most fully authenticated and best sustained by the content of the compositions as a whole is the following. It is given, not as a verified fact, but as a suggestive possibility, a legendary background in keeping with the work.

It is a well-known matter of history that, during his early struggles for existence in Vienna, while experiencing the inevitable period of probation, well named the “starvation epoch,” common to the lot of every creative artist, and the equally inevitable heritage of great genius, born fifty years in advance of its time,—lack of appreciation and scathing abuse from the self-constituted, self-satisfied foes of all progressive art, called critics,—Beethoven had the additional misfortune to fall deeply, but hopelessly, in love with a beautiful and brilliantly accomplished, though shallow, young heiress, of noble birth and lofty social position, Julie Guicciardi by name, who was, for a short time, one of his pupils. She is said to have returned his affection, but the union was, of course, under the then prevailing conditions, utterly impossible; and even if it could have taken place, would doubtless have proved most incompatible and uncongenial. She was a countess, accustomed to luxury and splendor; he an obscure musician fighting for the bare necessities of life, hardly higher in the social scale than her father’s valet and not so well paid. It was absurd; and blind Love had blundered once again in his marksmanship. Or was it an intentional, cruel shaft from the tricky little god? In any case, Beethoven was deeply smitten; and this unlucky passion darkened and saddened his life for many years, and is accountable for much of the somber tone which we find in his compositions of that period.

So much is fact. The story goes that one evening, when wandering in the outskirts of the city, on one of those long, solitary walks, which were his only relaxation, he chanced to pass an elegant suburban villa in which a gay social gathering was in progress. Some one was playing one of his recent compositions as he went by—a rare occurrence in those days. His attention was attracted and, half unconsciously, he stopped to listen—stopped, as luck would have it, in a full flood of moonlight, was recognized from within, and a laughing company of the guests, Julie among them, sallied out, surrounded and captured him, and fairly compelled him to come in and play for them. They insisted that he should improvise and should take for his theme the moonlight which had been the cause of his capture and their unexpected pleasure. The usually reticent, intractable, not to say morose, Beethoven at last consented—under who shall say what subtle spell of Julie’s voice and eyes?—and seated himself at the piano.

But those who are at all familiar with his music know that Beethoven was, except in a few rare instances, an emotional, not a realistic writer; a subjective, not an objective artist; reproducing not the scenes and circumstances of his environment or fancied situations, but the emotional impressions which they produced upon his own inner being, colored by his own personality and the mental conditions of the moment, often just the reverse of what might naturally have been expected. What he most keenly felt on this particular occasion was not the soft splendor of the summer night, or the opulent luxury and careless, superficial gaiety about him, but the bitter and cutting contrast which they afforded to his own struggling, sorrow-darkened, care-laden existence, full of disappointments and humiliations, of petty, sordid, yet unavoidable anxieties, with those twin vultures ever at his heart—a hopeless love, an unappreciated genius. The result was moonlight music in which no gleam of moonlight was reflected; only its somber shadow lying heavily and depressingly upon the stream of his emotions, which poured themselves out through the harmonies of this composition with an unconscious power and truth and a pathetic grandeur which have justly made it world-famous.

The first movement expresses unmingled sadness, but without any weakness of vain complaint; a calm, candid, but hopeless recognition of the inevitable.

The second seems to be an attempt at a lighter, more cheerful strain, a fleeting recollection of his ostensible theme; but it is only partially successful and very brief, and is followed by a reaction into a mood far more intense and darkly fierce than the first.

The last movement is full of indignant protest, of passionate rebellion, with occasional bursts of fiery defiance. In it we see the strong soul, surging like the waves of a mighty sea against the rocky borders of fate, striving desperately to break through or over them, and returning again and again to the fruitless attempt, with a courage only equaled by its futility. It is the Titan Beethoven battling with the gods of destiny.

It is, of course, unlikely, even impossible, that this improvisation,—the tradition being true,—was precisely the music of the Moonlight Sonata in its present form. It could but furnish the themes, outlines, and moods of the various movements, subsequently developed into the composition so widely known and admired.

Beethoven: Sonata Pathétique, Op. 13

With the exception, perhaps, of the “Moonlight,” this work is the best known to the world at large, and the one most frequently attempted by ambitious students of the Beethoven sonatas. Its familiar title was not bestowed by Beethoven himself, but by some publishers later, and seems to me inaptly chosen; in fact, not at all justly applicable to the composition as a whole. It was probably suggested partly by the minor key, but mainly by the second movement, which is gravely pathetic in mood. As a whole the work is far too strong, intense, and dramatic to warrant the name. Sonata Tragica would have been better. I have not been able to find any authority for attributing to it definite descriptive significance in the objective sense. It is the forceful expression of a pronounced emotional condition, or rather, sequence of experiences, embodied with all the fervent glow and impetuous power of early manhood, yet with the precision and finish of maturity. Every measure is replete with intense feeling as well as intrinsic beauty. There is not a superfluous note or a meaningless embellishment in it from beginning to end; not an ounce of sawdust stuffing to fill out the defective contours of a stereotyped form—which, alas! is not true of many of Beethoven’s piano works; and, all in all, it seems to the present writer to be the most musically interesting and evenly sustained composition for the piano from Beethoven’s pen.

The broad, impressive introduction marked grave is full of strength and somber majesty. It is gloomily grand rather than pathetic, like the epitome of some stern fatalist’s philosophy of life, and reminds one of Swinburne’s lines:

“More dark than a dead world’s tomb,

More high than the sheer dawn’s gate,

More deep than the wide sea’s womb,

Fate.”

The first subject of the allegro movement is anything but pathetic. It is full of fire, energy, and restless striving; of fierce conflict and desperate endeavor; of the defiant pride of genius exulting in the unequal combat with the world’s stony indifference, and the inimical conditions of life.

The second theme is warmer and more nearly approaches the lyric vein. It is half pleading, half argumentative in tone, strikingly suggestive of the mood so common to young but gifted souls, in the bitterness of their first pained surprise at the cruel contrast between the ideal and the actual in life. It seems to strive to reason with unreasoning and unreasonable facts, and to touch the heart of a heartless fate with its tender pleading. The continually reiterated embellishments upon the melody notes here should be given distinctly as a mordente, with marked accent on the last of the three tones in every case, not played as a triplet with accent on the first, as is so often done, and even so indicated in many standard editions, thus materially weakening the effect of the passage, rendering it trivial and characterless as well as out of keeping with the general mood. This is what Kullak used to call “the lazy way” of playing it. The striking contrast between the first and second subjects should be maintained throughout, with greatest possible distinctness, and the closing chords must be given boldly, defiantly, like a challenge proudly flung to all the powers of darkness, to fate, no matter how adverse.

With the second movement comes a radical change of mood. The first impetuous vigor has been expended in the struggle; the first joy of combat and self-reliant consciousness of strength have ebbed away like a receding tide, leaving the soul exhausted, discouraged, but not despairing. There is a moment of truce in life’s battle, a moment of calm, though sad reflection; a moment in which to contemplate the impassable gulf between the heaven-piercing heights of ambition and the petty levels of possible human achievement, in which to dream, not of victory and happiness,—those are among the unattainable ideals,—but of rest and sweet forgetfulness, and to say with Tennyson—

“What profit do we have to war with evil?

Let us alone.”

There is an occasional hint of the volcanic fires of passion, slumbering beneath this surface calm of a spirit sent to earth, but not broken, gathering its forces for a fresh uprising. But as a whole it is tranquilly thoughtful, gravely introspective, and should be rendered with great deliberation and profound earnestness.

The last movement is hardly up to the standard of the other two, either musically or emotionally. Still it is interesting, symmetrically made, and not devoid of depth and intensity. It is perhaps a logical conclusion to the work, if we regard the whole as a sort of tone-poem on life. With most of us in youth, our boundless courage and aspiration lead us to dare all things and believe in the possibility of all things; to hurl ourselves into the fight with destiny, with the limitless presumption of untried powers and unwarrantable hopes. Later comes a period of depression and discouragement, in which nothing seems worth effort, so far do realities fall below our expectations. Then, if we are reasonable, we learn, at last, to adapt ourselves in a measure to things as they are, to content ourselves in some wise with the flowers, since the stars are out of reach, and to measure achievement relatively, not by the standard of our first glorious, ever-to-be-regretted ambitions, but of the possible, the partial and imperfect, under the limitations of inflexible earthly conditions; and we quench our soul’s thirst as best we may with the meager, mingled draught of bitter-sweet that life offers.

This movement is light, rapid, and would be cheerful but for its minor key and its undertone of plaintive sadness. It seems like an attempt to take a brighter view of life, but is still shadowed by past experiences,—a touching gaiety dimmed by the mist of recent tears,—and this is, perhaps unintentionally, the most nearly pathetic of the three movements. It should be given with life and warmth, and, despite the pedants, with a free use of the rubato, but not with extreme velocity.

Beethoven: Sonata in A Flat Major, Op. 26

This sonata, like the “Moonlight” and several others in the collection of Beethoven’s piano work bearing this name, is not cast in the usual sonata mold; in fact, it is not a sonata at all, according to the modern technical application of the term. But as the name sonata was originally derived from the Italian verb sonare, to sound, or, in musical parlance, to cause to sound, to play upon a musical instrument, and was used to designate any piece of instrumental music whatsoever, in distinction from that which was intended to be sung, it is perhaps as correctly employed in this connection as in any other.

The first movement of this work consists of a simple, beautiful, melodious, noble lyric theme, followed by five strongly contrasted and strikingly characteristic variations, and an exquisitely tender and expressive little coda.

The theme and variations, not only in this, but in every case where the form is well wrought out, is a musical illustration of the natural, logical process of evolution. The simple, vital germ of thought or feeling, inherent in the theme, as the life principle inheres in the germ of wheat, is seen to expand gradually and develop through the successive variations into new and changing forms of ever-increasing beauty and suggestiveness until every latent possibility of expression has been matured and exhausted, and the idea has been presented to us in every practicable light and from every attainable standpoint; just as the gradual growth and ripening of the wheat, subjected to nature’s infinite variety of conditions and her ceaseless alternation of day and night, cold and heat, sun and rain, calm and storm, present to us daily some change of form and hue, some new phase of its progressive existence, until complete maturity is reached and its utmost limit of development attained.

A still better analogy may be drawn from human experience itself, from the constant modification and development of a given character, subjected to the shifting vicissitudes and changeful, often conflicting influences of daily life. It is interesting and helpful, in studying or listening to any work in the theme and variation form, to conceive of the theme as symbolizing a definite personality, as of hero or heroine in a narrative, a personality clearly marked, but undeveloped, distinct to the mind of the composer, and which the performer or hearer should endeavor to grasp with equal definiteness. Each variation may then represent some varying phase of life, some different experience or influence, or emotional condition, bearing upon this typified personality. The peculiar mood and suggestive characteristics of each variation must be clearly perceived and strongly emphasized, and its due relation to the whole work preserved, while the underlying, all-pervading theme must be kept intelligibly recognizable through all its most capricious and widely contrasting modifications, to give purpose and continuity to the whole; just as the strongly marked individuality of a well-drawn character is traceable through all the manifold vicissitudes of life and may be counted on to follow out its own inherent laws of evolution, no matter what the circumstances or conditions to which it may be subjected.

Let us, in the case of this sonata, conceive of the first simple theme as suggesting, through the subtle symbolism of tone effects, the character of our hero, gravely tender, calmly resolute, nobly, warmly, generously affectionate, with much of innate strength, tempered by gentleness and latent passion, refined by ideality.

In the first variation life presents itself to him as a serious but interesting and agreeable problem, possessing the charm of mystery. He investigates, speculates, reflects, lingers fascinated upon the threshold of the shadowy unknown, enjoys the vague delight of its dim but inviting perspective.

In the second he faces storm and conflict, revels in the discovery and fullest exercise of his own strength and courage and in his successful wrestle with danger and difficulty. The mood here is bold, heroic, full of life and energy.

In the third our hero is suddenly confronted by the twin giants, death and despair. The shadow of their sable forms envelops him with impenetrable gloom. His soul is crushed by a weight as of a leaden pall, and from the depths it sends up a half-stifled cry of unutterable, inarticulate anguish, equaled by nothing in literature, unless it may be by the verses of Edgar Allan Poe entitled “The Conqueror Worm.”

The fourth variation brings a reaction toward a brighter mood, flashes of sunlight through parting clouds, fitful gleams of spasmodic gaiety, half hope, half defiance, showing intermittently against the somber background of grief.

Finally, the fifth and last variation is a tender, cheerful love poem, telling, with a charming intermingling of fervent warmth and playful brightness, of the sovereign magic of human affection, in which the tried spirit has at last found solace and repose; while the brief but significant little coda seems like a dreamy retrospect, a tender reminiscence of bygone joys, and griefs, and struggles, tempered by distance and brightened by the light of present happiness.

If the work ended here it would be well rounded and complete, and it may be, in fact often is, presented in this form, entirely omitting the other three movements. But though not indispensable to the symmetry of the composition, the remaining three movements of the sonata are all intrinsically interesting and enjoyable, and embody three radically differing types of emotional life. In them we are dealing no longer with an individual experience, but with general moods, with abstract elements and conditions.

The principal subject of the scherzo is bright, piquant, exhilarating; expressing unmixed, uncontrolled gaiety, toned down for a moment in the trio to a touch of arch tenderness, but immediately breaking away again into rollicking hilarity. It should be given with great clearness and crispness, very little pedal, and a clean, sparkling tone, like sharply cut glass icicles with the sun behind them. The term scherzo is an Italian word, signifying a jest, and all that is most capricious, sportive, and humorous in music finds expression in this form.

The third movement is one of the two great funeral marches for the piano in existence, the other being that in the sonata, Op. 35, by Chopin. This one by Beethoven is so forcefully characteristic in mood and movement, so full of gloomy grandeur, of dramatic intensity, of depth and richness of somber harmonic coloring, that it may be ranked among his very ablest artistic creations. It should be played with the utmost fullness and sonority of tone, but not extremely loud even in the climaxes, and never hard or rough; so as to convey the impression of suppressed power and of a noble, sustained sorrow, not a spasmodic, petulant distress. Its inflexible, unvarying rhythm throughout should suggest, not only the slow, solemn movement of the funeral procession, the heavily tolling bells, the awed, hushed grief of the mourners, but as well the more abstract and universal thoughts of the slow but relentless march of time and destiny and the might and majesty of death.

The last movement of the sonata is in the usual rondo form, light, graceful, ethereal, with a certain subdued cheerfulness, telling of dreamy aspiration and vague, intuitive faith in ultimate good, of the airy, upward flight of light-winged hope toward a brighter realm beyond the grave, where pain and death shall be remembered only as the minor cadences and passing dissonances which lead to the enhanced beauty of the final major harmony.

The sonata as a whole is one of the most interesting productions of Beethoven’s second period, and is technically within the reach of most good amateurs.

Beethoven: Sonata in D Minor, Op. 31, No. 2

This is not usually considered a descriptive composition, but Beethoven, when questioned regarding it, answered: “Read Shakespeare’s ‘Tempest.’” With this hint from the most authoritative of all sources, the composer himself, we may easily trace, if not a strongly realistic, at least a suggestive reference in the music to that most romantic drama by the greatest of English play-writers. And we may also find a pertinent rebuke for those who are inclined to sneer at the idea of descriptive suggestion in music in general and in Beethoven’s works in particular, in spite of Beethoven’s own words: “I always have some picture in mind when I write.”

The first movement of this sonata opens with an extremely simple theme, consisting merely of the notes of the common triad—do-mi-sol-do—a theme so bald, so apparently devoid of beauty and latent resources that only Beethoven would have ventured to use it; and only his genius could have given it any degree of interest. It is evidently chosen with deliberate intention to indicate naïve simplicity and natural primitive conditions of life in the island, as Prospero found it, with that half-animal, half-savage man, Caliban, as the most prominent figure in it. His singular, ludicrously grotesque personality may have suggested some of the clumsily rollicking passages in this movement. The tempest is only hinted at, not vividly portrayed—a tempest in miniature, a storm in fairyland. Still, it is unmistakable, though divested of all its terrors, just as it must have appeared to Prospero himself, whose magic power and complete mastery over the elemental forces placed him above and beyond all fear.

The second movement, full of sweet repose, of grave, tranquil happiness, is like the hearts of the two lovers in the drama, safe in the loving and powerful protection of Prospero, living close to the gentle, passionless breast of Mother Nature, childlike in their simple trust, their spontaneous affection, their simple joy in the passing hour. It seems at first rather tame and colorless to our modern ears, accustomed to the ceaseless stress and din of complex and conflicting elements, warring together in the life and art of our own day; but if we can forget for a moment the intensity, the restless questioning and striving of the present and go back in spirit for a century or two to more normal conditions, we shall find this music restful and soothing as the green sweep of woods and meadows on a June morning in the country, after the glare and fever of a city ball-room.

The closing movement, with its light, tripping rhythm, its playful, half-facetious mood, is evidently intended to recall the pranks of that merry, tricksy sprite, Puck, so brimming over with good-natured fun and laughing mischief, yet so ready and able, at his master’s command, to “put a girdle round the world in forty minutes.”

The whole is a work of delicate fancy rather than emotional depth or dramatic force. It shows us a somewhat unusual phase of Beethoven’s genius, and is but one more proof of his versatility, one more justification for his title, “The Shakespeare of Music.”

Beethoven: Sonata, C Major, Op. 53

This is one of the best and justly most beloved of the pianoforte works from what is known as Beethoven’s Second Period; that is to say, the period when his creative power was at its zenith, when his genius had reached its fullest maturity, yet showed no sign of waning; when, in its individual development, it had outgrown all youthful crudities, all reminiscent suggestions of older masters, occasionally to be found in his earlier writings, yet before it had lapsed into that somewhat obstruse, metaphysical vein to which some of us are inclined to object in his latest works, in which individuality is sometimes exaggerated into eccentricity. The present writer is not among those who regard his latest sonatas for the piano as in any sense his greatest works, and it is something of a question whether any pianist would play or any audience tolerate the Op. 111, for instance, if it bore any signature but that of Beethoven. The works of his second or middle period are instinct with far more genuine spontaneity and true musical effect.

The Op. 53 is familiarly known among musicians under two names. It is often designated as the “Aurora Sonata,” because of its suggestive reference to, not to say actual description of, those wondrous fireworks of the heavens, the northern lights. The first movement particularly, with its constant change of key, its well-nigh infinite variety of light and shade, above all, its constant flash and play of scintillating embellishment and brilliant passage work, cannot fail to call up before the imaginative mind the varying hues, the shifting, intermittent splendors of the aurora borealis, with its flashes of crimson and orange, and its flickerings of softest violet and rose.

The second movement forms a distinct and restful contrast and quiet background to the brilliancy of the first. It is slow, reposeful, and gravely impressive, symbolizing the hushed solemnity of the quiet, frost-clear, winter night.

The last movement, a prefect rondo in form, returns to the mood and general style of the first. It is bright and crisp, full of brilliant ornamentations and striking contrasts, and should be given with the idea of the northern lights again distinctly before the mind. Its airy, buoyant melody, floating lightly upon swiftly flowing waves of accompaniment, reminding one of that Wotan’s bridge which the ancient Northman fancied he beheld in the glittering, far-spanning arch of the aurora, that bright, but perilous, path of heroes from Earth to Walhalla.

This composition is also known as the “Waldstein Sonata,” because dedicated to Count Waldstein, of Vienna, one of Beethoven’s best friends, during his earlier years in the Austrian capital. Count Waldstein was a descendant of the famous general and most prominent Catholic leader, who figured so prominently during the thirty years’ war in Germany, that sanguinary struggle between Catholics and Protestants, from 1618 to 1648. The name of this brilliant leader, a Bohemian noble of vast wealth and power, and commander of the Austrian imperial forces, is usually spelled Wallenstein; but the name and lineage are identical with that of the Count to whom this sonata is dedicated—the confusion arising from the difference between the German and Bohemian orthography. The original Wallenstein, though unquestionably a man of pronounced intellectual ability and a devout, enthusiastic Catholic, was a firm believer in what we term the obsolete science of astrology and an earnest student of its mysteries. He had fullest faith in all the mystic auguries and prophetic omens of the skies, and never undertook any important step without first carefully consulting them, aided by the profounder knowledge of a trained, professional astrologer, whom he always kept close at hand. It is of interest to note that the famous German scientist, Kepler, served for many years as the private astrologer of Wallenstein, In the researches and belief of Duke Wallenstein he included every manifestation of the aurora borealis. In fact, he seems to have laid particular stress upon these as bearing directly upon his own life and career, as fraught with special prophetic import for him personally. It is a curious coincidence, in view of these facts, that the most brilliant display of the northern lights recorded for the first half of the seventeenth century took place on the very evening on which Wallenstein was assassinated, only a few hours prior to his murder. In the light of his theories it would almost seem like an attempt of his old friends in the skies to warn him of impending peril. At all events, the aurora was, according to his belief, an important factor in his life. His descendants, who naturally treasured all the facts and traditions concerning their brilliant ancestor, would therefore regard the aurora with special interest as being, in a certain sense, connected with their own family history. It was for this reason, as a delicate and appropriate compliment to his friend, that Beethoven, in writing a work which was to be dedicated to him, chose this theme and embodied it in a composition which, for his time and in view of the then prevailing musical conditions, as well as the necessary limitations of the strict sonata form, is remarkably, even graphically, descriptive.

Beethoven: Sonata, E Minor, Op. 90

This composition is one of the shortest, easiest, and, from the standpoint of magnitude, least important of Beethoven’s later works. It has but two movements, neither of them of extreme technical difficulty, and in structure it fails, in various essential respects, to fulfil the requirements of the conventional sonata form. Indeed, the same may be said of many of his best known and most played sonatas, which are sonatas only in name, according to the generally accepted technical significance of the term, notably the Op. 26, Op. 27, No. 2, and others. Yet this little Op. 90, in E minor, is among his most genial, interesting, and gratefully musical compositions. In spite of an occasional touch of pedantry, it is full of melodic charm and emotional suggestiveness. It is not descriptive in the sense of portraying either actual scenes or events. It deals not with action, but with a series of varying, strongly contrasted moods.

It is dedicated to Count Lichnowsky, a resident of Vienna, with whom the composer was intimately acquainted, and of whose touching little love story it is a musical embodiment. The Count’s personal experiences of mind and heart suggested the work and formed its emotional content. He was a member of one of the most aristocratic Viennese families, belonged to the highest nobility, and had inherited a proud old name and vast estates. He occupied a lofty position in both social and diplomatic circles, but he had become seriously and profoundly attached to a young actress of unquestioned talent and rising fame, but of obscure and very humble origin—a girl of exceptional beauty, sterling character, and refined, winning personality, but, considered from the standpoint of worldly position and class traditions, a wholly unsuitable alliance for the great noble.

It is difficult for one educated in democratic America to grasp the conditions involved in such a situation, or to understand and to sympathize with the painful struggle in the mind of the Count, the maddening doubts, the heart-sick vacillation on her account, as much as his own, before the final decision was reached; the obstacles to be overcome, the opposition of friends and relatives to be met or defied, before the path could be cleared to his desired goal. On the one hand, love and happiness with the woman of his choice; on the other, social ostracism for his future wife, certainly, and for himself, probably; serious detriment to his promising career; a life of constant battle with class prejudice, of incessant petty slights and mortifications; a position necessarily trying and humiliating to both. At last, however, love triumphed over all doubts and difficulties, as it always should and must if genuine, and the wedding took place.

It is said, “All the world loves a lover,” and certainly the story of true love victorious over all opposition is the oldest and to most people the most interesting ever told. This story, or at least the emotions underlying it, expressed in music, Beethoven gives us in the two strongly contrasted movements of this little sonata: a simple drama of hearts, in two acts, written in the language of tone.

The first movement deals with the period of doubt and indecision, of mental conflict and moody alternation, of resolve and depression. Its strong, passionate minor first subject in chords expresses the struggle and unrest, the indignant protest against petty prejudice and inflexible conventionality; while its plaintive little counter-theme tells of tender longings, of sad discouragements, of hopes deferred and desire thwarted. In the development it reaches a vigorous, rough, almost dissonant climax, as of bitter defiance and fierce scorn of the world and its trammels.

The second movement, calm, fluent, and sweetly melodious, full of rest and tranquil content, deals with the period after love’s victory, when hope has been fulfilled and the heart’s unrest has been transformed to peace and happiness, where life flows onward like a placid stream, its waters brightened and purified by the glad sunlight of perfect love and full-orbed happiness, its waves murmuring the old yet ever new refrain, the simple, natural, yet magically potent melody, to which the symphony of the universe is harmonized.

There is an occasional brief suggestion of past strife and remembered trial, just sufficient to give enduring zest to the present, reposeful joy; but, as a whole, this last movement, with its constantly reiterated tender yet cheerful major melody, seems to sing over and over, with trifling variations of form, but untiring delight in its essential burden, the song of love’s completeness. A song without words it may be, but with a meaning passing words.

Beethoven: Music to “The Ruins of Athens”

This composition, or rather series of fragmentary musical sketches, containing some very original and telling movements, is wholly unknown to the American public, and unfamiliar to most musicians, except for the “Turkish Grand March,” the only number that has gained any considerable popularity. “The Ruins of Athens” is the name of a curious but very ingenious production for the stage, once quite popular in Germany—a sort of combination of the spectacular play, the musical melodrama and classical allegory, designated “A Dramatic Mask” by the author, a playwright of Vienna. It was written and produced at a time when the sympathies and interest of the Christian world were strongly enlisted for the Greeks in their gallant and desperate struggles for freedom from Turkish domination and oppression which ended successfully in 1829, after a contest of seven years.

The scene is laid in Athens, then practically in ruins. The characters, situations, and environment are all, of course, Greek. To this work Beethoven furnished the music, originally scored for orchestra, some numbers of which have since been transcribed for the piano. Of these, only two are of any real value or importance to the pianist.

Turkish Grand March

First, the “Turkish Grand March” referred to, written to accompany the march of the Turkish troops across the stage in one scene. Rubinstein, when in this country years ago, scored many of his greatest popular successes with his own effective arrangement of this number. It contains no great originality or musical depth, in fact is quite primitive in both content and structure, but is brilliant and pleasing, with a strongly marked, rhythmic swing and a shrill, strident melody which, in its intentional, bald simplicity, strongly suggests the rude but spirited martial music of a half-barbaric people, given by fife and drum. Its artistic effectiveness depends upon the skilful handling of an old but ever popular device, the audible illusion of approach and departure. The music, beginning with the softest possible pianissimo, swells in a gradual, almost imperceptible crescendo, to the heaviest obtainable triple forte, and then as gradually diminishes to double pianissimo, tapering off at last into silence; thus simulating the approach of marching troops from a distance nearer and nearer, till they pass across the stage in immediate proximity, and then their gradual receding till lost again in the distance. It is a device of which many composers have availed themselves, and makes great demands upon the player’s self-control and sense of proportion and gradation, as well as his command of the tonal resources of his instrument.

The Dance of the Dervishes

By far the most original of these numbers is “The Dance of the Dervishes,” the second one referred to. This brief but complete composition is full of striking originality and graphic realism. It is one in which Beethoven’s genius seems to have anticipated by half a century the pronounced modern trend toward descriptive or program music, and is as realistic a tone-painting as we might expect from the pen of Saint-Saëns, Wagner, or any of the recent writers. The dance was introduced into the play as an interesting local feature,—the dervishes being numerous in connection with the Turkish army,—and Beethoven naturally selected it as an effective subject for musical treatment. But, before speaking of their dancing as illustrated by Beethoven, it may be of sufficient historical interest to give a brief sketch of the dervishes themselves.

They developed as a sect or order from Mohammedanism after it was well established in the world. The name “dervishes,” which they assumed, comes from a Russian word which means “beggars from door to door.” The Arabic word which means the same thing is “fakirs.” So they are called dervishes or fakirs in different localities, but are the same body. They declared themselves Moslems, but their doctrines, in many respects, differed widely from those of Mohammed. Their beginnings are in obscurity, but they were a well-established order by the eleventh century. Their expressed beliefs, as we earliest come to know them, were chiefly and decidedly religious. They seemed to represent the spiritual and mystical side of Islam, having a philosophy much like that of the Hindus, and perhaps borrowed from them. Their central idea seemed to be that the soul is an emanation from God, and that man’s highest aim is to seek a total absorption in Him. Their various and strange rites and ceremonies seem only different ways by which they sought for union with the deity. In this way they claimed that they secured miraculous powers. At first they largely lived in convents, under rules and orders, giving themselves up to meditation and penance, observing the rules of poverty, abstinence from wine, and celibacy, in the higher classes. Their growth was rapid; but in time they largely fell away from their highest estate, ceased to be so strictly a religious body, broke up into various ranks and sub-orders, became more free from conventional rules, more nomadic, and more wild and fanatical; but their social and political influence ever increased, so that they have long been regarded as a dangerous element in the state. There are crowds of them all through the East that seem to belong to no society, wandering mendicants, and, though often skilled in trades, largely subsisting by professional jugglery, bigoted in their fantastic beliefs, and varying in their rites and strange ceremonies. And yet always and everywhere there is still some general adherence to the old appointed religious ways, a peculiar tie or affiliation with the distinctive body or sect, however differing in certain notions or modes of worship. The lowest devotee of them all claims that the dervishes or fakirs constitute a distinct body of religious believers in spite of all divisions and varieties in manifestation. They acknowledge no authority but that of their spiritual guides, as that of the Mahdi in the Soudan, where these fanatics have been so lately fighting the English. They agree also in not following the letter of the Koran, or the general teachings of its interpreters. As a whole body, in all its orders, all over the world, they seek, as an act of worship, to get into an ecstatic state. They do this in various ways: Sometimes by drinking hasheesh, but more generally by some physical or mental ways, and while under the excitement they perform astounding feats in jugglery or mysticism that really seem almost miraculous. We cannot stop to detail these different methods. One of them is the dance of a certain order which has received the name of the “dancing or whirling dervishes.”