Read Ebook: History of the pianoforte and pianoforte players by Bie Oskar Kellett E E Ernest Edward Translator Naylor Edward W Edward Woodall Translator

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 930 lines and 123887 words, and 19 pages

A HISTORY OF THE PIANOFORTE AND PIANOFORTE PLAYERS

HISTORY OF THE PIANOFORTE

AND

PIANOFORTE PLAYERS

TRANSLATED AND REVISED FROM THE GERMAN OF

OSCAR BIE

E. E. KELLETT, M.A.

AND

E. W. NAYLOR, M.A., MUS.D.

LONDON J. M. DENT & COMPANY

NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY

Dedicated

EUGENE D'ALBERT

Editors' Preface

This work does not profess to be so much a literal translation as a somewhat free version of Dr Bie's "Das Klavier." The author, writing as he does for a German public, naturally uses a more philosophic style than would be generally intelligible in England. Availing themselves, therefore, of Dr Bie's kind permission, the Editors, with a view to making the book more acceptable to English readers, have allowed themselves considerable liberty both in omission and in addition. For all portions of the text which are enclosed in square brackets they hold themselves responsible. The footnotes, except a few which are specially marked, have been added by Dr Naylor.

E. W. N. E. E. K.

Contents

CHAP. PAGE

The Domestic Character of the Piano, p. 2. Queen Elizabeth at the Spinet, p. 3. Shakespeare and Music, p. 5. Mediaeval Church Music, p. 7. Ecclesiastical use of Folk Songs, p. 8. Popular Contrapuntal Music, p. 9. The Folk Song and the Instrument, p. 10. The Organ and the Lute, p. 11. The Clavier and Secular Music, p. 12. Italian influence in England, p. 13. Cultivation of Music in England, p. 15. First Books of Clavier Music, p. 16. Classes of old English Pieces, p. 17. The Virginal, p. 18. History of the Clavier, p. 19. The Clavichord, p. 21. The Clavicymbal, p. 23. Virginal Pieces, p. 26. Thomas Tallis, p. 27. William Bird, p. 28. John Bull, p. 32. Other Composers, p. 38.

A Preface by Scarlatti, p. 68. His Life, p. 70. His Style and the Italian Musical Emotion, p. 71. Technique, p. 73. Love of Adventure, p. 74. The Opera, p. 75. The position of Music, p. 77. Chamber Music, p. 78. Clavier Pieces, p. 79. Frescobaldi and Pasquini, p. 80. Corelli, p. 82. The Da Capo Style, p. 84. Scarlatti's Sonatas, p. 86. Other Italians, p. 89.

The Change of Taste, p. 127. The "Professional Musician," p. 129. Spread of Clavier Music, p. 131. Musical Periodicals, p. 131. Pianoforte Factories, p. 133. Stein and Streicher, p. 134. Handel, p. 137. Philip Emanuel Bach, p. 138. Haydn, p. 149. Mozart, p. 151.

Beethoven's Technique, p. 183. The Clavier Schools of this period, p. 185. The groups of Technicians, p. 189. The Life of the Virtuoso, p. 192. Concerts and Improvisations, p. 196. Compositions, p. 197. Piano and Opera, p. 201. The ?tude, p. 203. Clementi, p. 208. Cramer, p. 210. Hummel, p. 211. Czerny, p. 216. Kalkbrenner, p. 218. Weber, p. 218. Moscheles, p. 221.

Romance, p. 224. Franz Schubert, p. 225. Robert Schumann, p. 231. Early Works, p. 231. Jean Paul, p. 232. "Davidsbund," p. 235. Private Life, p. 237. The "Neue Zeitschrift f?r Musik," p. 238. "Davidsb?ndler T?nze," p. 238. "Carnival," p. 240. F sharp minor Sonata, p. 241. "Fantasie St?cke," p. 242. "?tudes Symphoniques," p. 242. Bach and E. T. A. Hoffmann, p. 244. Kreisleriana, p. 245. Op. 17, p. 246. "Novellettes," p. 248. Mendelssohn, p. 249. "Faschings-schwank," and later Works, p. 254. Chopin, p. 255. His Art, p. 257. His Life, p. 258. George Sand, p. 259. Works, p. 261. Style of Playing, p. 264. Field, p. 265. Chopin's Method, p. 266. , p. 268.

INDEX 329

Old England: a Prelude

Those were great days in which the foundation-stone was laid at Bayreuth. Days in which the creative philosopher of the stage threw his sceptre over the Ninth Symphony; days when choice spirits met together, who tremblingly passed through the moment in which they saw something never heard of become reality; days of a joyous intoxication when Liszt and Wagner embraced each other with tears; days that Nietzsche calls the happiest he had ever spent, when something brooded in the air that he could trace nowhere else--something ineffable but full of hope--those days, alas! return no more. In those days music, that music which the million greet with cheers of rapture, stood enthroned on the Stage, which gives to art its public hold upon the world. The living, new-creating music has to-day once more fled to the concert hall, to the haughty and more select rows of aristocratic amateurs who listen to the symphonic poems of Richard Strauss. These are tender and delicate creations beside the dramas of Wagner. They are elves, they elude us, and there are those, who see them not. We have been driven to them as the highest musical expressions of our time.

Since the trumpet-notes of Bayreuth died away we have conducted our musical devotions on a smaller, more intimate scale. Already, beyond the concert hall, we see opening the private chamber, holiest of all, and the chamber music, which is to the music of the stage what etching is to painting. It is the old ebb and flow. As we passed from the single instrument to the orchestra, from Beethoven's orchestra with its travail for expression to Wagner's stage with its world-embracing aims, so we are now passing back from the stage to undiluted music first before thousands of listeners, then before hundreds only.

Queen Elizabeth of England is sitting in the afternoon at her spinet. She is thinking of the conversation which she has had this forenoon with Sir James Melville--a conversation which the latter has preserved for us in writing. He was in 1564 ambassador from Mary Stuart to Elizabeth. Elizabeth had asked him what was Mary's style of dress, the colour of her hair, her figure, her way of life. "When Mary returns from the hunt," he answered, "she gives herself up to historical reading or to music, for she is at home with lute and virginal." "Does she play well?" asked Elizabeth. "For a queen, very well," was the answer. And so, this afternoon, Elizabeth is sitting at the spinet, and playing Bird's or Dr Bull's Variations on popular airs. She plays from the very copy which to-day is marked in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge as Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book. She does not notice that Sir James and Lord Hunsdon are secretly listening. When suddenly she sees them standing behind her she stops playing. "I am not used," she says, "to play before men; but when I am solitary, to shun melancholy."

Fifty years before, Albert D?rer had given an illustration of Melancholy in his famous engraving. Melancholy, as dignified Depression, is sitting in the open air, surrounded by the implements for Manual Labour, Art and Science. It expressed the anticipated pain of the misfortune which lurks in the good fortune of knowledge and intelligence; the pain of the dawning Age of Wisdom, for which Erasmus, in his Praise of Folly, had already shown a just contempt. In his St Jerome, D?rer represents the deliverance from Melancholy. St Jerome, in the contemporary engraving, is sitting quietly and contentedly at home, while the sun shines through the circular panes, the papers, books and cushions being so neatly disposed around, and the lion so wonderfully sleeping beside him. But--in the corner stands his house-organ or spinet!

Something of the spirit of the St Jerome breathes through the Elizabethan music--a tone of the Volkslied, or of that intimate world-sense, alongside of the decaying mediaeval counterpoint like scenes of popular life or of lyrical beauty, which display themselves chiefly in the drama, in the midst of scenes of historic ceremonial. Everyone has observed what a subtle sense for soft musical tones is revealed throughout Shakespeare's plays. The Duke in Twelfth Night loves the Volkslied, the old song, "old and plain," which "the spinsters and the knitters in the sun, and the free maids that weave their thread with bones, do use to chant: it is silly sooth, and dallies with the innocence of love like the old age." He heard it last night; he will hear it again to-day: "Methought it did relieve my passion much, More than light airs and recollected terms Of these most brisk and giddy-pac?d times." And it is the fool who sings it to him--that typical figure of the love-thoughts and of the love-business of the people: the fool, who in every play has the largest store of old popular songs, and who in this very drama empties a very cornucopia of them. But Shakespeare's holiest encomium on music is sung at night, in that idyllic scene at the close of the Merchant of Venice, between Lorenzo and Jessica. The moonlight sleeps upon the bank; the lovers sit in silence before Portia's house and let the music steal upon their ears. "Soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony." Lorenzo endeavours to cheer Jessica with the music. We can well believe that his impassioned words express the feelings of the poet himself, who has marked his Shylock, his Cassius, his Othello, his Caliban, with the stain of a heedlessness of music:--

"The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils."

Portia enters the moonlit garden and hears the gentle tones, not knowing whence they come. She feels keenly the eternal magic of invisible music which lies pillowed in silence and night. The whole scene is a hymn on the infelt soul of musical self-centredness, wherein man finds his best self.

So too, perhaps, stood Shakespeare by the spinet of his beloved, and to his musical sense the tones and the love are blended together, his loved one becoming transfigured into music:--

"How oft when thou, my music, music playest, Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently swayest The wiry concord that mine ear confounds, Do I envy those jacks that nimble leap To kiss the tender inward of thy hand, Whilst my poor lips, that should that harvest reap, At the wood's boldness by thee blushing stand. To be so tickled, they would change their state And situation with those dancing chips, O'er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait, Making dead wood more blessed than living lips. Since saucy jacks so happy are in this, Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss."

Secondly, the popular song on its own side stands apart from counterpoint. Since counterpoint is the recognised style of the time, popular song has no choice but to appropriate that means of expression. Hence arises the Madrigal, the most festive form of this appropriation, which sets popular themes to many parts, but with the utmost art. It exhausts all the requirements of better taste in secular music in the sixteenth century. Societies like the Arcadeltian have resulted in an extraordinary growth of published material, and it is no mere accident that this process has continued in England, thanks to the exertions of a Madrigal Society, down to our own time. Yet the popular song was too opposed to the choral setting to feel itself at home in this form long and universally. It tended to unison or to the total absence of words; in the latter case it could still remain contrapuntal and became simply a tone-piece; in the former the counterpoint existed, so to speak, simply at the pleasure of the melody, as it did in hundreds of old melodies throughout the world. These old popular songs, of remarkable origin in their plain melodious orderliness, became finally the precursors of modern music. While they marked the monodic principle, and gave to the expression the full value which it had in all early music, they accustomed the ears to the pleasure of the fully-outlined melody, and compelled the combination with this of an equally well-outlined harmony. Thus the way was prepared for the great discovery of the monodic opera, which arose in Florence about 1600.

But in that wonderful drama, which the emancipation of the secular or popular principle in the music of the sixteenth century presents, the instrument appears as the second agent, with its greater freedom as contrasted with the human voice. Choral counterpoint penetrates into the music of the future in the two ways of the one-part song and of the instrumental polyphony, which form a quite natural whole. In proportion as vocal music became more individual and more full of soul, the absolute instrumental music gained in meaning. But we must mark two impulses which necessarily condition each other. As the one-part song was, so to speak, a victory of the logic of expression over the metaphysic of many-parts, so the latter also was a transference of counterpoint to the instrument.

Thus it is the instrument which opens to the popular song and to the dance of the same kind, within the contrapuntal style, new paths of promise; and this principle of popular music, after it had held itself for a century in the almost neglected plain melody under the wintry covering of ecclesiastical counterpoint, becomes, in a moment, conscious of its immeasurable powers. Still, further, here there was the ground on which the popular song, so long differenced from counterpoint, gradually overcame it and was able to develop its principle freshly and clearly. In the opera we see it suddenly break with counterpoint; but this kind of art suffered by this suddenness, since it swung uneasily to and fro from the heights of the stage-reformation to the depths of virtuosity. Instrumental music escaped this sudden break, took up into itself counterpoint, transformed it out of itself, and passed on to meet a development far more regular and advancing with giant strides. What instrument, then, was best for the reproduction of the contrapuntal play of the voices? Next to choral song stood the organ, with its power of holding on its tones. Slowly, therefore, as we might expect, the organ steps into the contest with the church-choir. At first more clumsily, then more gently, its voices contrast and work into counterpoint. The organ also offers, as exchange for the sung chorus, direct transferences from motets of Josquin and Orlando Lasso. But so soon as the organ recollects that it is not vocal but an instrument, it begins--shall we say?--to run off into flourishes. All kinds of adornments and grace-notes start up, and finally the organist prides himself on departing utterly from the composer's or author's intention, and embroidering the theme at pleasure. A Prelude and a Fugue in this style appeared to the men of that time dreadful enough to linger over; as Hermann Finck writes, "they run sometimes by the half-hour, up and down over the key-board, trusting thus, with God's help, to attain the highest, never asking where Dan Time, or Dan Accent, or Dan Tone, or Bona Fantasia, are staying in the meanwhile." Further, when the organ had purified itself in the great epoch of German church-music, it had perforce to remain in the service of the Church. It felt the influence of the audience, which was brought into rhythm and harmony by the secular principle of music--that influence which, in the Protestant Choral and in the creations of Bach, made itself felt as a brilliant reaction of the secular musical sense on the church tradition.

Alongside of the organ came the lute, which for so long had been the chief instrument of the home. Yet the lute, with its tones drawn from so few strings, was unable to show itself very productive. It had provided the accompaniment of songs, and music in many parts had very early been arranged for it. At all times, therefore, the lute had imitated the contrapuntal style, though in simple fashion, and occasionally certain passages had been accented with chords thrown in arpeggio-wise. Whether the lute accompanied a voice, or whether it took up the popular melody into itself to produce "absolute" music, it exhibited a style of its own, conditioned by its own limitations, even as, alongside of the organ, it had its own note-script. It was not convenient accurately to retain on the lute every separate voice. An instrumental style was formed; men became accustomed to the sufficiency of this simplicity of tone; dances were written for the lute, as Hans Judenkunig in his lute-book offers a "Court-dance, Panana alla Veneziana, Rossina ein welscher Dantz" and the like. As time went on, all well-known pieces were arranged for the lute, as they are to-day for the piano. Encyclopaedias appear--as for example in 1603 the "Thesaurus" in ten volumes of "Besardus nec non praestantissimorum musicorum, qui hoc seculo in diversis orbis partibus excellunt, selectissima omnis generis cantus in testudine modulamina continens." Graceful figurations arise, which in France and Italy receive fine names, while the German lute-player sets himself strongly against these complicated "battements," "tremblements," or "flattements," against this or that "passagio largo," "stretto," "raddopiato." But, on the whole, much as the lute achieved, it could not suffice to compel the complete admission of the whole musical material into the home.

Under such circumstances it is no wonder that the old English clavier should have flourished, or that it was in England that it first recognised its mission. The influence of this was great enough to bring about a speedy development on the continent. The cultivation of music was not only wide-spread, but also very ancient; so much so that the old musical writer Tinctor expressly ascribes the origin of all contrapuntal music to England. The compositions of the thirteenth century were, in grace of melody, simplicity of rhythm, and modernity of harmony, far in advance of their age. It is noteworthy that the English possessed of old a popular, simple, melodious tendency in music which reminds us of Mendelssohn. This has made English music great and also small. Great, for at a time when the whole musical world struggled with the contrapuntal want of system in harmony and melody, the English were capable of preparing the way, in systematic, plastic form, for the new conquering secular principle. Small, because so soon as this principle became universally recognised, they laid themselves to sleep in the luxurious enjoyment of their tradition, and set up foreign ideals, such as Mendelssohn and Handel, who were endowed with the like gifts.

Madrigals of Elizabeth's time are so familiar to us that Dr Ambros, of Prague, could produce them in Prague with great success, drawing from J. J. Maier's German collection. That free geniality of the English in its ancient dress, which conceals all triviality, overcomes us even to-day. With the clavier-pieces it is the same. We are charmed with the extreme simplicity of their musical form, and we love them because they come before us in an archaic dress. They exhale an aroma whose popular sweetness mingles beautifully with the slight harshness of their na?ve style. Allowing ourselves a touch of triviality, we find ourselves wondering that these works seem to be quite outside their own time, and in the modernness of their spirit surpass even the renowned contemporary performances of Gabrieli and the other Venetians.

In this London, the imitator and rival of Venice, we fall upon the first clavier-books that, as such, were ever collected in the world. Strictly speaking, they are not the absolute first. We read on the title-page of a collection of Chansons, Madrigals and Dances, issued at Lyons in 1560 by S. Gorlier: "Premier Livre de tablature d'Espinette." We learn from Pr?torius that the inscription, "For an Instrument," which appears so often on old works, is not to be understood universally, but to be confined to the clavier. Nevertheless, it is in England that we first find in any numbers collections of expressly-marked clavier-pieces, springing from a special impulse of musical enthusiasm. First in interest stands the so-called Queen Elizabeth's Virginal Book, one of the chief treasures of the Fitzwilliam Museum, lately transcribed into our own script for Breitkopf and H?rtel. Granting that it may have been written after the time of Elizabeth, it yet, with its three hundred pieces, goes back to the earliest names of this school--Tallis, Bird, Farnaby, Bull. Next, in the library of the late Rimbault, an important English historian of music, we find, in manuscript, a Virginal Book of the Earl of Leicester, and another of Lady Nevill. Doubtless great lords and ladies had many manuscript collections of this kind, including copies of the favourite pieces of the day. But soon manuscript gave way to print. In 1611 appeared the first copper-engraved set of pieces ever seen in England. This was "Parthenia, or the Maydenhead of the first Musicke that ever was printed for the Virginalls. Composed by three famous masters: William Byrd, Dr John Bull, and Orl. Gibbons, Gentilmen of His Majestie's most illustrious Chappell." A modern edition of this collection was issued in 1847 by the indefatigable London Musical Antiquarian Society. From the materials collected by this Society Ernst Pauer, whose contributions to the history of the clavier have achieved a great repute, formed his collected edition of Old English Composers, which presents, in modernised form, special pieces by Bird, Bull, Gibbons, Blow, Purcell, and even Arne, who, though later, is not uninteresting.

The pieces in these collections are of three kinds. First, free fantasias, such as were also composed for organ and lute under the name of prelude, preamble, or even toccata . In their essence fugal they are broken and intersected by florid passages. In the second class, a canto fermo was taken from a church melody, and developed after the approved fashion in fugal or figured style. Or, finally--and this is the most usual case, and the style most appropriate to the clavier--a number of variations, or even groups of variations, if the theme has several sections, are formed into a series. The theme itself is a popular song or dance. Popular songs, as they swept uncounted through England and Scotland, are inexhaustible. Even to-day they retain their freshness. To the whole piece they impart their tense and melodious rhythm. The dances--in common time called Pavans, in triple, Galliards--are frequently named after noblemen, and are in their variations adorned with the same encomiastic flourishes as the songs.

It is a union of the harp with the mechanism of key-action. Harps, in which the strings are plucked with the plectrum, are in some form or other as old as music itself, and appear in the most various shapes in the first dawn of civilisation. The mechanism of the keyboard, which by means of an easy leverage adapted to the human fingers, gives the player control over the sounds of pipes or strings, is not quite so ancient, since it presumes a certain inventive capacity; but it is old enough to be equally beyond our chronological powers. In Europe we find keyed organs as early as the first centuries after Christ. The application of this action to stringed instruments was completed in the monochord. The monochord, an instrument well-known to the earliest theoretical musicians, was a board with a string stretched across it on which the intervals could be clearly marked and sounded by mathematical division: the half marking the octave above the pitch of the whole length of the string; the third part of it giving a fifth above that octave; the quarter part giving a fourth above that fifth, namely a note two octaves above the pitch of the whole string; the fifth part sounding a major third above the last named note, viz., a seventeenth above the pitch of the whole length; and so on.

In the form of a simple case, fit to be laid on the table, and later when fitted with its own stand, frequently painted on top and sides, or with its keys set in ivory and metal, the clavichord continues to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Although the strings were then duplicated, although it was possible to attain in the touch stronger or weaker, louder or softer, expression, yet it could not, with its far too great simplicity of tone, hold its place in the rapidly hurrying development of music. It had taken one thousand years to improve the monochord, five hundred more to produce a clavichord, two hundred and fifty more were required to bring the clavicymbal form to its perfection; and yet a hundred and fifty for the clavicymbal to emerge into a Steinway or a Bechstein.

It is astonishing to see what feats were attempted by the old English masters of the virginal in spite of their scanty means. We feel how they love this instrument, which, in spite of itself, pointed out to them the way to the Promised Land of music, namely, to the stiff rhythm and arrangement of the secular music. For example, we actually find in the virginal books pieces by the famous Amsterdam organist, Sweelinck, and arrangements of compositions by Orlando Lasso, as well as all kinds of transcriptions of Italian works; but the gems are the variations on popular songs and the dances. In the contemporary virginal music of Venice this relation is reversed. There the Ricercari , the Toccatas, the Preambles, are overlaid by the heavy, clumsy harmonies of the Middle Ages; they stagger about in uncertain syncopations, dabbling with 5/4 time, and confused with the most intricate figurations. It is only towards the end that they yield a clear formal idea. Not until the younger Gabrieli do we see rhythm more clearly defined.

Compared with the lute dances, which necessarily retained the stiffness of their fabric, there is here a blossoming field, a veritable new world. The organ gives the voice parts their character, the lute supplies their tone-colour, but the child of these two parents has its own standing and its own future.

Prosniz, the collector of all clavier-literature, in his "Handbuch der Klavierlitteratur"--a work not to be implicitly relied on--calls Bird's music coarse and tasteless. Weitzmann agrees, saying that it is composed with intelligence and art, but heavy and without soul. But this is the fate of all transition styles. If we observe, from the standpoint of modern music, the traces of the old style, as for instance the change of time and the "flabbiness" of the harmony in the Fantasia, which comes eighth in the Virginal Book, or the cross-passages in the interesting Piece 60, they are indeed coarse and tasteless. But we must endeavour in such things to put aside the modern point of view. Mediaeval music is not a preliminary step to the modern, but something quite different. It is pictorial, as the other is plastic. If we would hear their "molluscous" harmonies, and their indistinctness of rhythmical arrangement, we must lay aside the rhythmical canons of modern music; we must accept the molluscous nature and want of distinctness as something purposed, and we must follow without preoccupation this web of voices, enjoying it note by note. The piece is so delicate, so quite in colour, that the last note is a shock to us. In fact, the conclusion of these pieces, with its formal clash, under which the harmonies and voices assemble themselves in a stiff group, is a contradiction to their inmost being, a desertion of the pictorial principle and--in a word--the germ of the coming style. In a greater degree than we can bring ourselves to believe, the ultra-modern expression-music is allied to this conception of the art of tone.

It is true that we justly judge Bird chiefly from the modern point of view, since we are investigating the progress of history, and therefore work for the new, the developing, rather than for the old. But it is precisely from this point of view that he presents such surprises that we are not at first able to form a decisive opinion about him. I find a quiet pleasure in observing his harmonies, which are felt rather than calculated, as, for example, the sudden D major chord in the famous song, "John, come kiss me now" , and in studying the delicate parallel legato passages, the gradual change of melody, the growing complexity, the unusual variations, the alternation of hands, the rhythmical developments. In the ninth variation there run together plain quavers, dotted quavers, and the melody above all.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet