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We can not attempt to follow up the placid and gentle current of Moscheles's life, flowing on to ever-increasing honor and usefulness, but hasten to the period when he left England in 1846, to become associated with Mendelssohn in the conduct of the Leipzig Conservatorium, then recently organized. Mendelssohn lived but a few months after achieving this great monument of musical education, but Moscheles remained connected with it for nearly twenty years, and to his great zeal, knowledge, and executive skill is due in large measure the solid success of the institution. Mendelssohn's early death, while yet in the very prime of creative genius, was a stunning blow to Moscheles; more so, perhaps, than would have occurred from the loss of any one except his beloved wife, the mother of his five children. Our musician died himself, in Leipzig, March 10, 1870, and his passage from this world was as serene and quiet as his passage through had been. He lived to see his daughters married to men of high worth and position, and his sons substantially placed in life. Perhaps few distinguished musicians have lived a life of such monotonous happiness, unmarked by those events which, while they give romantic interest to a career, make the gift at the expense of so much personal misery.

As a pianist Moscheles was distinguished by an incisive, brilliant touch, wonderfully clear, precise phrasing, and close attention to the careful accentuation of every phase of the composer's meaning. Of the younger composers for the piano, Mendelssohn and Schumann were the only ones with whose works he had any sympathy, though he often complains of the latter on account of his mysticism. His intelligence had as much if not more part in his art work than his emotions, and to this we may attribute that fine symmetry and balance in his own compositions, which make them equal in this respect to the productions of Mendelssohn. Chopin he regarded with a sense of admiration mingled with dread, for he could by no means enter into the peculiar conditions which make the works of the Polish composer so unique. He wrote of Chopin's "?tudes," in 1838: "My thoughts and consequently my fingers ever stumble and sprawl at certain crude modulations, and I find Chopin's productions on the whole too sugared, too little worthy of a man and an educated musician, though there is much charm and originality in the national color of his motive." When he heard Chopin play in after-years, however, he confessed the fascination of the performance, and bewailed his own incapacity to produce such effects in execution, though himself one of the greatest pianists in the world. So, too, Moscheles, though dazzled by Liszt's brilliant virtuosoism and power of transforming a single instrument into an orchestra, shook his head in doubt over such performances, and looked on them as charlatanism, which, however magnificent as an exhibition of talent, would ultimately help to degrade the piano by carrying it out of its true sphere. Moscheles himself was a more bold and versatile player than any other performer of his school, but he aimed assiduously to confine his efforts within the perfectly legitimate and well-established channels of pianism.

As an extemporaneous player, perhaps no pianist has ever lived who could surpass Moscheles. His improvisation on themes suggested by the audience always made one of the most attractive features of his concerts. His profound musical knowledge, his strong sense of form, the clearness and precision with which he instinctively clothed his ideas, as well as the fertility of the ideas themselves, gave his improvised pieces something of the same air of completeness as if they were the outcome of hours of laborious solitude. His very lack of passion and fire were favorable to this clear-cut and symmetrical expression. His last improvisation in public, on themes furnished by the audience, formed part of the programme of a concert at London, in 1865, given by Mme. Jenny Lind Goldschmidt, in aid of the sufferers by the war between Austria and Prussia, where he extemporized for half an hour on "See the Conquering Hero Comes," and on a theme from the andante of Beethoven's C Minor Symphony, in a most brilliant and astonishing style.

Aside from his greatness as a virtuoso and composer for the piano-forte, whose works will always remain classics in spite of vicissitudes of public opinion, even as those of Spohr will for the violin, the influence of Moscheles in furtherance of a solid and true musical taste was very great, and worthy of special notice. Perhaps no one did more to educate the English mind up to a full appreciation of the greatest musical works. As teacher, conductor, player, and composer, the life of Ignaz Moscheles was one of signal and permanent worth, and its influences fertilized in no inconsiderable streams the public thought, not only of his own times, but indirectly of the generation which has followed. It is not necessary to attribute to him transcendent genius, but lie possessed, what was perhaps of equal value to the world, an intellect and temperament splendidly balanced to the artistic needs of his epoch. The list of Moscheles's numbered compositions reaches Op. 142, besides a large number of ephemeral productions which he did not care to preserve.

THE SCHUMANNS AND CHOPIN.

Robert Schumann was born in the small Saxon town of Zwickau in the year 1810, and was designed by his father, a publisher and author of considerable reputation, for the profession of the law. The elder Schumann, though a man of talent and culture, had a deep distaste for his son's clearly displayed tendencies to music, and though he permitted him to study something of the science in the usual school-boy way , he discouraged in every way Robert's passion. The boy had quickly become a clever player, and even at the age of eight had begun to put his ideas on paper. We are told by his biographers that he was accustomed to extemporize at school, and had such a knack in portraying the characteristics of his school-fellows in music as to make his purpose instantly recognizable. His father died when Schumann was only seventeen, and his mother, who was also bent on her son becoming a jurist, became his guardian. It was a severe battle between taste and duty, but love for his widowed mother conquered, and young Robert Schumann entered the University of Leipzig as a law student. It was with a feeling almost of despair that he wrote at this time, "I have decided upon law as my profession, and will work at it industriously, however cold and dry the beginning may be." Previously, however, he had spent a year in the household of Frederick Wieck, the distinguished teacher of music. So much he had exacted before succumbing to maternal pleading. At this time he first made the acquaintance of a charming and precocious child, Clara Wieck, who played such an important part in his future life.

Robert Schumann's law studies were inexpressibly tedious to him, and so he told his sympathetic professor, the learned Thibaut, author of the treatise "On the Purity of Music," in a characteristic manner. He went to the piano and played Weber's "Invitation to the Waltz," commenting on the different passages: "Now she speaks--that's the love prattle; now he speaks--that's the man's earnest voice; now both the lovers speak together "; concluding with the remark, "Isn't all that better far than anything that jurisprudence can utter?" The young student became quite popular in society as a pianist, heard Ernst and Paganini for the first time, and composed several works, among them the Toccata in D major. The genius for music would come to the fore in spite of jurisprudence. A vacation trip to Italy which the young man made gave fresh fuel to the flame, and he began to write the most passionate pleas to his mother that she should con sent to his adoption of a musical career. The distressed woman wrote to Wieck to know what he thought, and the answer was favorable to Robert's aspirations. Robert was intoxicated with his mother's concession, and he poured out his enthusiasm to Wieck: "Take me as I am, and, above all, bear with me. No blame shall depress me, no praise make me idle. Pails upon pails of very cold theory can not hurt me, and I will work at it without the least murmur."

Taking lodgings at the house of Wieck, Schumann devoted himself to piano-forte playing with intense ardor; but his zeal outran prudence. To hasten his proficiency and acquire an independent action for each finger, he contrived a mechanical apparatus which held the third finger of the right hand immovable, while the others went through their evolutions. The result was such a lameness of the hand that it was incurable, and young Schumann's career as a virtuoso was for ever checked. His deep sorrow, however, did not unman him long, for he turned his attention to the study of composition and counterpoint under Kupsch, and, afterward, Heinrich Dorn. He remained for three years under Wieck's roof, and the companionship of the child Clara, whose marvelous musical powers were the talk of Leipzig, was a sweet consolation to him in his troubles and his toil, though ten years his junior. The love, which became a part of his life, had already begun to flutter into unconscious being in his feeling for a shy and reserved little girl.

Schumann tells us that the year 1834 was the most important one of his life, for it witnessed the birth of the "N'eue Zeitschrift fur Musik," a journal which was to embody his notions of ideal music, and to be the organ of a clique of enthusiasts in lifting the art out of Philistinism and commonplace. The war-cry was "Reform in art," and never-ending battle against the little and conventional ideas which were believed then to be the curse of German music. Among the earlier contributors were Wieck, Schumke, Knorr, Banck, and Schumann himself, who wrote under the pseudonyms Florestan and Eusebius. Between his new journal and composing, Schumann was kept busy, but he found time to persuade himself that he was in love with Fr?ulein Ernestine von Fricken, a beautiful but somewhat frivolous damsel, who became engaged to the young composer and editor. Two years cooled off this passion, and a separation was mutually agreed on. Perhaps Schumann recognized something, in the lovely child who was swiftly blooming into maidenhood, which made his own inner soul protest against any other attachment.

It would have been very strange indeed if two such natures as Clara Wieck and Robert Schumann had not gravitated toward each other during the almost constant intercourse between them which took place between 1835 and 1838. Clara, born in 1820, had been her father's pupil from her tenderest childhood, but the development of her musical gifts was not forced in such a way as to interfere with her health and the exuberance of her spirits. The exacting teacher was also a tender father and a man of ripe judgment, and he knew the bitter price which mere mental precocity so frequently has to pay for its existence.

But the young girl's gifts were so extraordinary, and withal her character so full of childish simplicity and gayety, that it was difficult to think of her as of the average child phenomenon. At the age of nine she could play Mozart's concertos, and Hummel's A minor Concerto for the orchestra, one of the most difficult of compositions. A year later she began to compose, and improvised without difficulty, for her lessons in counterpoint and harmony had kept pace with her studies of pianoforte technique. Paganini visited Leipzig at this period, and was so astonished at the little Clara's precocious genius that he insisted on her presence at all his concerts, and addressed her with the deepest respect as a fellow-artist. She first appeared in public concert at the age of eleven, in Leipzig, Weimar, and other places, playing Pixis, Moscheles, Mendelssohn, Beethoven, and Chopin. The latter of these composers was then almost unknown in Germany, and Clara Wieck, young as she was, contributed largely to making him popular. A year later she visited Paris in company with her father, and heard Chopin, Liszt, and Kalkbrenner, who on their part were delighted with the little artist, who, beneath the delicacy and timidity of the child, indicated extraordinary powers. Society received her with the most flattering approbation, and when her father allowed her to appear in concert her playing excited the greatest delight and surprise. Her improvisation specially displayed a vigor of imagination, a fine artistic taste, and a well-defined knowledge which justly called out the most enthusiastic recognition.

When Clara Wieck returned home, she gave herself up to work with fresh ardor, studying composition under Heinrich Dorn, singing under the celebrated Mieksch, and even violin-playing, so great was her ambition for musical accomplishments. From 1836 to 1838 she made an extended musical tour through Germany, and was welcomed as a musico-poetic ideal by the enthusiasts who gathered around her. The poet Grillparzer spoke of her as "the innocent child who first unlocked the casket in which Beethoven buried his mighty heart," and it must be confessed that Clara Wieck, even as a young girl, did more than any other pianist to develop a love of and appreciation for the music of the Titan of composers.

Long before Schumann distinctly contemplated the image of Clara as the beloved one, the half of his soul, he had divined her genius, and expressed his opinion of her in no stinted terms of praise. When she was as yet only thirteen, he had written of her in his journal: "As I know people who, having but just heard Clara, yet rejoice in their anticipation of their next occasion of hearing her, I ask, What sustains this continual interest in her? Is it the 'wonder child' herself, at whose stretches of tenths people shake their heads while they are amazed at them, or the most difficult difficulties which she sportively flings toward the public like flower garlands? Is it the special pride of the city with which a people regards its own natives? Is it that she presents to us the most interesting productions of recent art in as short a time as possible? Is it that the masses understand that art should not depend on the caprices of a few enthusiasts, who would direct us back to a century over whose corpse the wheels of time are hastening? I know not; I only feel that here we are subdued by genius, which men still hold in respect. In short, we here divine the presence of a power of which much is spoken, while few indeed possess it.... Early she drew the veil of Isis aside. Serenely the child looks up; older eyes, perhaps, would have been blinded by that radiant light.... To Clara we dare no longer apply the measuring scale of age, but only that of fulfillment.... Clara Wieck is the first German artist.... Pearls do not float on the surface; they must be sought for in the deep, often with danger. But Clara is an intrepid diver."

The child whose genius he admired ripened into a lovely young woman, and Schumann became conscious that there had been growing in his heart for years a deep, ardent love. He had fancied himself in love more than once, but now he felt that he could make no mistake as to the genuineness of his feelings. In 1836 he confessed his feelings to the object of his affections, and discovered that he not only loved but was loved, for two such gifted and sympathetic natures could hardly be thrown together for years without the growth of a mutual tenderness. The marriage project was not favored by Papa Wieck, much as he liked the young composer who had so long been his pupil and a member of his family circle. The father of Clara looked forward to a brilliant artistic career for his daughter, perhaps hoped to marry her to some serene highness, and Schumann's prospects were as yet very uncertain. So he took Clara on a long artistic journey through Germany, with a view of quenching this passion by absence and those public adulations which he knew Clara's genius would command. But nothing shook the devotion of her heart, and she insisted on playing the compositions of the young composer at her concerts, as well as those of Beethoven, Liszt, and Chopin, the latter two of whom were just beginning to be known and admired.

Hoping to overcome Papa Wieck's opposition by success, Schumann took his new journal to Vienna, and published it in that city, carrying on simultaneously with his editorial duties active labors in composition. The attempt to better his fortunes in Vienna, however, did not prove very successful, and after six months he returned again to Leipzig. Schumann's generous sympathy with other great musicians was signally shown in his very first Vienna experiences, for he immediately made a pious pilgrimage to the W?hring cemetery to offer his pious gift of flowers on the graves of Beethoven and Schubert. On Beethoven's grave he found a steel pen, which he preserved as a sacred treasure, and used afterward in writing his own finest musical fancies. He remembered, too, that the brother of Schubert, Ferdinand, was still living in a suburb of Vienna. "He knew me," Schumann says, "from my admiration for his brother, as I had publicly expressed it, and showed me many things. At last he let me look at the treasures of Franz Schubert's compositions, which he still possesses. The wealth that lay heaped up made me shudder with joy, what to take first, where to cease. Among other things, he also showed me the scores of several symphonies, of which many had never been heard, while others had been tried, but put back, on the score of their being too difficult and bombastic." One of these symphonies, that in C major, the largest and grandest in conception, Schumann chose and sent to Leipzig, where it was soon afterward produced under Mendelssohn's direction at one of the Ge-wandhaus concerts, and produced an immediate and profound sensation. For the first time the world witnessed, in a more expanded sphere, the powers of a composer the very beauties of whose songs had hitherto been fatal to his general success. During this period of Schumann's life the most important works he composed were the "?tudes Symphoniques," the famous "Carnival" dedicated to Liszt, the "Scenes of Childhood," the "Fantasia" dedicated to Liszt, the "Novellettes," and "Kreisleriana." As he writes to Heinrich Dorn: "Much music is the result of the contest I am passing through for Clara's sake." Schumann's compositions had been introduced to the public by the gifted interpretation of Clara Wieck, with whom it was a labor of love, and also by Franz Liszt, then rising almost on the top wave of his dazzling fame as a virtuoso. Liszt was a profound admirer of the less fortunate Schumann, and did everything possible to make him a favorite with the public, but for a long time in vain. Liszt writes of this as follows: "Since my first knowledge of his compositions I had played many of them in private circles at Milan and Vienna, without having succeeded in winning the approbation of my hearers. These works were, fortunately for them, too far above the then trivial level of taste to find a home in the superficial atmosphere of popular applause. The public did not fancy them, and few players understood them. Even in Leipzig, where I played the 'Carnival' at my second Gewandhaus concert, I did not obtain my customary applause. Musicians, even those who claimed to be connoisseurs also, carried too thick a mask over their ears to be able to comprehend that charming 'Carnival,' harmoniously framed as it is, and ornamented with such rich variety of artistic fancy. I did not doubt, however, but that this work would eventually win its place in general appreciation beside Beethoven's thirty-three variations on a theme by Diabelli ." Both as a composer and writer on music, Schumann embodied his deep detestation of the Philistinism and commonplace which stupefied the current opinions of the time, and he represented in Germany the same battle of the romantic in art against what was known as the classical which had been carried on so fiercely in France by Berlioz, Liszt, and Chopin.

The year 1840 was one of the most important in Schumann's life. In February he was created Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Jena, and, still more precious boon to the man's heart, Wieck's objections to the marriage with Clara had been so far melted away that he consented, though with reluctance, to their union. The marriage took place quietly at a little church in Sch?nfeld, near Leipzig. This year was one of the most fruitful of Schumann's life. His happiness burst forth in lyric forms. He wrote the amazing number of one hundred and thirty-eight songs, among which the more famous are the set entitled "Myrtles," the cycles of song from Heine, dedicated to Pauline Viardot, Chamisso's "Woman's Love and Life," and Heine's "Poet Love." Schumann as a song-writer must be called indeed the musical reflex of Heine, for his immortal works have the same passionate play of pathos and melancholy, the sharp-cut epigrammatic form, the grand swell of imagination, impatient of the limits set by artistic taste, which characterize the poet themes. Schumann says that nearly all the works composed at this time were written under Clara's inspiration solely. Blest with the continual companionship of a woman of genius, as amiable as she was gifted, who placed herself as a gentle mediator between Schumann's intellectual life and the outer world, he composed many of his finest vocal and instrumental compositions during the years immediately succeeding his marriage; among them the cantata "Paradise and the Peri," and the "Faust" music. His own connection with public life was restricted to his position as teacher of piano-forte playing, composition, and score playing at the Leipzig Conservatory, while the gifted wife was the interpreter of his beautiful piano-forte works as an executant. A more perfect fitness and companionship in union could not have existed, and one is reminded of the married life of the poet pair, the Brownings. After four years of happy and quiet life, in which mental activity was inspired by the most delightful of domestic surroundings, an artistic tour to St. Petersburg was undertaken by Robert and Clara Schumann. Our composer did not go without reluctance. "Forgive me," he writes to a friend, "if I forbear telling you of my unwillingness to leave my quiet home." He seems to have had a melancholy premonition that his days of untroubled happiness were over. A genial reception awaited them at the Russian capital. They were frequently invited to the Winter Palace by the emperor and empress, and the artistic circles of the city were very enthusiastic over Mme. Schumann's piano-forte playing. Since the days of John Field, Clementi's great pupil, no one had raised such a furore among the music-loving Russians. Schumann's music, which it was his wife's dearest privilege to interpret, found a much warmer welcome than among his own countrymen at that date. In the Sclavonic nature there is a deep current of romance and mysticism, which met with instinctive sympathy the dreamy and fantastic thoughts which ran riot in Schumann's works.

On returning from the St. Petersburg tour, Schumann gave up the "Neue Zeitschrift," the journal which he had made such a powerful organ of musical revolution, and transferred it to Oswald Lorenz. Schumann's literary work is so deeply intertwined with his artistic life and mission that it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to separate the two. He had achieved a great work--he had planted in the German mind the thought that there was such a thing as progress and growth; that stagnation was death; and that genius was for ever shaping for itself new forms and developments. He had taught that no art is an end to itself, and that, unless it embodies the deep-seated longings and aspirations of men ever striving toward a loftier ideal, it becomes barren and fruitless--the mere survival of a truth whose need had ceased. He was the apostle of the musico-poetical art in Germany, and, both as author and composer, strove with might and main to educate his countrymen up to a clear understanding of the ultimate outcome of the work begun by Beethoven, Schubert, and Weber.

Schumann as a critic was eminently catholic and comprehensive. Deeply appreciative of the old lights of music, he received with enthusiasm all the fresh additions contributed by musical genius to the progress of his age. Eschewing the cold, objective, technical form of criticism, his method of approaching the work of others was eminently subjective, casting on them the illumination which one man of genius gives to another. The cast of his articles was somewhat dramatic and conversational, and the characters represented as contributing their opinions to the symposium of discussion were modeled on actual personages. He himself was personified under the dual form of Florestan and Eusebius, the "two souls in his breast"--the former, the fiery iconoclast, impulsive in his judgments and reckless in attacking prejudices; the latter, the mild, genial, receptive dreamer. Master Raro, who stood for Wieck, also typified the calm, speculative side of Schumann's nature. Chiara represented Clara Wieck, and personified the feminine side of art. So the various personages were all modeled after associates of Schumann, and, aside from the freshness and fascination which this method gave his style, it enabled him to approach his subjects from many sides. The name of the imaginary society was the Davids-bund, probably from King David and his celebrated harp, or perhaps in virtue of David's victories over the Philistines of his day.

During the years 1850 to 1854 Schumann composed his "Rhenish Symphony," the overtures to the "Bride of Messina" and "Hermann and Dorothea," and many vocal and piano-forte works. He accepted the post of musical director at D?sseldorf in 1850, removed to that city with his wife and children, and, on arriving, the artistic pair were received with a civic banquet. The position was in many respects agreeable, but the responsibilities were too great for Schumann's declining health, and probably hastened his death. In 1853 Robert and Clara Schumann made a grand artistic tour through Holland, which resembled a triumphal procession, so great was the musical enthusiasm called out. When they returned Schumann's malady returned with double force, and on February 27, 1854, he attempted to end his misery by jumping into the Rhine. Madness had seized him with a clutch which was never to be released, except at short intervals. Every possible care was lavished on him by his heartbroken and devoted wife, and the assiduous attention of the friends who reverenced the genius now for ever quenched. The last two years of his life were spent in the private insane asylum at Endenich, near Bonn, where he died July 20, 1856. Schumann possessed a wealth of musical imagination which, if possibly equaled in a few instances, is nowhere surpassed in the records of his art. For him music possessed all the attributes inherent in the other arts--absolute color and flexibility of form. That he attempted to express these phases of art expression, with an almost boundless trust in their applicability to tone and sound, not unfrequently makes them obscure to the last degree, but it also gave much of his composition a richness, depth, and subtilty of suggestive power which place them in a unique niche, and will always preserve them as objects of the greatest interest to the musical student. There is no doubt that his increasing mental malady is evident in the chaotic character of some of his later orchestral compositions, but, in those works composed during his best period, splendor of imagination goes hand in hand with genuine art treatment. This is specially noticeable in the songs and the piano-forte works. Schumann was essentially lyrical and subjective, though his intellectual breadth and culture always kept him from narrowness as a composer. He led the van in the formation of that pictorial and descriptive style of music which has asserted itself in German music, but his essentially lyric personality in his attitude to the outer world presented the external thoroughly saturated and modified by his own moods and feelings.

In his piano-forte works we find his most complete and satisfactory development as the artist composer. Here the world, with its myriad impressions, its facts, its purposes, its tendencies, met the man and commingled in a series of exquisite creations, which are true tone pictures. In this domain Beethoven alone was worthy to be compared with him, though the animus and scheme of the Beethoven piano-forte works grew out of a totally different method.

In personal appearance Schumann bore the marks of the man of genius. As he reached middle age we are told of him that his figure was of middle height, inclined to stoutness, that his bearing was dignified, his movements slow. His features, though irregular, produced an agreeable impression; his forehead was broad and high, the nose heavy, the eyes excessively bright, though generally veiled and downcast, the mouth delicately cut, the hair thick and brown, his cheeks full and ruddy. His head was squarely formed, of an intensely powerful character, and the whole expression of his face sweet and genial. Even when young he was distinguished by a kind of absent-mindedness that prevented him from taking much part in conversation. Once, it is said, he entered a lady's drawing-room to call, played a few chords on the piano, and smilingly left without speaking a word. But, among intimate friends, he could be extraordinarily fluent and eloquent in discussing an interesting topic. He was conscious of his own shyness, and once wrote to a friend: "I shall be very glad to see you here. In me, however, you must not expect to find much. I scarcely ever speak except in the evening, and most in playing the piano." His wife was the crowning blessing of his life. She was not only his consoler, but his other intellectual life, for she, with her great powers as a virtuoso, interpreted his music to the world, both before and after his death. It has rarely been the lot of an artist to see his most intimate feelings and aspirations embodied to the world by the genius of the mother of his children. Well did Ferdinand Hiller write of this artist couple: "What love beautified his life! A woman stood beside him, crowned with the starry circlet of genius, to whom he seemed at once the father to his daughter, the master to the scholar, the bridegroom to the bride, the saint to the disciple."

Clara Schumann still lives, though becoming fast an old woman in years, if still young in heart, and still able to win the admiration of the musical world by her splendid playing. Berlioz, who heard her in her youth, pronounced her the greatest virtuoso in Germany, in one of his letters to Heine; and while she was little more than a child she had gained the heartiest admiration in England, France, and Germany. Henry Chorley heard her at Leipzig in 1839, and speaks of "the organ-playing on the piano of Mme. Schumann , who commands her instrument with the enthusiasm of a sibyl and the grasp of a man." Since Schumann's death, Mme. Schumann has been known as the exponent of her husband's works, which she has performed in Germany and England with an insight, a power of conception, and a beauty of treatment which have contributed much to the recognition of his remarkable genius.

Schumann, in his "N'eue Zeitschrift," sums up the characteristics of the Polish composer admirably; "Genius creates kingdoms, the smaller states of which are again divided by a higher hand among talents, that these may organize details which the former, in its thousand-fold activity, would be unable to perfect. As Hummel, for example, followed the call of Mozart, clothing the thoughts of that master in a flowing, sparkling robe, so Chopin followed Beethoven. Or, to speak more simply, as Hummel imitated the style of Mozart in detail, rendering it enjoyable to the virtuoso on one particular instrument, so Chopin led the spirit of Beethoven into the concert-room.

"Chopin did not make his appearance accompanied by an orchestral army, as great genius is accustomed to do; he only possessed a small cohort, but every soul belongs to him to the last hero.

"He is the pupil of the first masters--Beethoven, Schubert, Field. The first formed his mind in boldness, the second his heart in tenderness, the third his hand to its flexibility. Thus he stood well provided with deep knowledge in his art, armed with courage in the full consciousness of his power, when in the year 1830 the great voice of the people arose in the West. Hundreds of youths had waited for the moment; but Chopin was the first on the summit of the wall, behind which lay a cowardly renaissance, a dwarfish Philistinism, asleep. Blows were dealt right and left, and the Philistines awoke angrily, crying out, 'Look at the impudent one!' while others behind the besieger cried, 'The one of noble courage.'

"Besides this, and the favorable influence of period and condition, fate rendered Chopin still more individual and interesting in endowing him with an original pronounced nationality; Polish, too, and because this nationality wanders in mourning robes in the thoughtful artist, it deeply attracts us. It was well for him that neutral Germany did not receive him too warmly at first, and that his genius led him straight to one of the great capitals of the world, where he could freely poetize and grow angry. If the powerful autocrat of the North knew what a dangerous enemy threatens him in Chopin's works in the simple melodies of his mazurkas, he would forbid music. Chopin's works are cannons buried in flowers.... He is the boldest, proudest poet soul of to-day."

But Schumann could have said something more than this, and added that Chopin was a musician of exceptional attainments, a virtuoso of the very highest order, a writer for the piano pure and simple preeminent beyond example, and a master of a unique and perfect style.

Chopin was born of mixed French and Polish parentage, February 8, 1810, at Zelazowa-Wola, near Warsaw. He was educated at the Warsaw Conservatory, and his eminent genius for the piano shone at this time most unmistakably. He found in the piano-forte an exclusive organ for the expression of his thoughts. In the presence of this confidential companion he forgot his shyness and poured forth his whole soul. A passionate lover of his native country, and burning with those aspirations for freedom which have made Poland since its first partition a volcano ever ready to break forth, the folk-themes of Poland are at the root of all of Chopin's compositions, and in the waltzes and mazurkas bearing his name we find a passionate glow and richness of color which make them musical poems of the highest order.

Chopin's art position, both as a pianist and composer, was a unique one. He was accustomed to say that the breath of the concert-room stifled him, whereas Liszt, his intimate friend and fellow-artist, delighted in it as a war-horse delights in the tumult of battle. Chopin always shrank from the display of his powers as a mere executant. To exhibit his talents to the public was an offense to him, and he only cared for his remarkable technical skill as a means of placing his fanciful original poems in tone rightly before the public. It was with the greatest difficulty that his intimate friends, Liszt, Meyerbeer, Nourrit, Delacroix, Heine, Mme. George Sand, Countess D'Agoult, and others, could persuade him to appear before large mixed audiences. His genius only shone unconstrained as a player in the society of a few chosen intimate friends, with whom he felt a perfect sympathy, artistic, social, and intellectual. Exquisite, fastidious, and refined, Chopin was loss an aristocrat from political causes, or even by virtue of social caste, than from the fact that his art nature, which was delicate, feminine, and sensitive, shrank from all companions except those molded of the finest clay. We find this sense of exclusiveness and isolation in all of the Chopin music, as in some quaint, fantastic, ideal world, whose master would draw us up to his sphere, but never descend to ours.

In the treatment of the technical means of the piano-forte, he entirely wanders from the old methods. Moscheles, a great pianist in an age of great players, gave it up in despair, and confessed that he could not play Chopin's music. The latter teaches the fingers to serve his own artistic uses, without regard to the notions of the schools. It is said that M. Kalkbrenner advised Chopin to attend his classes at the Paris Conservatoire, that the latter might learn the proper fingering. Chopin answered his officious adviser by placing one of his own "?tudes" before him, and asking him to play it. The failure of the pompous professor was ludicrous, for the old-established technique utterly failed to do it justice. Chopin's end as a player was to faithfully interpret the poetry of his own composition. His genius as a composer taught him to make innovations in piano-forte effects. He was thus not only a great inventor as a composer, but as regards the technique of the piano-forte. He not only told new things well worth hearing which the world would not forget, but devised new ways of saying them, and it mattered but little to him whether his more forcible and passionate dialectic offended what Schumann calls musical Philistinism or no. Chopin formed a school of his own which was purely the outcome of his genius, though as Schumann, in the extract previously quoted, justly says: "He was molded by the deep poetic spirit of Beethoven, with whom form only had value as it expressed truthfully and beautifully symmetry of conception."

Liszt, in his life of Chopin, says of him: "His character was indeed not easily understood. A thousand subtile shades, mingling, crossing, contradicting, and disguising each other, rendered it almost undecipherable at first view; kind, courteous, affable, and almost of joyous manners, he would not suffer the secret convulsions which agitated him to be ever suspected. His works, concertos, waltzes, sonatas, ballades, polonaises, mazurkas, nocturnes, scherzi, all reflect a similar enigma in a most poetical and romantic form."

Chopin's moral nature was not cast in an heroic mold, and he lacked the robust intellectual marrow which is essential to the highest forms of genius in art as well as in literature and affairs, though it is not safe to believe that he was, as painted by George Sand and Liszt, a feeble youth, continually living at death's door in an atmosphere of moonshine and sentimentality. But there can be no question that the whole bent of Chopin's temperament and genius was melancholy, romantic, and poetic, and that frequently he gives us mere musical moods and reveries, instead of well-defined and well-developed ideas. His music perhaps loses nothing, for, if it misses something of the clear, inspiring, vigorous quality of other great composers, it has a subtile, dreamy, suggestive beauty all its own.

The personal life of Chopin was singularly interesting. His long and intimate connection with George Sand; the circumstances under which it was formed; the blissful idyl of the lovers in the isle of Majorca; the awakening from the dream, and the separation--these and other striking circumstances growing out of a close association with what was best in Parisian art and life, invest the career of the man, aside from his art, with more than common charm to the mind of the reader. Having touched on these phases of Chopin's life at some length in a previous volume of this series, we must reluctantly pass them by.

In closing this imperfect review of the Polish composer, it is enough to say that the present generation has more than sustained the judgment of his own as to the unique and wonderful beauty of his compositions. Hardly any concert programme is considered complete without one or more numbers selected from his works; and though there are but few pianists, even in a day when Chopin as a stylist has been a study, who can do his subtile and wonderful fancies justice, there is no composer for the piano-forte who so fascinates the musical mind.

THALBERG AND GOTTSCHALK.

"I find his introduction of harp effects on the piano quite original. His theme, which lies in the middle part, is brought out clearly in relief with an accompaniment of complicated arpeggios which reminds me of a harp. The audience is amazed. He himself sits immovably calm; his whole bearing as he sits at the piano is soldierlike; his lips are tightly compressed and his coat buttoned closely. He told me he acquired this attitude of self-control by smoking a Turkish pipe while practicing his piano-forte exercises: the length of the tube was so calculated as to keep him erect and motionless." This exact discipline and mechanism were not merely matters of technical culture; they were the logical outcome of the man and surely a part of himself. But within his limits, fixed as these were, Thalberg was so great that he must be conceded to be one of the most striking and brilliant figures of an age fecund in fine artists.

Thalberg did not immediately begin to perform in public, but, on returning to Vienna in 1827, played continually at private soir?es, where he had the advantage of being heard and criticised by the foremost amateurs and musicians of the Austrian capital. It had some time since become obvious to the initiated that another great player was about to be launched on his career. The following year the young artist tried his hand at composition, for he published variations on themes from Weber's "Euryanthe," which were well received. Thalberg in after-years spoke of all his youthful productions with disdain, but his early works displayed not a little of the brilliant style of treatment which subsequently gave his fantasias a special place among compositions for the piano-forte.

To follow the course of Thalberg's pianoforte achievements in his musical travels through Europe would be merely to repeat a record of uninterrupted successes. He disarmed envy and criticism everywhere, and even those disposed to withhold a frank and generous acknowledgment of his greatness did not dare to question powers of execution which seemed without a technical flaw. During his travels Thalberg composed a concerto for piano and orchestra, to play at his concerts. But this species of composition was so obviously unsuited to his abilities that he quickly forsook it, and thenceforward devoted his efforts exclusively to the instrument of which he was such an eminent master. A more extensive ambition had been rebuked in more ways than one. He composed two operas, "Fiorinda" and "Christine," and of course easily yielded to the entreaties of his admirers to have them produced. But it was clearly evident that his musical idiosyncrasy, though magnificent of its kind, was limited in range, and after the failure of his operas and attempts at orchestral writing Thalberg calmly accepted the situation.

During the latter years of Thalberg's life he spent much of his time in elegant ease at his fine country estate near Naples, only giving concerts at some few of the largest European capitals, like London and Paris. He became an enthusiastic wine-grower, and wine from his estate gained a medal at the Exposition Universelle of 1867. Many of his best piano-forte compositions date from the period when he had given up the active pursuit of virtuosoism. His works comprise a concerto, three sonatas, many nocturnes, rondos, and ?tudes, about thirty fantasias, two operas, and an instruction series, which latter has been adopted by many of the best teachers, and has been the means of forming a number of able pupils. This fine artist died at his Neapolitan estate, April 27, 1871.

Thalberg had but little sympathy with the dreamy romanticism which found such splendid exponents, while he was yet in his early youth, in Schumann, Chopin, and Liszt. Imagination in its higher functions he seemed to lack. A certain opulence and picturesqueness of fancy united in his artistic being with an intelligence both lucid and penetrating, and a sense of form and symmetry almost Greek in its fastidiousness. The sweet, vague, passionate aspiration^, the sensibility that quivers with every breath of movement from the external world, he could not understand. Placidity, grace, and repose he had in perfection. Yet he was very highly appreciated by those who had little in common with his artistic nature. As, for example, Robert Schumann writes of Thalberg and his playing, on the occasion of a charity concert, given in Leipzig in 1841: "In his passing flight the master's pinions rested here awhile, and, as from the angel's pinions in one of Rucker's poems, rubies and other precious stones fell from them and into indigent hands, as the master ordained it. It is difficult to say anything new of one who has been so praise beshow-ered as he has. But every earnest virtuoso is glad to hear one thing said at any time--that he has progressed in his art since he last delighted us. This best of all praise we are conscientiously able to bestow on Thalberg; for, during the last two years that we have not heard him, he has made astonishing additions to his acquirements, and, if possible, moves with greater boldness, grace, and freedom than ever. His playing seemed to have the same effect on every one, and the delight that he probably feels in it himself was shared by all. True virtuosity gives us something more than mere flexibility and execution: aman may mirror his own nature in it, and in Thalberg's playing it becomes clear to all that he is one of the favored ones of fortune, one accustomed to wealth and elegance. Accompanied by happiness, bestowing pleasure, he commenced his career; under such circumstances he has so far pursued it, and so he will probably continue it. The whole of yesterday evening and every number that he played gave us a proof of this. The public did not seem to be there to judge, but only to enjoy; they were as certain of enjoyment as the master was of his art."

Thalberg in his appearance had none of the traditional wild picturesqueness of style and manner which so many distinguished artists, even Liszt himself, have thought it worth while to carry perhaps to the degree of affectation. Smoothly shaven, quiet, eminently respectable-looking, his handsome, somewhat Jewish-looking face composed in an expression of unostentatious good breeding, he was wont to seat himself at the piano with all the simplicity of one doing any commonplace thing. He had the air of one who respected himself, his art, and the public. His performance was in an exquisitely artistic sense that of the gentleman, perfect, polished, and elaborately wrought. The distinguished American litterateur, Mr. George William Curtis, who heard him in New York in 1857, thus wrote of him: "He is a proper artist in this, that he comprehends the character of his instrument. He neither treats it as a violoncello nor a full orchestra. Those who in private have enjoyed the pleasure of hearing--or, to use a more accurate epithet, of seeing--Strepitoso, that friend of mankind, play the piano, will understand what we mean when we speak of treating the piano as if it were an orchestra. Strepitoso storms and slams along the keyboard until the tortured instrument gives up its musical soul in despair and breaks its heart of melody by cracking all its strings.... Every instrument has its limitations, but Strepitoso will tolerate no such theory. He extracts music from his piano, not as if he were sifting the sands for gold, but as if he were raking oysters.... Now, Thalberg's manner is different from Strepitoso's. He plays the piano; that is the phrase which describes his performance. He plays it quietly and suavely. You could sit upon the lawn on a June night and hear with delight the sounds that trickled through the moonlight from the piano of this master. They would not melt your soul in you; they would not touch those longings that, like rays of starry light, respond to the rays of the stars; they would not storm your heart with the yearning passion of their strains, but you would confess it was a good world as you listened, and be glad you lived in it--you would be glad of your home and all that made it homelike; the moonlight as you listened would melt and change, and your smiling eyes would seem to glitter in cheerful sunlight as Thalberg ended."

Thalberg's style was, perhaps, the best possible illustration of the legitimate effects of the pianoforte carried to the highest by as perfect a technique as could possibly be attained by human skill.

That he lacked poetic fire and passion, that the sense of artistic restraint and a refined fastidiousness chilled and fettered him, is doubtlessly true. Whether the absence of the imaginative warmth and vigor which suffuse a work of art with the glow of something that can not be fully expressed, and kindle the thoughts of the hearer to take hitherto unknown flights, is fully compensated for by that repose and symmetry of style which know exactly what it wishes to express, and, being perfect master of the means of expression, puts forth an exact measure of effort and then stops as if shut down by an iron wall--this is an open question, and must be answered according to one's art theories. The exquisite modeling of a Benvenuto Cellini vase, wrought with patient elaboration into a thing of unsurpassable beauty, does not invoke as high a sense of pleasure as an heroic statue or noble painting by some great master, but of its kind the pleasure is just as complete. Apart from Thalberg's power as a player, however, there was something captivating in the quality of his talent, which, though not creative, was gifted with the power of seizing the very essence of the music to be interpreted. A striking example of this is shown in the fantasias he composed on the different operas, a form of writing which reached its perfection in him. His own contribution is simply a most delightful setting of the melodies of his subject, and the whole is steeped in the very atmosphere and feeling of the original, as if the master himself had done the work.

A good example is the fantasia on Mozart's "Don Giovanni." The little, wild, unformed melodies rustle in quick gusts along the keys as if wavering shadows, yet with all the familiar rhythm and family likeness, filling the mind of the hearer with the atmosphere and necessity of what is to follow, while gradually the full harmonies unfold themselves. The introduction of the minuet is one of the most striking portions. The scene of the minuet in the opera is a vision of rural loveliness and repose, whispering of flowers, fields, and happy flying hours. All this becomes poetized, and the music seems to imply rich reaches of odorous garden and moonlight, whispering foliage, and nightingales mad with the delight of their own singing, and a palace on the lawn sounding with riotous mirth. The player-composer weaves the glamour of such a dream, and the hearer finds himself strolling in imagination through the moonlit garden, listening to the birds, the waters, and the rustling leaves, while the stately beat of the minuet comes throbbing through it all, calling up the vision of gayly dressed cavaliers and beautiful ladies fantastically moving to the tune. Such poetic sentiment as this of the purely picturesque sort was in large measure Thalberg's possession, but he could never understand that turbulent ground-swell of passion which music can also powerfully express, and by which the soul is lifted up to the heights of ecstasy or plunged in depths of melancholy. Music as a vehicle for such meanings was mere Egyptian hieroglyphic, utterly beyond his limitation, absolute bathos and absurdity.

It is doubtful whether any player ever possessed a more wonderfully trained mechanism; the smallest details were polished and finished with the utmost care, the scales marvels of evenness, the shakes rivaling the trill of a canary bird. His arpeggios at times rolled like the waves of the sea, and at others resembled folds of transparent lace floating airily with the movements of the wearer. The octaves were wonderfully accurate, and the chords appeared to be struck by steel mallets instead of fingers. He was called the Bayard of pianists, "le Chevalier sans peur et sans reproche." His tone was noble, yet mellow and delicate, and the gradations between his forte and piano were traced most exquisitely. In a word, technical execution could go no further. It is said that he never played a piece in public till he had absolutely made it the property of his fingers. He was the first to divide the melody between the two hands, making the right hand perform a brilliant figure in the higher register, while the left hand exhibited a full and rich bass part, supplementing it with an accompaniment in chords. It was this characteristic which made his fantasias so unique and interesting, in spite of their lack of originality of motive, as compositions. Almost all writers for the piano have since adopted this device, even the great Mendelssohn using it in some of his concertos and "Songs without Words"; and in many cases it has been transformed into a mere trick of arrant musical charlatanism, designed to cover up with a sham glitter the utter absence of thought and motive. No better suggestion of the dominant characteristic of Thal-berg as a pianist can be found than a critical word of his friend Moscheles: "The proper ground for finger gymnastics is to be found in Thalberg's latest compositions; for mind , give me Schumann."

During Thalberg's first visit to America he had an active and dangerous rival in the young and brilliant pianist, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, who was as fresh to New York audiences as Thalberg himself, though the latter had the advantage over his young competitor in a fame which was almost world-wide. Of American pianists Louis Gottschalk stands confessedly at the head by virtue of remarkable native gifts, which, had they been assisted by greater industry and ambition, might easily have won him a very eminent rank in Europe as well as in his own country. An easy, pleasure-loving, tropical nature, flexible, facile, and disposed to sacrifice the future to the present, was the only obstacle to the attainment to a place level with the foremost artists of his age.

Edward Gottschalk, who came to America in his young manhood and settled in New Orleans, and his wife, a French Creole lady, had five children, of whom the future pianist was the eldest, born in 1829. His feeling for music manifested itself when he was three years old by his ability to play a melody on the piano which he had heard. Instantly he was strong enough, he was placed under the instruction of a good teacher, and no pains were spared to develop his precocious talent. At the age of six he had made such progress on the piano that he was also instructed on the violin, and soon was able to play pieces of more than ordinary difficulty with taste and expression. We are told that the lad gave a benefit concert at the age of eight to assist an unfortunate violin-player, with considerable success, and was soon in great request at evening parties as a child phenomenon. The propriety of sending the little Louis to Paris had long been discussed, and it was finally accomplished in 1842.

On reaching Paris he was first put under the teaching of Charles Halle, but, as the latter master was a little careless, he was replaced by M. Camille Stamaty, who had the reputation of being the ablest professor in the city. The following year he began the study of harmony and counterpoint with M. Malidan, and the rapid progress he evinced in his studies was of a kind to justify his parents in their wish to devote him to the career of a pianist.

Young Louis Gottschalk was much petted in the aristocratic salons of Paris, to which he had admission through his aunts, the Comtesse de Lagrange and the Comtesse de Bourjally. His remarkable musical gifts, and more especially his talent for improvisation, excited curiosity and admiration, even in a city where the love of musical novelty had been sated by a continual supply of art prodigies. Young as he was, he wrote at this time not a few charming compositions, which were in after-years occasional features of his concerts. His delicate constitution succumbed under hard work, and for a while a severe attack of typhoid fever interrupted his studies. On his recovery, our young artist spent a few months in the Ardennes. On returning to Paris, he became the pupil of Hector Berlioz, who felt a deep interest in the young American, as an art prodigy from a land of savages in harmony, and devoted himself so assiduously to the study that he declined an invitation from the Spanish queen to become a guest of the court at Madrid.

An amusing incident occurred in a pedestrian trip which he made to the Vosges in 1846. He had forgotten his passport, and, on arriving at a small town, was arrested by a gendarme and taken before the maire. The latter official was reading a newspaper containing a notice of his last concert, and through this means he assured the worthy functionary of his identity, and was cordially welcomed to the hospitality of the official residence.

His friend Berlioz, who was ever on the alert to help the American pupil who promised to do him so much credit, arranged a series of concerts for him at the Italian Op?ra in the winter of 1846-'47, and these proved brilliantly successful, not merely in filling the young artist's purse, but in augmenting his fast-growing reputation. Steady labor in study and concert-giving, many of his public performances being for charity, made two years pass swiftly by. A musical tour through France in 1849 was highly successful, and the young American returned to Paris, loaded down with gifts, and rich in the sense of having justly earned the congratulations which showered on him from all his friends. A second invitation now came from Spain, and Louis Gottschalk on arriving at Madrid was made a guest at the royal palace. From the king he received two orders, the diamond cross of Isabella la Catholique and that of Leon d'Holstein, and from the Duke de Montpensier he received a sword of honor. We are told that at one of the private court concerts Gottschalk played a duet with Don Carlos, the father of the recent pretender to the Spanish throne.

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