DELLUU UATE EUTLET } wim 5 wat new & wom § re ass 4 ad ont & ad mee —— * xa — © ee re nm 3 % we P on er —_ emi = oe , oat 9 a . a om & 5 as «auth ae & wes fp Brame. 5 —_ - =. ‘eee aw ahs I t CLOLEUDT LENT AA { AUTUVIENVERICOEO Td ECT SATIN TO Sk WSHTAUAY UOT VAUDEGALUBA YUM LEER UT HALTS SATE ATINZ oe oe fe] ea * - ee ee see ee, Deis *# ‘arene ae: sey ae a A> 7 Pali =o Aye. \7 0a 0-aRD % 7 2, Q *, of ous vemmoermefe Ca a A EEN ER EN WEEE NWN WHEW UEFA DRESS SEONG & : 96 2, oe c POETS OEE YS eee nnn EE eV_7O7O7Oee Music Masters Old and New A Series of Educational Biographies of the Greatest Musicians FROM Bach and Handel to the Present Time Prepared for individual reading and self-study as well as for use in clubs and history classes BY JAMES FRANCIS COOKE: ao ee ee bak Es oie re Or PHILADELPHIA, PA. Copyright 1918, by THEO. PRESSER CO. British Copyright Secured ay fe 2, | 2, So SO eal UIA AIA HINA AL HIM AOAT ll AAA HA | Ht IA INA PA fe 1 ore OREN E% ST SAAT AT ann Tan TT (Ally >, , 0,0) O-GED()-S Od) Tue interest in music study in America has been fostered by three things to which all music lovers of present and coming generations must owe a very great debt. 1. Pioneer music workers with original ideas, immense initiative and unending in- | dustry. This includes such men as Lowell Mason and his son William Mason, G. F. Root, William Sherwood, B. J. Lang, W. S. B. Mathews and many others. 2. A wealth of excellent musical books (not written beyond the comprehension of the average music lover) and a number of musical periodicals of exceptionally in- structive importance. 3. Musical Clubs, formed of individual groups or associated with the remarkably active and productive National Federation of Musical Clubs. These three factors have developed demands for musical information which seem more or less peculiar to America. It is therefore in recognition of an obvious need that the author has prepared this book for use by individuals, music schools and music clubs. Encouraged by the very large number of letters from students and teachers of the Standard History of Music who have wanted a work planned upon the lines of the present book, an effort has been made to make the work as interesting and “human” as a collection of life stories should properly be. In innumerable instances throughout the work original sources of information have been con- sulted and passages translated from continental languages especially for these pages. There is much, therefore, that has not been hitherto pub- lished in any book in English. The composers are arranged in alphabetical order for the convenience of the reader. Prof. Ritter’s introductory chapters, however, give a PAGE PAGE PAGE PAGE GAT tates a cieknie sis, Sees Gs Re cee Fa 32 arly aOlisis ticle list mine stein 3 Tse SCHeliz Ky Parle tantelsect. wlsvsleere sis.0 seo Saint-Saéns-....5.. «2.15 sae 32, 49 AMDTOSIUS, feta ss. fics 2 «tee eee 4 EL Bary Seen Ged wom cee Ee ho eae 77 |B aveld oN |(Sebakyeorg mae eck een OR 40 Sauer: . «0 is so dese «ale ee 32 PNTIGOTE Ch ahs apceci nis ogi nies 5 eee pote 32 lstechazya le ninemsn) eee: ee maar 29 Wigcima rere ciis tobioe cas !s) as.oe ate 6, 31 SCANDINAVIAN COMPOSERS.. 67 CATOZ 20 par: stelle elles Se oc ae 4 BNGBISH GOMPEOSBERS teria. 77 IMliay hile Pag Weenies Pa retorts re ashes sous eds cs eee 73 Scharwenka 2.) sn) nee eeaaae 32, 80 BASH A Slots wiclanale, «texan, cae Ree TRO 57 (ESTE ON ee erie Ech en ole 4 A) MntaBnne | 72 IMac DO wielliveacturiiccsssms ic cise aiecste 32 Schmitt; Florent )). 5..ape eee 72 Pepin AME ls wr ctelerhel tions tered Se | OZ Baycnamny a3 iavntee SAR Tee ok eee 32 Mack enziemmntiece ioscan wis nie eral eur 78 |, Schoenberg 2. 0... e-eeceeanae 74 BAS voce o's oer cn oes os scifi oie ene 32 Hrtedhetanttant ate aceite ee We MarSChileta eat eie te cdces sabis oare 6 Schubert ....< ..5.< 0 5g ene ae | [SVEN kage eso chore aS. ache 81 FRENCH COMPOSERS .......... 71 Machen: Memeeerrrsiniicikc sek. cr arate 69 Schumann’>... 2.0102 en eee 6,53 [SET W0\e SO ARompmc pg. odcusoorcsis 2s00 77 Franck a.).eis te eet cee ee 72 NMaSOnee er eee eG ac onieol eee 35 Scott f. 23.0... 05 ae re 77 Beaeny irs. 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Ween. ee a ere oe Oni 3 Gregor’ Popeseuah oe eae ik 3 Obersleb 32 Smetana... . .« ast s1sa eee 32, 74 Brassin ...... 0.0.0 sseeevseeeeeens 32 | Gregorian Chants ...........-...-. code peeeiccmsaiaias ny Teagne” ot aa 5 | Smyth, Dr. Ethel Marys saguumees 76 Brum€au 2.6.5.2 s seen e eo ince eee anes LEN Garter 1) hasta Peel tote Gate KE 25 Sete Teci Ie A eee 3 | Spohr... +.-..0.+. +s) gaa 6 Bilosamich, Vee aes eee 32 Piast, Me are Po ee ela 5 27 Paderewski ....--.0-+sseeeere eee e ee ms Staniérd .. cc... ae. 77 Bene .g5. suaenn ace eee 25 Havas: los seas ae ee ae 5 29 Palestrina .....++++eeeeeeerere reese 72 Sternberg, von ....... aan 32 Btilow, VOMg esas aca ot eee oe Haydn, Michaelais ine coe Lee 6 Parry Gia -isis < + »'s0'b Meme a eiee min» oe 70 Strauss, Johann .... -.ageeeeeee es o- 55 G2 Vein og SUB eee h J Sob Odea chive OEM 76 Mepmann, Carles .sies cea. ee 32 PELOSI coos sees sereereee sees eeseaees 34 Strauss, Ro. sack us» oer ce 7 Casty bon mel Oh; & ote sarcasm eee ate 72 LES ae ane eh 4 Petecbotor Ni Hives soeceetee el eee a Stravingky ........<« ee. 2 Ghabrier Tey wae... ie sees dee ates oe 72 Hamperdinck ss uae... es 74 Piern€ . 0... eee eee eee eee ees a Stucken, van der . <..5ne ene. 32 Chawiigade. .. ss Neue sec ete eee 75 indivi) ae We te eee 72 Poueigh «0. +++ esse sees etre eee eens 72 Swendsetie i... -m S.5!-.s eee ame ees 67 Charpentier ,. chet. nt an timiuets 72 Tc aeaern ar nada Pratt, S. Gs sess ysryeeeerver estes 32 OU) Parley fies. - « ons) A or 82 Ghakccon & deme RM see tae 72 IDDAL TAN ‘GOMPOSERS cae weer 69 Program Music ...... Bh eR Te 6 Talisig css... ol, 32 Chapiale, .: Meco s. cease ee 15, }2gadassoha x, 24, eae! . pygep yn orange 32 | Puccini «6... eee eee ec eee eee eee ees AY Wd ei ataiveky. cae ee ee ae Ghevillard:)cgetkivtce eee ee 72 Jiaelhs ae ae ccs, ne Cee eee 32 Rachmaninov «aati ears seme ue 82 ibaa: dts. ee 53 Coleridge-Taylor A eT Re opi 7S OSCE Y- 7 ois le seals Make. ov aeetuetee etait 32 Ratt ae Avatanas .alaicletese fe eee uatnceyiets 32, 79 Verdi 61 COTS, ee RR Oe une ae TCS a WPELtSGrh OP e rte he < ohay teepete eterna te weber anags 80 Ravelternas. >) Rent Soba sree Vovlée cas eee ee 30 Gomielins aie est ct OO, ache 32 Lachmundas. 6s ates ce pra ree 32 RE GE Maer Malesia ons Ooi od mae pie alee 74 Was ks Haas fore eS ee | 63 (Coten! 1h sees ec te 78 Radinmrailiey: Beker eaiten rend cee 72 Richter iak so oe oe cue. locas task e Seren 55 Waltz CRN ORR RS: OPTIONS CD CI 35 GE i ule ert ee ohn, atin ees 81 Lalo ee eee ae Pee 36 72 Ritisky-Worsakoyy .msie. «histone 82 Web CE AIRES. 9. 0 RCo NE ECE 6 68 Danitosch? losses hace aan tees 32 Lambert aine.cis.os soe cet: «ceca 32 Ritter ssecescceeeece ee ere ees caecees 32 Weber, A iieeae gee one eS ) 42 Datcumycs ieee: Seema 6 fon Ae 81 Lamond wes. eh sccets At eee ra) 82 Rivé-King .......00+-esseseeseenees 32 Wei e Bee ic NCTE SSS C3 A 020° 39 Debwbsy se Ace oor noe <6 ees ee 17 Latimer Sravdac s hsnct sean alent: 55 TROMANTIGIStS elsmesieees = intent ene ere 6 Wi. ck Cl ce ee Cen 53 Delives ier bs do ccs sn" Po een oa’ We Teassen yn he .c ase ee ee he 32 Rosenthalv.e..peunss es eee datas Sz Wolf.” i CYB ORS 1 RA Ce ea ae 20 Deyelopment of Music... ....-.09.4..5 4 Rehman . a... 2 cen tee ntact ug aa Dohe ea Rts kay the > aoe rommera ter a Wolf-Fersari Rasp ag' < SORE Ro 8 Ge et 70 WW) ito} gad eae OT AP GH et 73 Beker ey nae ceed COP CLE Wc BITS COTES MGS SRR OR ees PRN ROL o at Cra mf oo CE eS ats Goel TS Gls 8 ES CS Oa cae Dikas, Watts mea: 2 decd Poko Oe 72 Eenz, ‘vir fee tae nase ete tet ck 32 Rubinstein £ o..ccheeheneah oer 47 WOMEN COMPOSERS .......... 43 pahery see eect cr mere ae 72 age LEONCAVAllO un. sveeteate aie cee ocr oes 69 | RUSSIAN COMPOSERS . » BL | Zichy 22... cece eee ee ces essen seees 3 FOREWORD remarkable chronological view of music history. Indeed, it is probably the best short “thumbnail” history of music ever presented. After the completion of the Standard History of Music the story of music should be reviewed through Prof. Ritter’s historical introduction to this work. Then the chapters of this book should be taken up one by one. If studied as hereafter indicated the student will have a knowledge of the story of the art of music which would have been abso- lutely unobtainable even ten years ago. Music Masters Old and New is independent of the Standard History of Music, and may be read by itself. It is a work slightly in advance of the Standard History. Famous American composers who have passed on have been treated in this work, but a book dealing with the whole vast musical situation in America would. demand an entirely new and much larger volume. The author strongly recommends in connec- tion with the study of this work in musical clubs: 1. The study of the works of the com- posers mentioned through the analysis of their most important works. The most advanced musician of the club should be encouraged to supervise this important matter and the extent of the work would depend entirely upon the amount of time at the disposal of the club. 2. The performance of works of the composer by members of the club. This will give an intimate personal interest to the work of the club that nothing else can supply. The life of any musical club de- pends upon the opportunities offered to the members for personal activity and progress in the musical life. If the club does not provide these it has no real reason for ex- istence. Music Masters Old and New INDEX ing machines. a. affords the club leaders a means of plan- ning programs for months ahead. Indeed, with bi-monthly meetings it would take even a very active club at least two years to do this work properly. The club leader should be provided with the catalogs of the best music publishers and work construc- tively with the club members in assigning works to be rendered at club meetings. Properly done, this will mean a whole revival of musical interest in the club. 3. The author can not lay sufficient stress upon the great value of the talking machine for use in connection with these lessons. There are countless musical masterpieces which can not be represented to the club group in any other way, unless there be a great orchestra, choral society or opera com- pany at hand. It was the author’s first thought to prepare a special list of records to accompany this book, but since the work is biographical and. since the best record catalogs have the works of the masters listed very accessibly, the reader or the club leader is referred to such a list. The use of the talking machine with this work will give a historical insight to the student that even the best college course in musical history could not give ie a few years ago. Above everything the writer has endeavored to throw up in bold relief the lives of the great masters as men, not as gods or as music-mak- There are few more fascinating studies in the world than the romantic lives of the immortal music makers. of fancy and poesy, often gloriously impractical, almost always rhapsodic and _ brilliant, page has something of peculiar interest. —JAMES FRANCIS COOKE, Living in a world every \ ‘7 haa ri S218 es. Yo 6 “Ywre CB tG- te INTRODUCTION ~The Ten Most Important Epochs in Musical History By PROFESSOR HERMANN RITTER (The author of Master Study in Music is under a deep debt of gratitude to the late Prof. Hermann Ritter, formerly, Professor of -’ Musical History at the Royal Conservatory of Wurzburg, and Docent of the University of Wurzburg, for advice and instruction upon musical historical subjects. Prof. Ritter was long recognized as one of the reatest European authorities upon musical history. supporters and admirers were Franz Liszt and Richard Wagner. playing upon his own invention, the viola alta, He was a kindly, scholarly gentleman of high character and brilliant attainments. Among his strongest He was a pupil of Joachim and toured much with Anton Rubinstein, Much of Prof. Ritter’s life was spent in England, where he had many admirers. The following serves as an excellent digest of the main factors in musical history, and may be referred to in connection with the detailed biographical studies of which the book 1s composed.) Just as in nature forms can be changed, just as in human life habits and customs must vary; so Art, the spiritual image of life, is ever subject to con- stant change. And the function of history is to show us in what manner developments have per- fected themselves, how they have reached their culmination, only to make way in turn for some new development. The history of music also teaches us the changes in the feelings and moods of men, as well as in the forms in which they have been ex- pressed. When we consider the development of music among the nations who have deeply con- cerned themselves with it, we observe that the art has been inseparably connected with their whole intellectual outlook. Any work of art must always be judged according to the intellectual and social life of its period, as well as by the peculiarities of the people or individual who created it. Life and art are intimately related. Therefore the forms of expression vary according to the moving impulses and ideals of the period in which they are given utterance. In this way, therefore, we find different principles ruling in the various phases of the development of music. Thus, for instance, the flowering of the highest ideal of church music is represented by the two great masters, Bach and Palestrina, in whose music the sublime is combined with the true. The ideal of the greatest truth and the highest beauty is found in the epoch of Haydn and Mozart. The ideal of characteristic expression combined with the highest truth is to be found in Beethoven’s last period, in Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner. Wherever ~) among the contemporaries of these great masters we ™ Gnd truth facking, there we find the baroque, the insin- cere style arising. We know that music became the language of the deepest emotions of life at a time when Christianity was the great temporal power of the world; and in the Christian church from the fourteenth to the six- teenth centuries developed each of the chief ele- @-ments of music, as well as melodic and harmonic — choral singing. Pope Gregory (about 600 A. Dy plaia the foundations of a Diatonic System of Melody in ~ his “Antiphonarium.” The fundamental principles of et aony were systematized in the tenth century by JHucbald. Rhythm (mensural notes) came into its ~own through Franko of Cologne in the thirteenth cen- _tury; and from the twelfth to the fourteenth cen- uries, among the learned musicians of France, the first beginnings of counterpoint were initiated—the counterpoint which from the fifteenth to the six- teenth centuries was to be further developed by the Netherlanders until finally, on Italian soil, in the music MoOlurg. / of the church, it blossomed to its finest flower in the — music of Palestrina. We must regard the diatonic style, as represented by the Gregorian chants and the works of Palestrina, as the principal characteristic of the music of the first fifteen centuries of the Christian era. On the other hand, the characteristics of the music of the middle ages (and of modern music also) are: 1. The use of the chromatic scale and enharmonic changes in addition to diatonic harmonies, and 2. Free counterpoint, as well as the highly differen- tiated use of the instruments of the orchestra, the technical possibilities of which had greatly expanded —as they continued to do even during the nineteenth century. The psychology of the modern orchestra is already totally different from that of a hundred years ago. I consider that the technic of listening PALESTRINA. is also quite different from what was formerly re- quired, just as national and individual consciousness has altered and the expression of it was changed. Whoever has traced carefully the development of music in connection with the various epochs of gen- eral history will have observed the following general law: Each separate period of art undergoes gradual changes. We see its exponents ripen and rise gradu- ally’ to a certain height, remain at this height for a time, and then gradually decline. The decline occurs when there is no longer necessity for renewed pro- duction, and when the highest proficiency in skill has been ireached; that is, when skillful use of form, as welf’as use of the external technical means, can be learned mechanically. and used:.in imitation merely. Form and technical means are not interesting in them- selves. Only the content (the reality, the idea they express) -is interesting. When original genius is lacking, original content is usually lacking also. Moreover, it is a law in the devel- opment of music that all significant phenomena must struggle for recognition. Such phenomena arise from a deep inner necessity for expression; when this necessity has passed, then the phenomena disappear also, and new phenomena, corresponding to the changed spirit of the times, take the place of the earlier ones. This seldom happens, as I have said, without a struggle. Inseparably connected with the entire intellectual out- look of a people, and with the life and attitude of the individual, is the process of development of its musical life. In fact, we may consider it with reference to its environment. At first we perceive music in the heart of the church, for from the beginning of the Christian era till the sixteenth century music as an art was found exclu- sively in the churches'and convents. Then it appeared in worldly life, leaping directly from the churches to the theater. From the theater, in which the opera, as well as virtuosity in singing and in performance upon single instruments developed, it withdrew to the draw- ing-room (camera), resulting in the origin of chamber music. From the salon to the concert hall was the next step. Influenced by the modern national con- sciousness, it proceeded to the greater public concert halls and public gardens. In, the various classes of human society, therefore, music was at first the privilege of the heads and scholars of the Church (church music), then of the princes and nobles(opera and chamber music), until it finally becamie the common property of all the people (part songs, songs for single voice, in- strumental music, opera; oratorio). Moreover, the various means of expression employed by the tone-poets in the course of music’s development are typical of the different epochs of style. In the period after the birth of Christ from Ambrosius and Gregory to Palestrina, church music was purely vocal in character. Song ruled and determined the style of all the music of this:time. In the period marked by the works of Bach and Handel, the style created by the organ is recognizable throughout. . The style of Gluck, Haydn, Mozart and the younger Beethoven is determined by the string instruments. The string quartet is the basis of the orchestra. The instrumental melody predominates even in the song of this period, especially in Italian opera, Piano and orchestra are still undeveloped. The piano is the instrument of the modern composers (Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Chopin, Brahms, Liszt). The combination of all the means of expression of orchestra and voices is characteristic of Berlioz, Liszt and Wagner, also of Richard Strauss. In song the declamatory style predominates (based on the syllabic proportions of the words). The orchestra is developed to its utmost limits, according to the peculiar character of each instrument. Italy is to be considered the home of music, because in Italy the germs of all musical forms developed. Later she yielded the supremacy to Germany, who in turn shared the fruits of her labors with other lands, as, for example, the Slav, Magyar and Scandinavian, as well as England and America. In. the music of Handel and Mozart we must recognize both Italian and German influence; in Meyerbeer, German, Italian and French. It is interesting to observe how the three elements of music, melody, rhythm and harmony ap- pear as the influences of the music of Italy, France and Germany. In the music of Italy, melodic style predominates; in that of France, rhythmic style is strongest, and in that of Germany, harmonic, poly- phonic and contrapuntal. No country except Italy has passed through so comprehensive a development of music as has Germany. The following plan will illus- trate these facts: 1. GERMAN RELiIGiIous MUSIC-DRAMA, The mystery plays of the Middle Ages. The Passion Music of Bach. Parsifal of Wagner. 2. GERMAN INSTRUMENTAL MuSIC. J. Sebastian Bach, Ph. E. Bach, J. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Ber- lioz, Liszt, Wagner, R. Strauss, Bruckner, Mahler, (Suite, Sonata, Symphony, Symphonic Poem, Symphonic Ode.) 3. ORATORIOS. Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, M. Bruch. 4. Sone. Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Franz Liszt, Wagner, Cornelius, Ru- binstein (whose songs follow a pure’ German style), Brahms, Strauss, Wolf. 5. GERMAN OPERA AND GERMAN NAatTIoNAL MusIc- DRAMA, Gluck, Mozart, Beethoven, Spohr, Marschner, Wagner, R. Strauss, Schillings, Pfitzner, Humper- dinck. Two principles of musical style have worked out in the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- _turies; one based on treatment according to themes and conventional forms, the other on psychological treatment. The music of the first style is expressed in conven- tional form and has no definite emotion (mood) as its content. The music of the second is derived from purely psychological principles; that is, this music is merely the expression of a mood, and the painting of a situation; its form is deduced from the princi- ples of a poetical idea, and finds its justification and explanation by means of a program. All forms of music, excepting the oratorio, which has never passed beyond certain limits of convenience and tradition— symphonic style, opera, piano forms and song-forms, have suffered an extension, a broadening of form, because of this new principle. It sought at the end of the nineteenth century new outlets in realism and symbolism, which involved a decided development of technic in the orchestra, as our youngest poet, Rich- ard Strauss, has shown. He introduced new surprises in his works, compelling the instruments of the orches- tra to obtain remarkable effects. He marks, with- his orchestra, the culmination (up to the present time) of the wave of highly developed orchestra-technic. The first wave, as we know, was the transition from the old classic writers to the romantic school. Weber, closely followed by Mendelssohn, with reference to orchestra-technic, is an example. A special distinctive mark of modern music is the individual, the personal, the subjective quality, in contrast -to the objective. A characteristic difference between the art-principle of the older classicists and that which developed in the romanticists, as well as with Berlioz, Liszt and Wagener, is the follow- . ing: In considering the constructon of a work of art the classicists took care to produce a certain continuous flow of development in the thematic material ac- cording to the require- ments of conventional ITALIAN “A artistic conception is more or less subjective, freeing the art of sounds from compulsory form. The ideals, the inner being of a time or an individual, finds expression in any art, especially in music, the sphere of feeling. History suffices to show us how man is subject to con- tinual change, and we must suppose that the law of external change persists in music also. This the de- velopment of music shows us. If, now, we glance at the development of music from the beginning of the Christian era, that is the process of growth of German, French and Italian music, we deduce the diagram given at the bottom of this page. Let us now, from the history of the general course of music development, select the ten most significant events or happenings which have made their influence felt even up to the present time. 1. THE EARLIEST STAGE OF CHURCH MUSIC. The first great event of the growth of music in the early years of Christianity was the work of Ambrosius (Bishop of Mailand, 333-397) and Gregory I (540- 604). With the name Ambrosius we associate a series of Hymns, which are still sung to-day in the Catholic Church. He succeeded in preserving esthetically the culture of the Catholic Church, in combining the anti- phonal singing customary in the Eastern Churches, with the elements of old. Greek music, since his series of scales can be traced back to the old Greek modes. Of his system of notation we know nothing. Gregory I extended widely the cultivation of Church music (which consisted exclusively of song), giving an impetus to unity of development which has persisted up to the preseit time. His chief work was the Anti- phonarium, the book which contained the antiphonal chants prescribed for use in the Church. The “Can- tus Gregorianus,” also called “Cantus Firmus,” or fixed song, so called because it was to remain as guide and foundation in all church music, and is still in our own time the basis of the liturgy of the Catholic Church. The Gregorian Song was founded on eight series of tones (or scales), the so-called “Church Modes.” It was always sung in unison. For notation, he used the “neumes,” which did not fix the intervals definitely, but indicated the rising and falling of the melody. The “neumes” were merely an aid to memory (re- memorationis subsidium). 2. THE EPOCH OF HUCBALD AND d’AREZZO. The second great mark in the development of music was the work of Hucbald and Guido d’Arezzo. With Hucbald (born 840, in Belgium, died 932, in the Con- vent of St. Armand), we associate the first system of principles for polyphonic singing; with d’Arezzo (born about 1000, died 1037, as a Benedictine monk), the discovery of a system of notation which for the first time showed exactly the pitch of the notes. Hucbald laid down his rules for polyphonic song in his “Or- ganum,;” Arezzo showed his system in a work called Micrologus de disciplina artis musical. THE MASTERS OF NETHERLAND. 3. Epoch of the Netherlanders. While the principles of melody and harmony were developing in the head of the Christian Church for two thousand years after Christ, the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries bring new principles for the construction of music with reference to melody, har- many, rhythm-and counterpoint. The so-called Mensur- alists, Marchettus von Padua, Franco of Cologne and Jean de Muris, not only advanced in harmony, but DIAGRAM INDICATING THE MAIN OUTLINES OF MUSICAL DEVELOPMENT IN ITALY, FRANCE AND GERMANY FROM THE FOURTH CENTURY TO THE PRESENT. AMBROSIUS———GREGORY HUCBALD———GUIDO DAREZZO THE NETHER LANDERS PaLestrinaA (Rome) G. Gasrte.t (Venice) (Highest Development of Netherland Contrapuntists) Frencu forms, their contem- poraries, more or less, following with a the- ALLEGRI CarissiM1 (Sacred Music) A MonTeverveE (Florence) (Chamber Music) Lu.tiy (Ope ae (Opera) Rameau discovered a notation (mensural notes) by which it was possible to indicate in writing a particular dura- tion of the note. Through the work of these men came about the general development of our modern idea of consonance and dissonance. During the fif- teenth and sixteenth centuries, therefore, the com- posers of the Netherlands carried on the work of the preceding years, and influenced the development of music as far as our own day, because they furnished the materials, the stones for building up the art. The Netherlanders must be regarded as having established artistic counterpoint. From Northern France, Eng- land, Holland, Belgium and Germany, were the com- posers who shared in this important phase which lasted from the twelfth to the middle of the fifteenth centuries. Many forces work together. Many the- oretical and practical writers put their hands to the work, and many experiments of all sorts had to be made in order to create a wholly artistic system of contrapuntal writing, which in many cases took over- subtle and exaggerated forms. In the period of the Netherlanders were developed the canon, augmentation and diminution of the theme, imitation and inversion of the theme, besides the be- ginnings of the fugue. The names of Dufay, Ocken- keim, Josquin de Prés, Gombert and Orlando di Lasso are the most important ones of the period. They prepared Italy for her musical independence. Their influence became especially strong in Rome and Venice (also in Naples), where the contrapuntal and poly- phonic principles worked out in the field of a capella song, so that we hear of a Roman school of composi- tion, a Venetian school and a Neapolitan school. PALESTRINA’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS. 4. Palestrina and His School (Sixteenth and Seven- teenth Centuries). ; This period marks the culmination of a capella song in the Catholic Church. Palestrina, whose style was founded on the Gregorian chants, brought to glorious perfection that which the laborers of earlier times had been preparing. His church music is full of sacred dignity, and is free from all the scholastic limitation of the Middle Ages. Examples of his style are: The Missa Papae Marcelli, the Missa Brevis and the Stabat Mater. The work of Palestrina was one of the great- est events in the development of music, because he showed for the first time (as Mozart did later), that great effects can be made with simple means. Great composers of the Palestrina school were: Allegri, Vit- toria, Marenzio, Nanini, Frescobalo Pitoni. THE RISE OF THE OPERA. 5. (Drama per Musica) About 1600 in Florence and Naples. The time of the Renaissance had come, the new birth of the life of the mind of the ancients, with its beautiful and natural manner of thought. The new morn of culture brought with it new ideals of life. That music did not lag far behind in this jubilant welcome of beauty and truth is easy to understand, for it is ever and always music that is the image, the reflection of the emotional life of every time. The town of Italy in which the influence of the renaissance was strongest was Florence; here, at the end of the six- teenth century, arose practically a new branch of music, a true child of the renaissance, the opera, the music- drama, the “opera in Musica.” This new style of music grew not out of the polyphony of the Middle Ages, but from solo singing, from the individual musical speech, which from this time on began to over- power counterpoint in Italy. The modern sub- jective expression in music becomes stronger than the ob- jective style of the Middle Ages. With the opera arises mod- ern music. The fol- Guna lowing innovations “H. Scaura (Pupil of A. Gabrieliy Bacu ANDEL date from this period: 1. Beside the dis- tinctive scale of the pie <= = ory which they had studied out; in general, the artistic conception je Fe Piccini Jomelli A Scartatti (Naples) i Lotti Marcello = ~ =o Guiuck Gretry Méhul Haypn Cherubini. Spontini. Boieldieu. Auber. was objective (rather Rossini Bevuint than other). With the later and latest com- posers the art principle lies in the inspiration, the intuition, and the VERDI Borto Mascacni Puccint Boss1 SGAMBATI DonizeTT1 MEYERBEER: rT ae , > a ae ee Bizet Cuopin MAsseNnet SAINnT-SAENS CHARPENTIER Cesar Franck and his Schoo! Desussy, DuKas Gounop ApAM =, LEONCAVALLO Perosi Guiuckx Weber. Spohr. Marschner. Mendelssohn. Schumann. SS SIDE EE EEE SS Se SS R. Wacner R. Strauss ScHILLINGS Middle Ages, with its eight tones, stands the chromatic scale, with > twelve tones. Zarlino, the Venitian (1517- 1590), introduced EvEN TEMPERAMENT, or tem- pered tuning, and de- clared the old Pytha- Mozart * BEETHOVEN F. ScnuBEert BrauMs Berutoz; Liszt PrITzNER MAHLER REGER gorean system of tones to be no longer possible. The works in which Zarlino sets forth his ideas are called Institution Harmoniche and Demonstrazioni Har- moniche, 2. Recitative (Parlanto Representativo). 3. THE FREE MANNER OF EXPRESSION in instrumental music (organ, piano and violin), which threw off the restrictions of vocal music, whose echo it had been. The first opera was Daphne, by Peri. It consisted of recitatives, accompanied by a clavicembalo or a lute. Claudio Monteverde (born 1568, Cremona; died 1643, Venice), lifted the Italian opera above its feeble be- ginnings. His epoch-making operas were Orianna and Orfeo. His innovations were: 1. The break with the old scale systems. 2. Free introduction of the disso- nance. 3. First use of the unprepared seventh chord. 4. Definite distinction between piano and forte. 5. Use of tremolo and pizzato in string instruments. 6. THE CLASSIC MASTERS OF GERMANY. a. Bach, Handel, Gluck, the first trinity in German music development. b. Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, the second trinity. These men, who with their creations mark the rich- est period of German music, were for Germany the great power in the realm of tone, which was already known to Italy. We designate them as “classic” there- fore, because their works must serve as models and patterns for all time. The most intimate union of form and content is a distinguishing mark of their compositions, which are most widely removed from the banal and the trivial. Crude effects are not to be found in them. Especially do we perceive the or- ganic construction in our classic compositions. Art and nature, these two opposites, unite here in a man- ner altogether wonderful. These works present to us also the laws and normal forms which as guides we dare not neglect, and which warn us also against ec- centricities ; they are like the natural spring where we may drink and be restored, when we have wandered too far from Mother Nature. Their creation marks a civilizing power in human culture. The significance of J. S. Bach in the development of music rests on 1. His activity in teaching, through which he became the founder of the modern Haus-musik and chamber music. — 2. In new treatment of the Klavier Preludes, Sym- phonies, Inventions, Well-tempered Clavichord. 3. The independent and artistic treatment of the string instrument (Suites for violin and violoncello). 4. The working out and masterly command of poly- phonic and contrapuntal style. 5. His unique position as the greatest of organ play- ers and of composers for the organ. 6. The perfecting of Protestant Church music, which focussed in the congregational song—the chorale. 7. The development of instrumental music. Because of his suites for orchestra and for solo instruments, Bach is to be regarded as the father of instrumental music. Bach is thus the fundamental type of a German com- poser; he is the creator of German music. His music is the source to which all composers of all times must go to learn what is needed for the creation of art- works. Of Bach’s sons, Philipp Emanuel, is the one who is to be considered in music-history, because of his influence in developing the Sonata. The importance of Handel (born 1685, in Halle; died 1759, in London) in music development is chiefly in the field of oratorio. Handel is the founder of the epic style in music. He lived a long time in Italy, and united the beauty of the Italian melos with the Ger- man contrapuntal style. It is noteworthy that Handel did not limit the material of his oratorios to Biblical texts alone, but made use of mythical stories and his- torical events also. The subject which Handel loves to develop in most of his oratorios is that of an enslaved people freed by a hero who has grown up amongst them (Samson, Belsazar, Esther, Joshua, Jephtha, Judas Maccabaeus, etc.). Although Handel, like Bach, was a child of Protest- ant Christianity, he did not confine himself solely to the evangelistic ideas, but extended his spiritual horizon in all directions. Bach, on the contrary, was deeply imbued with religious piety, and stood for the purely churchly, religious ideals, as they grew out of the spirit of the Reformation. Bach’s works are closely con- nected with the Church; in Handel’s works the religion of the Church (although he wrote The Messiah) does not have the chief place. It was new to music and due to Handel that great events, historical incidents and human ideals should be celebrated in the art of sound, and in the style of the oratorio (the musical epic). Gluck was born in 1714, in Wiedenwang, in Bavaria, and died, 1787, in Vienna. His greatness and impor- tance lay in the province of dramatic music. He was the first of all musicians to raise the opera to the light of drama, for he subordinated absolute music to dra- matic necessity. Therefore he gave to recitative, that important factor of opera, attention hitherto unknown. Also, he required that the orchestra should be treated according to the demands of each situation and the ideas to be expressed. He was so significant, therefore, because he was nearer to nature than preceding com- posers in depicting character and situation on the stage. He may be called thé Lessing of the music-drama. Three tone-poets who gave a particularly strong im- pulse to the development of music by their labors are Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven. Together with Bach, Handel and Gluck, they are the supporting pillars of our musical structure. In their works are the roots of all other musical endeavors; from them branch out all secondary growths. As types they represent those tendencies in style which have been named for them. Joseph Haydn (born 1732, in Rohrau, in Northern Austria, died 1809, in Vienna) was of special im- portance to chamber-music and instrumental music. Bach had made the form of the suite a complete whole; his son Philipp Emanuel had extended the form of the Sonata. It was Haydn who for all time established the art-form of the Sonata, its members and construc- tion. In doing this he also gave some individuality to separate instruments. In his orchestra are to be found more color and life, because he brought out the char- acteristics of the various instruments, and wrote themes especially suited to them. Haydn, therefore, is to be regarded as the founder of modern instrumental music, as it was expressed in his symphonies for orchestra and in his string quartets. The particularities of Haydn’s music are sunny, childlike cheerfulness, fresh and wholesome thought. It is a combination of the seriousness of North German schools and the South German gaiety; his ideals grew out of the folk-song and folk-dance. His greatness, however, consists in his manner of idealizing these dances and songs. For the old German dances and songs of the people ideal- izen in form, raised to the sphere of art, are what we hear in Haydn’s compositions. Mozart (born 1756, in Salzburg; died 1791, in Vi- enna) is not only the most genial of German com- posers, but also the most universal. For all that Bach, Handel, Gluck and Haydn contributed, each in his spe- cial style, Bach in the lyric, Handel in the epic, Gluck in the dramatic and Haydn as “father of the symphony and chamber-music”—all of these styles Mozart united in his works of art. Mozart and Rafael have much in common. The trait of universality is particularly striking in them both. The union of Italian and German characteristics is in Mozart’s works; the rare air of Italy breathes through them, commingling with the German atmosphere. Mozart, who was very sensitive in nature, was open in character and splendidly sincere; clever, without be- ing scheming or sly, he was also sympathetic, cheerful and courageous. His style shows the highest truth combined with the greatest beauty. He is the com- poser of the most perfect form and the embodiment of the genius of the beautiful in music. And now to Beethoven! There is hardly an edu- cated person who in reading or hearing a work of Beethoven is not involuntarily reminded of the highest conception of music—reminded that it is the power- fully affecting language of the deepest human emo- tions. And, truly, the name of Beethoven has become the personification of the highest and noblest ideals of music. With Beethoven, the history of his life and the devel- opment of his compositions go side by side, and are especially interesting to us. In him we come in contact with an exceptional character, who requires us to con- sider not only the purely human, but the deeply relig- ious, the political and the moral aspects of existence. The two chief chapters in the life of this great musi- cian and great man are: From 1770 to 1800. This period covers the time of study and preparation, which was influenced by the manner of Haydn and Mozart. From 1801 to 1827. In this period Beethoven’s crea- tions became wholly original. His greatness reaches its climax in his instrumental music. For Beethoven’s music did not exist merely because of the sensuous beauty of its sound; it was, on the contrary, an ethical power. As proof of his attitude we have his own dictum: “Music is a higher revelation than all of wisdom and philosophy.” 5 The epochs or periods into which Beethoven’s com- positions fall are: 1. The_period in Bonn and Vienna, till 1800 or 1802 (the youthful Beethoven), 2. The period from 1800 (1802) to 1814 (the middle period). 3. The time from 1814 till his death (the later Bee- thoven). Beethoven is already a child of the nineteenth cen- tury whose impassioned spirit makes itself felt in his creations, So his style is deeply emotional as com- pared with Haydn and Mozart. Beethoven demands of music that its style and idea shall correspond (expres- sion shall be characterized). Quite in contrast to the music of Haydn and Mozart, the music of Beethoven expresses the personal, the individual feelings. It is the utterance of the feeling of personal freedom. As with Haydn and Mozart, so also with Beethoven, the idiom-of the folk-song was the basis of his music. The art of these three heroes of music-history grew out of the deep longing to give expression to some- thing which could not be said in words. Music was for them not the slave of the lower pleasures, but a freeing, liberating power, the comfort of mankind. And truly, in these days of the division of labor, the man who comes out from his one-sided business pursuits into the influence of music, feels himself once more a whole and complete man; through her the oppressed may throw off his burden, and herein consists her liber- ating power. THE SONG AND FRANZ SCHUBERT. 7. The Song and Its Classic Master, Frang Schubert. The culminating period of the German folk-song, which flourished from the fourteenth century to the beginning of the eighteenth, was followed by the de- velopment of the art-song and the chorus (art-song of the people). The song developed especially in the German nation. It was a particular growth of German musical life, and is found in such comprehensive and manifold forms in no other nation. After Bach, Gluck, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven had made the first beginnings of the art-song, came Franz Schubert (1797-1828). To this is really due his important position in music history. His songs can be counted by hundreds, and they group themselves in four divisions, which include every style of song. Group 1. Those songs which are closely related to the folk-song in imitating its form and simple expres- sion; the form is as in the folk-song in strophes or stanzas. Examples are Sylvia, Hedge Roses and the Cradle Song. Group 2. Songs with extended forms, the so-called ternary song-form. Group 3. Those songs which take their musical form from the form of the poem. These songs show a wealth of resources. The piano accompaniment is im- portant in rhythm and harmony. Interesting melodic forms and characteristic modu- lations distinguish these songs. Examples are: “Ach! um deine feuchten Schwingen,’ several of the Miller's songs, songs from the “Winterreise,” the songs from “Fraulein vom See,” and the great “Waldesnacht.” Group 4. The ballades and kindred songs. In this group belong, for instance: The Erl King, Die Burg- schaft, Gretchen at the Spinning Wheel, The Wanderer, The Dwarf, Gruppe aus den Tartarus, The Young Nun and The Sea. Group 5. Those songs of Schubert’s in which the so- called instrumental melody does not dominate, but rather musical speech—musical declamation, founded on the prosody of the words of the text. Examples are: Orest auf Tauris, Der entsiihute Orest, Freiwilliges Versinken, Der Doppelganger and Grenzen der Mensci- heit. As has been said, in Schubert’s songs are com- prised all forms of the song (Lied), from the simp- lest, the folk-song, to the lyric recitative—musical speech. THE MUSICAL ROMANTICISTS. 8. The Musical Romanticists. (Schubert, Spohr, Weber, Marschner, Mendelssohn-Bartholdy, Schumann and Brahms (nineteenth century). The songs of Schubert have already been recognized as marking an important epoch in the history of music. But in this next division we must consider Schubert yet again, with reference to his works in general. With Franz Schubert begins the series of great composers of the nineteenth century, whom we designate as “Ro- manticists.” In their compositions the peculiar tenden- cies to each, the individual, the personal, come more and more into the foreground, while the productions of the classicists of the eighteenth century chiefly sink the personal into the general and conventional. The struggle against the conventional, the stamp of the personal quality, is the distinguishing mark of the mus- ical compositions of the period which opens with the nineteenth century. We observe in the creations of the tone-poets, Schubert, Spohr, Weber, Marschner, Mendelssohn, Schumann and Brahms, an entirely new emotional content, which grows out of a new funda- mental tendency of thought, and this had been termed “Romanticism.” Romanticism appears at the end of the eighteenth century, and in the-course of the nineteenth as a ten- dency of human thought. In its influence there grew up a school of poets, of which the representative names are the two Schlegels, Ludwig Tieck, Wackenroder, Novalis, Schenkendorf, Matthison, Arhim von Arnim and Clemens Brentano. In painting, for example, Mor- itz von Schwind, is a true romanticist, and the friend- ship of Schubert for this artist is to be traced to the similarity of their ideals. It was a peculiar characteristic of human thought that it should return to that period from which the romantic idea first sprang—the time of the crusades, of chivalry, through which a new world—a world of mira- cles—was opened to the western countries of the Orient. Here suddenly was an unlimited field offered to the range of the imagination. The abstract, the im- material, the indeterminate, became the subjects to be represented in the arts of the romanticists. The Chris- tian miracles had no small share in preparing the mind of the people to receive the ideas of the romanticists. The murmuring of the brook, the rustling of the forest, the rolling of the thunder, became “romantic” through the new conception of their origin. To music a wide field for new expression was thus opened. New forms, new ideas in color and dynamics came from the com- posers of this romantic period. Compare, for example, simply the dynamics and instrumentation (coloring) of a composition by Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven with those of a work by Weber or Mendelssohn. That the spirit which ruled the romantic poets influ- enced also the composers of this period is shown by the composers from Schubert to Brahms. Even Liszt and Wagner must also be reckoned as belonging to this period, in that they derived much of their material from romantic sources. (Schubert, the opera Alfonso and Estrella and Fierrabras; Spohr, the operas The Mountain Spirit; The Crusader, Zemire and Azor and Jessonda. With Weber romanticism appears in his three chief works, Freischiitz, Euryanthe and Oberon. In Freischiitz we see romanticism in the guise of the people (folk-lore); in Euryanthe we see it in the guise of the poetry of the middle ages, which tells of chivalry and knight-errantry (tales of chivalry), and in Oberon as the pure play of the imagination set free from all restraints of earth. Marschner, the opera The Vampire, Templar and Jewess, Hans Heiling and others. Mendelssohn, the cantata Walpurgisnacht, music for the Age of the Rose, Paradise and the Peri, the opera Genoveva. Brahms, the cantatas Rinaldo and Fingal. Liszt, Saint Elizabeth. Wagner, Tannhaeuser, Lohengrin, Tristan and Isolde and Parsifal.) PROGRAM MUSIC. 9. The Development of Program Music as an End in Itself. (Special types, Berlioz and Liszt.) Hector Berlioz (born 1803, died 1869), like Liszt, is important in the history of music, because he broke the bonds of formal expression wherever the expres- sion required such freedom. Berlioz, like Liszt, and Beethoven, in his latest period brought music to a height of expressiveness in depicting a situation which had never before been known. Words joined with music in the symphony, as in Beethoven’s Ninth, and the “Symphonic Ode,” arose. Berlioz is to be considered the founder of modern orchestral technic. To realize that with him a new principle of musical style has come into existence, one needs only to examine the Sym- phony Fantastique, the symphony with viola obbligato; Harold in Italy, Romeo and Juliet, The Damnation of Faust and to read the programs of the Fantastique and the Harold symphonies. Franz Liszt (born 1811, died 1886), the friend and contemporary of Berlioz, built further on this new principle of musical style in his symphonic poems, as well as in his two great symphonies with chorus, the Faust Symphony and the Dante Symphony. If we in- quire what is the difference between the symphony as it developed from Haydn to Beethoven, and the sym- phonic poem created by Liszt, the answer is: The sym- phony is a composition in several movements, based on general types of emotional life; the symphonic poem is composed in one continuous movement; it receives its form from a poetical idea which is set forth in a program. The symphonic poem, therefore, has not grown out of a pre-established form, but it is the direct product of poetic thought. The symphonic poems of Liszt, which have been a great inspiration to modern musical life and have found many imitators are: 1. Ce qu'on entend sur la montagne (Bergsymphonie) ; 2. Tasso (Lamento e trionfo); 3. Les Preludes; 4. Or- pheus; 5. Prometheus; 6. Mazeppa; 7. Festklinge; 8. Héroide Funébre; 9, Hungaria; 10. Hamlet; 11. Hun- nenschlacht; 12. Die Ideale. RICHARD WAGNER, 10. The Creator of the National Music Drama, Rich- ard Wagner (1813-1883). The culmination of the last great period of music history is marked by Richard Wagner and his influence on the development of music. Wagner is the creator of the drama as a product of the combined arts. His music dramas have only the externals—the materials, in common with the previous operas. The musical in- novations which we find in them are—new harmonic devices, new effects of instrumentation, musical decla- mation, and the Leit motif. In general, the antique drama was Wagner’s model of form, while as poet he drew his material from the German myths and the German legends of the. middle ages. Musically, he was influenced by the compositions of loftiest in- spiration, from Palestrina to Beethoven. The essen- tially human was the idea which Wagner sought in the material of his music dramas—the eternal struggle of light with darkness, the contest of freedom, of love and of faith, with the evil powers of the world. From The Flying Dutchman to Parsifal through all the operas runs as a leading idea the theme of redemp- tion. Wagner devoted his art to the themes of the highest moral ideals of humanity and because it is a source of the highest edification it may be regarded as the sister of religion. Therefore Wagner’s stage is no theater in the ordinary sense but a temple. From the union of poet, musician and thinker (philosopher) arose Wagner’s art work for which he took possession of all man’s powers. Song is the speech of his charac- ters who are not itdividual limited separate beings in the historical sense but types of nature and of humanity as these were embodied in the German myth. It would carry us beyond the limits of this sketch to trace the ethical and ideal content of Wagner’s music drama. According to him the realization of the incompleteness of life and of a loveless world led to a visitation which pointed the way to those high moral ideals which the master expresses in his music dramas. From the Fly- ing Dutchman to Parsifal they depict all-pitying love in its unselfishness and deep sympathy. Love in all its forms is according to Wagner the one effectual power for the redemption of man and this view gives to his art a widely human significance. Wagner’s composi- tions comprise: Rienzi, The Flying Dutchman, Tann- hiuser, Lohengrin, Tristan and Isolde, The Master- singers of Nuremburg, The Ring of the Niebelungs and Parsifal. We have come to the end of our journey through the centuries. We have seen that music, especially the art of song arose from Italy. In Italy took place the evo- lution from the universal to the individual form of expression in song—music combined with words. Song was quite distinct from absolute music. The province of vocal music comprised the following forms: the melodrama, the song in its many modifications, the mass (for church use), the oratorio, the opera, and the music drama. Word and tone were each the complement of the other, and mutually assisted toward more definite expression—the word as the bearer of thought, and tone as the direct utterance of emotion. As the word gives to thought a certain definite expression, so tone supplies the general mood. And so vocal music has acquired an especial significance in opera and music drama, as well as in song and oratorio. We have learned that Florence and Naples were the two cities which gave rise to the opera, the drama with the addition of music. Polyphony, which in the church music of the Netherlands had become a ruling influence in Italy, met a counter influence in Florence—monody and reci- tative; in Naples, the aria—the melodic style, which gave an extraordinary impetus to individual, personal expression. It was a strong influence which the opera. originating in Italy, exerted on France, Germany and other countries of musical importance. The art of singing first began to flourish in the opera of Italy, fostered by the climatic influences in this land of beautiful voices. In Germany, less rich in natural voices, instrumental music developed to its highest tech- nical perfection. The Italians, as a rule, sacrificed truth of expression 6 in the opera to senstious beauty of tone and virtuosity. These tendencies were, as we saw, reformed by Gluck. From Gluck, through Mozart and Weber, down te Wagner, opera made such tremendous advance that in Wagner’s time it had lost all its distinctively Italian characteristics. We have seen Germany receive her inheritance after the decline of music in Italy—an inheritance which she used in her own ways. At the very beginning of the great German movement stand the masters Bach, Handel and Gluck; Bach as master of the lyric form, Handel of the epic, Gluck of the dramatic. In their works are the germs of all the music of great significance which has been written since, whether absolute music or vocal, whether in Germany or in other countries. Their great successors, Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven, developed the funda- mental characteristics of instrumental music, and Schu- bert, Mendelssohn and Schumann perfected the art- song, in which no people is*so rich as the German nation. For besides the symphonies of Beethoven, the symphonic poems of Liszt and the music dramas of Wagner, it is the art-song which, through Schubert, marks an epoch in the development of music at the beginning of the nineteenth century. If, in Italian opera, music was degraded and made only the servant of language; in the modern song, she has become a true comrade. In the songs of the great modern masters we can perceive how great a capacity for ex- pression Music has acquired in the course of nearly two thousand centuries of growth. How much has she been able to intensify, to make truly impressive, the language of poetry! It is probable that in Wagner’s works the union of language and music has reached its highest possibility. No wonder, then, if this master is, of all composers of our time, the one most beloved of the people. But all of us, as we stand, rapt and wondering before this last giant of our art, desire to heed and to honor all the many other outpourings of art, especially all honest and sincere music. Let us not be narrow-minded; let us belong to no party, but to Art. So shall we share in the blessings of this great kingdom, which, like a vast garden, contains a wealth of flowers and fruit for him who comes in need! —HERMANN RITTER. CONCLUSION. It was Prof. Ritter’s intention in a later article to treat upon American music of which he was a great ad- mirer and with which he was surprisingly familiar. His admiration did not end with an appreciation of a few of the best known works of MacDowell but compre- hended the compositions of the leading figures in American musical history from William Billings to the present. Unfortunately, however, Prof. Ritter was seized with a mental malady which made further work impossible. Our American musical beginnings, crude as they were, did not lack virility. The psalm-tunes which our Pilgrim Fathers brought to New England, together with their historic cargo of prejudices and conventions, religious and otherwise, form a very somber back- ground for our musical beginnings. William Billings (1746-1800), who seems to have attracted more atten- tion than any other of our American composers of the period, was a self-taught tanner who scrawled his first harmony exercises on hides. His “fugue tunes,” which were not fugues in any sense of the word, were among the first American flights from the dreary monotony of the psalm-tunes. Many of them were quite florid for the times. From Billings, one may jump to that great pioneer educator Lowell Mason, discussed in some detail in this work in the chapter devoted to his son and to Louis Moreau Gottschalk. Music in the fefties, the sixties and seventies showed indications of much initia- tive in America, particularly in the work of such men as William H. Fry, George F. Bristow, Dudley Buck, Wm. H. Sherwood, B. J. Long, John S. Dwight, John K. Payne, W. S. B. Mathews, Clarence Eddy, C. C. Converse, Root and others, but it was not until the coming of Edward MacDowell and other men who were enabled to combine lofty ideals with sufficient technic that America could be said to possess masterly: musicians. ; A work encompassing all that has been done by the musicians of the present and the past generation in America would require a separate volume. Therefore only American composers who have passed into merited immortality have been included in this volume. This is a matter of deep regret to the author as it would have been a privilege to have given adequate attention to such men as’ Nevin, Hadley, Chadwick, Parker, F. S. Converse, Huss, Cadman, Rogers, Herbert, Johns, Kroeger, de Koven, Smith, Sousa, Kelly, Loeffler, Good- rich and others. ope ee ee i le A a ets a ec a TOT a UAE AURA SNA BACH’S PERIOD. PiLunper and bloodshed for a third of a century now passes down in history under the glorified title of the “Thirty Years’ War.” Perpetrated in the name of religion, but carried on with bar- barities unlimited, this long succession of battles moved over Germany like some frightful cata- clysm, leaving in its track poverty, misery and despair. The peaceful art suffered most and the conditions of the art workers were desperate. For years thereafter musicians fared miserably. One Heinrich Bach, for instance, was reduced to such extremes that he was obliged to petition for help, exclaiming, “I know not where to find bread for myself and my young family.” Despite this and other cases of poverty and affliction the family of Bach survived to produce wonderful works of art. A REMARKABLE FAMILY. When a family is catalogued by number in dozens of musical reference works it may easily be seen that its ac- complishments have been, to say the least, unusual. Thus the ‘‘clan’’ of Bach, as one writer has expressed it, pro- duced nearly sixty musicians. Hans Bach of Wechmar stands at the head of the genealogical table. The first of renown was one-Veit Bach, son of Hans named after the good St. Vitus, whose mercy was often invoked for the cure of diseases including the distressing aflfliction named after him. Veit Bach had settled in Presburg, Hungary, where he milled grain and baked bread for a living, now and then playing upon the cithara for the delight of his idealistic mind. The cithara was a kind of sixteenth century guitar or lute. (It is possible, however, that the instrument might have been a_ zither.) When religious persecution drove Veit from Hungary to the village of Wechmar in Thuringia his interest in music increased. In the catalogue of -Bach’s we find the great Johann Sebastian in the sixth generation from Hans Bach (about 1561) and the descendants of Johann Sebastian Bach reach down to 1845, when Bach’s musical grandson Friedrich Ernst Wil- helm died in Berlin. Thus it may be seen that the musical endeavors of this family covered nearly three cen- Some of these enthusiastic workers held distin- turies. guished positions, others were little above the rank of what in those days were known as “beer fiddlers,” Tt is interesting to note that when the musicians of upper and lower Saxony united in a union known as the Jnstru- mental Musikalische Collegiums in dem ober und _ nieder- sachsischen Kreise und anderer interessierter Oerter, no record is found of any member of the Bach family. How much the status of musicians must have been lowered at that time can only be estimated by reading some of the reforms this XVII century musicians’ union proposed. The follcwing quotations are significant: ‘No man, whether he be master, assistant or apprentice, shall divert himself by singing or performing coarse obscenities or disgraceful or immodest songs or ballads inasmuch as they greatly . pro- voke the wrath of almighty God and vex decent souls, particularly the innocence of youth.’’ “Everyone shall have around him pious and faithful assistants so that nothing may be stolen from the invited guests.’ “No man shall dare perform on dishonorable instruments, such as bag- pipes, sheep horns, hurdy-gurdies, and triangles which beggars often use at street doors, so that the noble art would be brought into contempt and disgrace by them.’ “Every man shall abstain from all blasphemous talk, pro- fane cursing and swearing.’ ‘No man shall give attend- ance with jugglers, hangmen, bailiffs. gaolers, conjurers, rogues, or any other such low company.” It is evident that the God-fearing Bachs did not consider it necessary for them to align thémselves with men who felt obliged to ' put such restriction upon their behavior. BACH’S BIRTH. Devastating wars and widespread plagues prove a serious strain upon a race. The strong go down in battle and the weak perish in disease. It sometimes takes a generation of a family to regain its grasp upon the best in life after the death-dealing blows of battles and epidemics. The peaceful calling of the Bach famjly, the healthful surrounding of Wechmar, Arn- stadt, Erfurt and Eisenach had much to do with the sturdy virility of the Bach family. Hans Bach son of Veit was known as Der Spielman (The Player) and was a kind of touring violin virtuoso of his day. His son Christoph was the court musician of Eisenach and wrote many effective organ pieces in the style of his time. His son Johann Ambrosius was a fine organ- ist. His son was the foundation rock of modern musical art, Johann Sebastian Bach. Johann Sebastian Bach was born at Eisenach, March 21st, 1685. The house in which he was born is still standing under the shadow of one of the most romantic medieval castles in Germany, Die Wartburg. Bach’s mother was Eliza- beth Lammerhirt, the daughter of a furrier. His father was the Court and Town musician of Eisenach. “Anyone could do as much as I have done if he worked as hard.” BACH’S EARLY YEARS. Bach’s first instruction came from his father, who taught him to play the violin. Both of his parents died when the boy was only ten years old and the little orphan went to live with his elder brother, Johann Christoph, a pupil of Pachelbel and organist at Obrdruf. This brother sought to repress the enthusiasm of the little Bach rather than encourage it. There is a well authenticated anecdote of Johann Sebastian purloining a manuscript volume of pieces of Pachelbel, Frohberger, Kerl, Buxtehude, etc., by twisting it out from behind the latticed doors of a locked cupboard— then taking the precious work to the garret and copying it by moonlight. Although he spent six months in this labor of love his brother took the copy away from him when he found what the little fellow had been doing. Because he had a beautiful soprano voice he secured ad- mission without tuition fees at the school of St. Michael in Liineburg, where the organist B6hm helped in his educa- tion. During vacations the youth trudged on foot to Hamburg to hear the famous Dutch organist, Reinken. Since Hamburg was about twenty-five miles away Bach’s enthusiasm was truly monumental. Bach's greatest bio- grapher, Philipp Spitta, allows the statement that Bach made frequent journeys on foot. He also quotes the in- teresting anecdote which relates how the boy upon a return journey found himself with only two coins and a huge appetite. He sat down outside of an inn and commenced to cry. The odor of the viands cooking in the kitchen floated out of the window to him. He sniffed them eagerly. A few moments later two herrings’ heads fell on the ground BACH’S BIRTHPLACE. 7, ys him, evidently cast out by some one who \ beside wished to see if he were really hungry. The boy took them up to eat voraciously. In each head he found a golden ducat. He never discovered who his ¥ benefactor was. } At_ the neighboring ““Hofkapelle” at Celle, Bach found another advantage. The players were practi- y, eally all French, and Bach thus had an opportunity ) to become acquainted with another style of musical composition which in those days of restricted travel was naturally somewhat different. Bach’s next move was to Weimar, where he became ‘tHofmusikus” in the band of Prince Johann Ernst. Thence he went to Arnstadt to he come organist at the “new church.” In 1705 Bach received permission from the church authorities at Arnstadt to visit Liibeck for the purpose of hearing the great Danish organist, Buxtehude. A journey of fifty miles was made on foot. Bach was so fascinated that he over stayed his leave three months and was very severely criticized when he returned. In i707 Bach became organist of Blasius at Miihlhausen in Thuringia. married his cousin Maria Barbara Bach, Michael] of Gehren. the church of St. In the same yerr he daughter of Johann BACH’S REGULAR ADVANCEMENT. One year later Bach went to Weimar as court organist and Kammermusikus. This appointment is generally considered the end of his period of study since he com- menced at once to produce works which were marked with mastery. A period of great creative activity com- menced at once and we are not surprised that in a few years (1714) he became the “Hof-Concertmeister.” Although, unlike Handel, Bach never ventured very far from home he did make short trips to Cassel, Leipsic, and Halle and Carlsbad. Upon one occasion in Dresden he was induced to challenge the French organist, Mar- chand, to a keyboard duel. Marchand accepted, but in the meantime took it upon himself to hear his opponent play. When the time for the duel came, Marchand, doubtless feeling that wisdom was the better part of valor, did not put in an appearance. Bach was easily declared the victor. 1717 Bach was called to Cothen by Prince ‘Ledpeid and appointed capellmeister. His salary, considered a good one in those days, was $300 a year. Bach became a great friend of the’ Prince and was in his company much of the time. Twice they went together to Carls- bad. Upon the return in 1720 he was shocked to learn that his wife had died and had been buried for some time. In the meantime Bach’s great contemporary, Handel, was making immense successes in widely separated parts of Europe. Bach naturally wanted to meet him and it is said that the public was anxious to have them compete after the manner of the time, but although Bach made two attempts to meet Handel (1719 and 1729), it was impossible to arrange a meeting much to the regret of both great masters. In 1720 Bach attempted to secure the position of organist at the “Jacobi Kirche” in Hamburg but owing to corruption in the church management the position went to an unknown applicant who actually paid 4000 marks for the position. BACH AT LEIPSIC. Finally Bach received the coveted appointment of cantor (precentor, conductor or trainer of a choir) at the famous Thomasschule in Leipsic. He took his new position in 1723. While the title was not so lofty as that he had held at Céthen, the field was wider and gave room for far greater activity. He also had advantages in the way of furthering the education of his sons. The position was not won without competition as there were other applicants. It fell to Bach not only because of his musica] ability but because of his wide general learning. He was required, for instance, to give five Latin lessons a week. Bach’s inaugu- ration in his new work was made a funetion. His residence was in the school building. His coming marked the begin- ning of new life in the famous old school. THE THOMASSCHULE, The Thomasschule or school of St. Thomas was founded by the Augustine monks in the thirteenth cen- tury. It became a town school in 1543. Singers for many of the Leipsic churches are selected from the school and once a week this body was assembled in one choir (Thomaner-Choir). The discipline at the school was very strict. The boys were obliged to rise at five in the morning and retire at eight in the evening. The manner in which Bach received his income at this time was very interesting. His salary was compara- tively small, amounting to 100-thalers, but he received in addition free rental, and various perquisites such as 13 thalers and 3 grosschen for wood and lights, contri- butions from different foundations or endowment funds, an annual allowance of 16 bushels of corn (wheat?), 2 cords of firelogs, and last of all two measures of wine at Easter, Whitsuntide and Christmas, provided through the munificence of the church. In addition, the school fees amounted to something. Twice a week eight of the boys ran around town with collection boxes receiving small donations. In this way Bach’s income averaged some 700 thalers. BACH’S HAPPY HOME LIFE. While in Leipsic, Bach had much time for composition. Ignorant laymen continually bothered him with stupid criti- cisms so that at one time be felt that he would be obliged to leave the city for which he was doing so much. Bach was obstinate, and it is known that he continually con- tended with one of the rectors. His family life, however, was ideal. After the death of his first wife he felt the need of some one to look after his growing family, and falling in love with Anna Magdelina Wilken, daughter of the Court Trumpeter of Weissenfels, married her on the third of December, 1721. She was very musical, a fine singer, and devoted to her famous husband. Naturally their home be- came tbe center of the musical activity of the city. Pupils came to him from great distances, and visiting musicians never failed to call upon him. BACH’S VISIT TO FREDERICK THE GREAT. Honors came fast to Bach in his later years. In 1736, the honorary appointment of Hof-Componist was given him by the Elector of Saxony. In 1747 Fred- erick the Great informed Bach’s son Emanuel, then a cembalist (equivalent to conductor) of the court orchestra, that his imperial majesty would receive Bach at the Palace in Berlin. Bach accepted, and his visit to Berlin was made an event. He played upon all the pianos and organs at Potsdam much to the delight of the king. He also improvised a six part fugue upon themes selected by himself and after his departure wrote out one of his improvisations from memory and dedicated it to the king. BACH’S BLINDNESS. When Bach was 64, his eyes commenced to fail. Overuse since childhood had stolen his vision. An English occulist performed an operation upon him but brought no satisfactory results. It will be remembered that Handel was also afflicted by blindness. In 1750 Bach’s eyesight came back to him for a very few hours after which he was seized with apoplexy and died after a sickness of ten days. On his deathbed he dictated a choral, Ver deinen Thron tret ich hiermit. His death was widely mourned. The happy family broke up shortly thereafter. His wife, despite the apparent suc- cess of her sons, was forced to accept alms and was buried in a pauper’s grave. BACH AS A PERFORMER. Enough bas been said in the fore- going to indicate that Bach had no equal as a performer during his lifetime. In a day when contests for supremacy were 10 order, rival organists let the great Bach severely alone. His organ performances were unusual in that they drew large crowds. The organist familiar with the Bach repertoire realizes how slight has been the real advance in since the time of the In fact, many go so there bas been organ music great cantor. far as to insist that no advance at all. BACH AS A CONDUCTOR. In Bach’s time plaving and con- ducting were so closely associated that one cannot think of Bach as a conductor in the sense in which one would think of Berlioz or Wagner. It is known, however, that he was a very strict disciplinarian, discharg- ing his performers and singers at once when there were signs of neg- iect or other just provocation. BACH AS A TEACHER. Tf Bach ever suffered from lack of pupils he had but to cast around in his own voluminous family for another. Without question Bach’s most celebrated pupils were his own sons, notably Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach. Although little known today, such men as Agricola, Kirnberger, Goldberg, Krebs and Abt Vogler, all of whom considered themselves disciples of Bach, were famed in their time. Bach showed his greatness in his patience. He never considered himself above small things. At first it was his custom to give only exercises in touch, in fingering, and in making the move- ment of each finger wholly independent. He was fond of writing pieces embodying the technical difficulty upon which the pupil was working. He also sought to estab- lish equality in the proficiency of the hand. Whatever the right hand did the left hand was obliged to do. He was fond of saying, “Anyone who works as hard as I| do may do as well as 1 do.” It is well known that he wrote a kind of instruction book or course for his son, Wilhelm Friedmann Bach, (Clavier Buchlein), which was never published for popular sale. One notable feature of this book is the attention given to ornaments and scale passages and also the fact that an opportunity was afforded for the son to compose and insert some pieces of his own as he went along. Bach’s Inventions were written mainly with an educational object. Bach insisted upon his pupils being equally familiar with all of the keys, rather than with a few. His Forty- eight Preludes and Fugues were written to comprehend all the keys. BACH’S PERSONALITY AND APPEARANCE. Altogether, Bach was a very unusual man apart from his great musical talents. His disposition was kindly, yet he could stoutly defend himself in a dispute. He was very pious but could not be called narrow. He loved to travel but rarely ventured very far from his home. He was marvelously industrious. In his fiftieth year he wrote no less than twenty monumental cantatas. He was generous and hospitable, but at the same time economical. He pos- sessed mauy instruments including five claviers, and enough in the way of violins, ’cellos and other string instruments to provide for concerted music in his home when the op- portunity offered. Bach was a_ strong, earnest worker, dignified in his bearing and yet courtly in his carriage. His face indicates alertness, a sense of humor, natural vigor and confidence in bis technical security. BACH’S COMPOSITIONS. A space equal to the entire length of this biography would scarcely be adequate to accommodate a complete catalogue of all of Bach’s works. First in consequence, considered numerically, are the great number of Can- tatas, of which there are five complete sets for every Sunday and feast day in the year. In addition there are other cantatas both sacred and secular and even comic. One had to do with the craze for coffee drink- ing, which overcame Leipsic in the time of Bach. The five Passions, including the immortal St. John and St. Matthew, The Christmas Oratorio, the Mass in B Minor, two Magnificats, several fine eight-part motets and many other voice works give some idea of his great contribution to vocal musical art. Of his remarkable works for the organ the most noted are his great fugues, for all time the models of this style of composition. Six Concertos and two over- tures comprise his orchestral works. It seems well nigh useless to touch upon his compositions for the MORNING PRAYERS IN THE BACH FAMILY. 8 cembalo, spinet, clavichord, violin, ‘cello, etc. The fugues, concertos, suites, toccatas, preludes, fantasias, partitas, sonatas are a treasure mine which in many cases is rarely visited because of the difficulty of the compositions and because the style in which they are written has in a measure lost favor with many mu- sicians who clamor for nothing but Schumann, Chopin, Mendelssohn and Liszt. BACH’S VERSATILITY. Composer, conductor, teacher, organist, pianist, scholar, musical scientist, Bach was one of the most versatile of all musicians. When he felt the need for an instrument he set about and invented it. He was very much interested in the construction of the organ and in the mechanical processes through which music is printed. His work in establishing the equal tempered system of tuning keyed instruments was monumental. Bach’s first wife was the mother of seven of his children, three of whom, Wilhelm Friedmann, Karl Philipp Emanuel and Johann Gottfried Bernhard, be- came musicians. Bach’s second wife was the mother of thirteen of his children, six of whom were sons. Of these Johann Christoph Friedrich and Johann Christian also became known in the musical world. Wilhelm Friedmann was described as the greatest organist in Germany after his father. For a time he lived in Halle and was known as the “Halle Bach.” He was improvi- dent and died a drunkard in Berlin. Karl Philipp Emanuel, known as the “Berlin” Bach, was conceded to be the greatest theorist of his time and was a composer of very great ability. His only teacher in music was his great father. Johann Gottfried Bernhard Bach was the organist at Muhlhausen for some time but did not equal his brothers in his musical ability? Johann Chris- toph Friedrich, known as the “Buckeburger”’ Bach, was Chamber musician to Count von Lippe of Buckeburg. Had it not have been for the great talents of Karl Emanuel he might have ranked as the greatest of Bach’s sons. Johann Christian, known as the “Milan- ese” Bach, was for a long time organist of the Cathe- dral in Milan. Later he went to London, where he died. He was a prolific composer with tendencies leading him to follow the more or less frivolous Italian style. All of Bach's eight daughters died young except three. None showed pronounced musical talent. All of Bach’s famous sons were given a broad general education, some spending years at the University of Leipsic. A BACH PROGRAM. Grade. 1. Fugue in C Minor (Piano) 320. > cicheeeeeeeeeene i 2. My Heart Ever Faithful (Medium Voice)....... 6 3. Gavotte and Bourrée in G (Piano) a... ee eee tj 4. Loure in G (Third Violoncello Suite)............ 5 5. Little Prelude in C Minor. (Plano) >a ae eee 3 6. Gavotte in G@ Minor........05- eee 3 7. Solfeggietto, by K. P. EB. Bach= eee 5 8. Little. Prelude in D..... ....> «0 «asteheeeeeeeeee 4 9. Sarabande in E Minor.....i.«05 ssn 6 10. Ave-Maria written by Gounod as an obbligato over the first Prelude from the Wohl-Temperirte Clavier. Many excellent selections may be found in the Bach Album, A Collection of Favorite Pieces for the Piano which will prove of great assistance in making a program. QUESTIONS ABOUT BACH. 1. State the condition of Ger- many which preceded Bach’s birth. : 2. Give a general idea of the remarkable achievements of the Bach family. 3. Who were Bach’s teachers? . 4. What appointments did Bach hold prior to going to Leipsic? 5. What was the Thomasschule ? 6. Describe Bach’s home life. 7. Tell of Bach’s famous visit to Frederick the Great. 8. Give an account of Bach's ability as a composer—a teacher— a conductor, 9. Describe Bach’s appearance. 10. Who were Bach’s most fa- mous sons? BOOKS ABOUT BACH. Naturally an enormous number of books have been written about Bach, but of these the best are unquestion- ably the monumental works’ of Philipp Spitta, in three volumes, and 1900 pages. Every detail of the life all the available authentic statistics have been assembled in this work. Sir Hubert Parry’s Bach is also very fine. Among the shorter books, Bach, by C. F. Abdy Williams, is one of the most interesting. of Bach is carefully considered and— AUNMUTATFMTOATUUTTONOMMAHOVITOOOUPRDVRNUOANUONOODNOGAOUOUQQOQOLALUCOROCUNGOOOUUTCOTEANQUUOOLGOLUONOUOORROUEGRUQUEURRUULEOLUECERCLUUEARUERUUGOQUOUOLLTDEGLORRGNEQGANERULCUOECOQOQOAUDUTOOOUUOORREUNUATROQCOUQOOEONORERCOAAGQOQUVORUUUUOOOQUAATANORAVVOMMOROAQUGRIOGUUGOLODOUOMU0NOO LACSEA VOLO. CCRERERHAFOPD ET HE E = = EI = = = E, BEETHOVEN’S PERIOD. BEETHOVEN was born at the beginning of the most powerful social and intellectual wave in modern history. The sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries had been marked by almost unceasing warfare of state against state. With the year 1770 we find a new kind of warfare coming into general prominence, that of the people against monarchy resulting in a marvelous revival of the spirit of liberty; mental, artistic and political, The seedlings of Rousseau, Franklin, Patrick Henry, Vol- taire, Jefferson, Payne and other iconoclasts detested by the aristocrats of the times, were developing the massive oaks which provided the timber for at least two great republics, France and the United States. Beethoven teemed with this new spirit of liberty. Haydn and Mozart literally knelt before the royal throne, avoiding innovations which might prove revolu- tionary. With Beethoven, however, all was different and he may be regarded as the first composer of a new epoch. BEETHOVEN’S ANCESTRY. Beethoven’s family, originally from a village near Lou- vain, Belgium, moved to Antwerp about 1650. The prefix “van” is not a sign of nobility. Beethoven’s grandfather was a bass singer in the court band of the Elector of Cologne, at Bonn, Germany. His father was a tenor singer in the same body. Beethoven’s mother, the daughter of the chief cook at the palace of Ehrenbreitstein, was sweet- tempered and benevolent. The father was drunken and abusive. In fact the boy was repeatedly obliged to recover his hopelessly intoxicated parent from the police authorities. BEETHOVEN’S BIRTHPLACE. Into such a home and with such parents came Ludwig van Beethoven, born in Bonn, Germany, December 16th (baptized 17th), 1770, just one year after the birth of the little Corsican infant that was to disturb the equilibrium of political. Hurope, as Beethoven upset the musical balance of the world. The father’s income was limited to about 800 florins a year. Even at that time one hundred and fifty dollars was a small amount, and the poverty of the Beethovens can easily be imagined. BEETHOVEN’S EARLY TRAINING. The penury-stricken father realized the boy’s great talent. Remembering the fortunate childhood of Mo- zatt, he forced the little fellow to practice with so much cruelty, that we are not surprised that the child repeatedly rebelled. His father taught him both the violin and the clavier. His general education was greatly hampered and had it not been for the fortunate friendship of educated people later in life he might have suffered from this. At nine Beethoven studied music with a tenor singer named Pfeiffer. Later he received lessons from the organist of the court chapel, van der Eeden. In 1781 the English chargé d’affaires gave Beethoven 400 florins to pursue his work. His next teacher was van der Eeden’s successor, C. L. Neefe. Beethoven became so proficient that Neefe appointed him as his deputy organist and Bee- thoven, at the age of twelve, often substituted for his teacher. At this age he was able to play most of Bach’s Well-tempered Clavier. Shortly thereafter we find the boy “cembalist im Or- chester,” directing the band at the court thea- ter. In the same year Beethoven’s first pieces (Schilderung eines Mad- chens and Three Sonatas for Piano Solo) were published. At the theater - the operas of Gluck, Salieri 4 and Paisiello were given, and the youth was greatly benefited by this experience, although the theatrical company was discontinued in 1784. Beethoven lost little, as he had given his services BEETHOVEN’S BIRTHPLACE A LE TT TE i Se Co @ ES PUMNUUDOTODUNOVORRGARODNONONUOUOTODANEGUOIORNQEQNONUQUGUOQNOMROAUNNVONONDOUDUDRONDUURONOOHOROLONAUGNONAADANGOVAODDHNONON es a, TBARS oi 1770—The Real Beethoven—1827 ISIS IES D>. rts 3 “Plaudite aes comoedtia finita est” free. After playing for a short time at a church in Bonn, Beethoven was.engaged by the Elector as an organist at a salary of 150 florins, and his father was MAX KLINGER’S FAMOUS STATUE OF BEETHOVEN. retained at his old stipend of 300 florins a year. In 1785 Beethoven was enabled to study violin with Franz Ries. BEETHOVEN’S LATER EDUCATION. In 1787 Beethoven journeyed down the wonderful Rhine to Vienna. There he had a few lessons from Mozart. At their first meeting Beethoven’s playing made little impression upon the older master. The latter thought that Beethoven was merely playing an exhibi- tion piece. The youth begged Mozart to give him a theme upon which to improvise. Mozart did so and then went to an adjoining room with some friends. In a few minutes he said, “Pay attention to him. Some day he will make a noise in the world.” Returning to Bonn, Beethoven made the acquaintance of Count Waldstein, who assisted the young composer greatly. Beethoven in return dedicated a Sonata, Opus 9 eae aC MINT el 53, to him, and the Sonata is now generally known as the Waldstein Sonata. In 1788 the Elector broadened his musical scheme and _ in- creased the scope of the work at the court opera, with Reicha as director. Beethoven played sec- ond viola in the band of thirty-one pieces and retained his position as second organist. Haydn, then at the height of his fame, passed through Bonn in 1792. He was honored by a dinner given by the Elector’s band. Beethoven’s cantata, composed for the occasion, won the admiration of Haydn and influ- enced the Elector to send the young man to Vienna to O Violino MLO co sae waren ra {ae eS SECS SASS Ra SS Se 7 —" Pens 4 a or ew SA 8 LS se SSSs ese Seize ara ar oes 1 eee a = MANUSCRIPT OF BEETHOVEN, study with the great creator of the symphony. Bee- thoven remained with Haydn a little over a year, paying him at the rate of. twenty cents an hour for his lessons. Dissatisfied with the lack of attention he was receiving from Haydn and realizing that he needed the pains- taking care of a real teacher, rather than the fame of a great master, Beethoven sought other teachers, among them Schenk (composition), Schuppanzigh (vio- lin), but most renowned of all, Albrechtsberger, the renowned specialist in counterpoint who, after months of hard work, said this about Beethoven: “Have noth- ing to do with him. He has learnt nothing and will never do anything in decent style.” BEETHOVEN’S LATER LIFE. In Vienna Beethoven found innumerable friends, willing publishers and limitless opportunities for making his works public. He played in public as a pianist for the first time in 1795, performing his C major Concerto. His two greatest rivals were the now forgotten pianists, Steibelt and Wolff. He won the homage of-monarchs and despite his infinite boorishness and well-nigh unfor- givable eccentricities became the foremost figure of his time in the Austrian capital. BEETHOVEN’S PERSONALITY AND APPEARANCE. Beethoven was short and thickset, with very broad shoulders. His hair in youth was very black. His eyes “like jet” were exceptionally brilliant and penetrating. His teeth were regular and despite his careless habits were kept “dlean. His head was large and his forehead made impressive by his heavy hair and thick eyebrows. From early youth his face was pock-marked, but his complexion was ruddy. Per- haps the most just apprecia- tion of his appearance comes from his admirer, the Countess Gallenburg: “He was meanly dressed, very ugly to look upon, but full of nobility and fine feeling c! and highly cultivated.” Despite his irregular habits Beethoven was a most pains- taking worker, saving his themes with the penurious care of a miser and develop- LYSER’S PEN DRAWING OF ing them with the most BEETHOVEN, WITH THE minute attention to details. MASTERS AUTOGRAPH Brusque to rudeness, thought- SIGNATURE, BEETHOVEN’S FATHER. BEETHOVEN S MOTHER. less of others, irascible and selfish at times, he was nevertheless charitable and willing to provide for his less fortunate relatives. He loved a practical joke and was guilty of many. He was so independent in his manners that the nobles who patronized him regarded him as a freak and refused to be insulted. Truthful, yet ironical, he presented so many strange contrasts that he was always in the public eye. His greatest love was for nature and his daily walks in the woods and * fields inspired many of his works. BEETHOVEN’S DEAFNESS. Picture the greatest musician of his time at the zenith of his career, afflicted with the direst calamity that could affect a tone-poet and we see the tragic spec- tacle of Beethoven awaiting the deafness that he knew would seal the music of the world forever from him. Despite the fact that he had a piano made with additional strings to reinforce the tone he could hear so little that it was painful to watch the great Titan of music play. In a letter to his brother (1802), which he requested to be opened after his death, the master told of his woes. This letter came to be known as Beethoven’s will. One strikingly pathetic passage is, “Joyfully I hasten to meet death. Should he come before I have the opportunity of developing the whole of my artistic capacity he will come too soon in spite of my hard fate.” HOW BEETHOVEN DIED. “Plaudite amici, comoedia finita est,” said Beethoven over and over again during the last few days. What clearer indication can we have of his intensely dramatic nature, “Applaud, my friends, the comedy is ended.” Suffering greatest agony from dropsy, planning works he knew that he would never finish, fighting Fate with a broken sword, Beethoven passed away during a ter- rific storm of snow, hail and lightning, March 26, 1827. Out of the clouds came a thunderclap which terrified all those at his bedside. The unconscious man awoke, shook his clenched fist at the elements and then sank into his immortal sleep. What a divine climax for such a life. Schubert had called during the last days, but Beethoven was too far gone to do much more than recognize him. The Requiems of Mozart and Cherubini were cnanted for the repose of his soul. The actor An- schutz, who was to read the funeral oration written by the playwright Grillparzer, was halted at the cemetery gates, since no actor could at that time ste€p upon consecrated ground. It is estimated that at least twenty thou- sand people attended the funeral of Beethoven. BEETHOVEN ASA PERFORMER. Carl Czerny, one of Beethoven’s pupils, de- - clared that “his playing of the slow movements is full of the greatest expres- sion,’ while the pianist Tomascheck said, “His grand style of playing, es- pecially his bold improvi- zation had an _ extraor- dinary effect upon me; I feit so shaken that for several days I could not bring my- self to touch the piano.” Sir George Grove, who received his information from those who had heard Beethoven, also speaks of “the loftiness and elevation of his style and his great power of expression in slow movements, which, when exercised upon his own music, fixed his hearers and made them insensible to any fault of polish and mere mechanism.” Little wonder that Beethoven BEETH OVEN’S GRAVE IN VIENNA. was called the “giant of players” by his contemporaries, and the “god among players” by his biographers. He approached the piano in a spirit of play, often striking it with the palm of his hand and rubbing his fingers over the keys as a master would caress an animal. Applause was met with a grimace or even rude remarks. BEETHOVEN AS A CONDUCTOR. Beethoven, we are told by thoughtful critics, was 100 impulsive to make a good conductor even of his own works. As he grew deaf it became exceedingly difficult for the players to follow him. He endeavored to sug- gest his wishes by the contortions of his body. In diminuendo passages he would shrink until his body almost disappeared behind the conductor’s stand. In a loud passage he once became so demonstrative that he knocked the lamps off the music rack. BEETHOVEN AS A TEACHER. Whatever may be said of Beethoven’s irregularities as a teacher, the fact that he was the teacher of Carl Czerny and Ferdinand Ries, and that they were ex- ceedingly enthusiastic about him, remains as permanent evidence of his ability, “when he wanted to teach.” By others we are told that he had an aversion to the en- forced performance of regular duties, especially in giving lessons. He feared no one, and even rapped the knuckles of the Archduke Rudolph, when the fatter fingered badly. BEETHOVEN’S FRIENDS. The friends of the great musical creator were strangely chosen—one moment plebeian, another aristocratic. In Bonn, members of the Breuning family assisted him in his early BEETHOVEN PLAYING FOR HIS FRIENDS, struggles, and gave him that indispensable environment of culture whick his own home denied to bim. Eleanor yon Breuning not only knit comforters and made waistcoats for him but inspired him to nobler ideals of life. Beethoven admired many women from Babette Koch, the daughter of an inn keeper, to queens and empresses. In turn he was admired by them, but no scandal of any kind attached it- self to his name. His letters, written in such an execrable hand that they were often refused at the post office, burned with effusive messages of emotion. Yet, Beethoven never married. Three wonderful love letters found in Beetboven’s desk after his death reveal that he was engaged at one time to the Countess Theresa yon Brunswick, whom he called his ‘“‘eternal beloved’ (‘“unsterbliche Geliebte’’). Owing to the patronage of several noblemen, Beethoven was relieved of much of the financial anxiety which ham- pered many of the composers of the past. Among the most notable of these were the princes Rudolph, Lobkowitz, Kin- Sky, Galitzin, Lichnowsky, Rasoumowsky and others. Lob- kowitz, Rudolph and Kinsky provided an annuity amounting to four thousand florins, which, though affected by the fluctu- ating currency of the times, was a great help to Beethoven. Among many who might be classed as friends of Beethoven were Sir Julius Benedict, Maxmiliana Brentano, George Bridgetower (a negro violin virtuoso’ who played the Kreut- zer Sonata with Beethoven,and later secured the degree of Mus. Bac. at Cambridge). Count von Brown, Count von Brunswick, Czerny, Grillparzer, Gyrowetz, Hummel, Hiitten- brunner, Kreutzer, Kuhlau, Maelzel, Moscheles, Schubert, Rode and many others whose names may be found in the dedi- cations of his pieces. Anton Schindler deserves special mention, since he became a veritable slave to Beethoven, taking his abuse with patience and forgiveness. * BEETHOVEN’S COMPOSITIONS. The writer, von Lenz, divided Beethoven's life into three creative periods, and this classification has been widely ac- cepted. These divisions are chronologically, 1700 to 1800, 1800 to 1815 and 1815 to 1827. Many of Beethoven’s most famous works are classed in the second period although his life was being continually embittered by his great afflic- tion. The best-known catalogue of the master’s works con- tains 256 list numbers and about thirty unclassified com- positions. Several of these works are composed of many separate numbers as in the case of the Twenty-five Irish Songs, No. 223, It will thus be seen that bis separate com- 10 positions actually number more than twice the figure rep- resented by their opus numbers. Beethoven’s one opera Fidelio was first produced in 1805, and is still played in some of our great opera houses. Tw= masses (C and D) his Mount of Olives and the cantata The Glorious Moment are his principal contributions to choral music, although the Symphony Number Nine contains a choral setting of Schiller’s An die Freude. Of the nine incompara- ble Beethoven symplonies the most popular are: Number Three, The Broica in E flat. Originally dedi- cated to Napoleon. When in 1805 Napoleon aban- doned his republican doc- trines and became Hmperor of France Beethoven de- stroyed the dedication ; Number Five in C Minor; Number Six, The Pastoral in F; and Number Nine, The Choral in D minor. The Battle of Vittoria written for Maelzel, the inventor of the Metronome, might also be called a sym- phony despite the mercen- ary motives said to have inspired this piece. Of the nine overtures the Leon- ora 1, 2 and 3 and the Fidelio, are the most frequently heard. The music to Hymont and Prometheus is dramatic and powerful. The violin concerto, Opus 61, is one of the greatest compositions in the literature of the instrument. The most famous of the five piano concertos is the fifth in E flat, The Emperor. There are ten sonatas for violin and pianoforte (The Kreutzer is Opus 47 in A), five son- atas for ‘cello and pianoforte and thirty-eight sonatas for pianoforte solo. In addition to these he wrote 21 sets of variations for pianoforte and numerous smaller pieces. His chamber music includes 16 string quartets, five string trios, eight pianoforte trios, two quintets for strings, two octets and one sextet for wind, one septet and one sextet for strings and wind. No list less than an actual catalogue~ can define his complete works. The Grove Dictionary de- votes eight pages of fine type to this list. BRUNSWICK. THERESA VON FAMOUS BEETHOVEN SAYINGS. “Art, who can say that he fathoms it? Who is there capable of discussing the nature of this great goddess?” “It is art and science alone that reveal to us and give us the hope of a loftier life.” “Art is a bond that unites all the world; how much closer is this bond between true artists?” “Liberty and progress are great conditions in the empire of music as in the universe.” A BEETHOVEN PROGRAM. (Suitable for the Average Club Meeting.) Grading 1 to 10. 1. PIANO DueEv.Allegretto from Seventh Symphony, Grade 2. WOCAUisc >.< ic seattle Know’st Thou the Land, Grade 3. PIANO SOLO Sonata, Opus 10, No. 2, First Movement. ..Grade 4. VIOLIN SOLO..Adagio Cantabile, from Sonata, Opus 30, No. 2, Grade 5. PIANO SoLo. .Sonata, Opus 27, No. 2 (Moonlight), First and Second Movements, Grade 6. MIXED VoIcEsS..Come, Ye Disconsolate. Ar- ranged by W. Dressler, Grade ono Nn A wk 1. Pano Durtr....Menuetto from Septet, Opus 20, Grade 3 2. VocaL SOLo....Faithful Johnnie, Violin and *Cello Obbliygato, Grade 3 3. PIANO SOLO. .Funeral March from Sonata, Opus 26, Grade 6 4. VIOLIN SoLo..Adelaide (vocal part played as violin solo to regular accompaniment, unless some one capable of singing this song may be secwred) 5. P1ANO Souo..Andante Célébre from Sonata, Opus 14, No, 2, Grade 5 6. PIANO Durr..Turkish March from Ruins of >» Athens, Grade 3 The experienced teacher may easily arrange a program of Beethoven’s more advanced works if the material is at hand to give them the proper interpretation, Grade 5 BOOKS UPON BEETHOVEN. Beethoven, by Crowest ; Beethoven, by Wischer ; Beethoven, by H. A. Rudall. Beethoven, a Bioyraphical Romance, by Rau. Beethoven and His Nine Symphonies, by Sir George Grove ; Beethoven, Depicted by his Contemporaries, by Ludwig Nohl. Life of Bee- thoven, by A. Schindler. The most famous book of all is “Beethoven’s Leben” in three volumes (German), by the American, Alexander W. Thayer. QUESTIONS. 1. How did the social at- titude of Beethoven differ from that of Haydn and Mozart. 2. What was the nature of the home surroundings in Beethoven’s childhood? 3. Who were Beethoven's first teachers? 4. What great masters be- came Beetnoyven's teachers in later life? 5. What were the main characteristics of Beethoven's piano playing? 6. Was Beethoven an able conductor ? 7. Had Beethoven any pupils who became famous ? 8. Describe Beethoven’s appearance. 9. Tell something of Beethoven’s great affliction. 10, Name five of the most important Beethoven composi- tions. “lk Bille BEETHOVEN’S PIANO TM MM ~ — AIIM THE PERIOD OF BERLIOZ. BeERLIOZ came into the world just as the French democracy, that allowed Robespierre to barter his insatiable ambition for his life, was merging into the Empire which was to offer Napoleon a sim- ilar tragic opportunity. In 1804 “the little corpo- ral” importunately snatched the crown from the hands of Pope Pius VII and: placing it upon his own head with his own hands declared himself Emperor of France. During the childhood and youth of Berlioz he saw upon all sides the significant “N” of Bonaparte. France was ascending to new power and new glory. Berlioz was all patriot. He loved his France and par- ticularly his Paris. Mercurial at all times, his dispo- sition and life experiences were not unlike the fortunes of his native land. During his entire life the French people seemed to be struggling for republican freedom —a freedom, which did not arrive in anything like a permanent form until the year after the death of Berlioz. BERLIOZ’S ANCESTRY AND YOUTH. Hector Berlioz (pronounced Bair-lee-ohs) was born at La Cote St. André, near Grenoble, on Dec. 11th, 1803. His father was a country physician who was determined to have his son become a great surgeon: In the home every possible attempt was made to suppress the boy’s very manifest love for music. Berlioz had the great- est imaginable disgust for the horrors of the dissecting room, and whenever his father urged him to become a medical student he rebelled. Consequently when he went to Paris in 1822, for the purpose of entering the medical school, he found the Conservatoire far more inviting and spent most of his time in the pursuit of musical education. This resulted in a long domestic war between the parents and the talented son. BERLIOZ’S PRIVATIONS. Regarding his attendance at the Conservatoire as open disobedience, his remittances from home were discon- tinued and Berlioz suffered the direst poverty in his efforts to secure a musical education. In his auto- biography he tells how he was obliged to take a chorus position in a minor theatre to get the bare necessities of life. There is an element of the tragedy in the case of this young man with great musical talents and ambitions, denied all through his youth the technical training which might have affected his entire career as a composer. In his earlier years Berlioz had learned to sing at sight, play the guitar and flute fairly well, but he never mastered the pianoforte or the violin instruments which have proved so indispensable to other composers. Singularly enough, with this meagre executive ability he became the greatest authority upon instrumentation of his time. His discoveries in the realm of orchestra- tion were so striking that he revolutionized many phases of the art. Shut off from assistance at home, Berlioz was more determined than ever to become a great master. Ac- cordingly he secured the interest of Jean Francois Lesueur, who became his teacher of composition. Lesueur, now forgotten, was one of the foremost musi- cians of Paris in the early years of the last century. As Master of the Chapel at Notre Dame and later for Napoleon he gained wide influence. He took a great interest in Berlioz and in a very few months we find our young musician writing a Mass for one of the Parisian churches. AT THE CONSERVATOIRE. Berlioz had some difficulty in securing admission to the French Conservatoire. As in the case of many another genius trying to secure a position in an institution conducted along conventional lines his talent was altogether ignored in face of his technical short-comings, Cherubini was then cA AAAS Hector Berlioz ~ me OE 4 E- SSS UOT hee TO TTT? 1803—The Real Berlioz—1869 “Paris, Paris, Let Parts Hear of My Triumphs.” the director. Although Beethoven looked upon Cherubini as one of the foremost musicians of the time and Berlioz made a veritable god of Beethoven, there was little friendship be- tween the director and the student. During the seven years, which Berlioz spent at the Conservatoire, he was in a con- stant state of turmoil. The student was a romanticist to the core while his teachers took a pride in being as academic as possible. They took it upon themselves to build a barrier of rules around each student and called that barrier educa- tion. Berlioz was regarded as a kind of musical anarchist to be repressed rather than encouraged. THE PRIX DE ROME, Finally, after many failures, due partly to his own technical deficiencies and again to the political maneu- verings of his enemies in the Conservatoire, Berlioz succeeded in winning the much coveted Prix de Rome with a cantata La Mort de Sardanapale. This: entitled him to two years in Rome and one year in travel in THE BIRTHPLACE OF BERLIOZ, 11 HAMHAUORAUEQDROEOUTUDORGNOOOREGRENLOG ; TS se ae — ee tere other continental countries. Berlioz was no sooner away from his Paris than he longed to return, and with the consent of the ininistry back he journeyed in 1832. He had already written two of his well known works, King Lear and Symphonic Fantastique. A ROMANTIC MARRIAGE. In his entertaining autobiography there is no part as interesting as that in which he describes his court- ship and marriage with the Irish actress, Henrietta Smithson (1833). She was the rage of Paris in her day and Berlioz, who had developed a great fondness for everything Shakespearean, saw in Henrietta Smith- son the actualization of one of his ideals. Berlioz, however, was in love with Juliet and Rosalind rather than with the one who portrayed them. Later in life his actress wife fell so far below his ideals that a separation became inevitable. z Berlioz’s marriage was undertaken at a time when he had little prospect of future income. In fact after the birth of his son he was obliged to devote so much time to writing newspaper criticisms that only a little time could be devoted to the actual work of composition. He had been turned down at the Con- servatoire where he had applied for a position as teacher of harmony. Cherubini would have none of such a revolutionist. Had it not been for his ability as a feuilletonist he and his family might have starved. HIS REMARKABLE PRODUCTIVITY. Berlioz was a very rapid writer. Many of his critics contend that if he had written a little slower and taken more pains with his work he might have produced compositions of higher consequence, but Berlioz was a rhapsodist and wrote as he improvised. In fact in order to get his ideas down quick enough he was obliged to invent a kind of short hand notation. Dur- ing the years immediately following his marriage he wrote the three symphonies. Symphonie Funcbre et Triomphale, Harold in Italy and Romeo and Juliette, a cantata on the death of Napoleon; the opera, Ben- venuto Cellini, the Requiem, and other works of small- er dimensions. Gradually his works became more an1 more popular and some financial return was received. This, however, came in the form of awards and gratuities rather than earnings. The French Govern- ment, for instance, paid him 4,000 francs for his - Requiem and the violinist, Paganini, presented him with 20,000 francs for his Harold en Italie. Through this and other sources of income he was enabled to make a long-coveted. trip through Germany. Liszt and Schu- mann had championed his cause so well that he was enthusiastically received everywhere. In fact his tour has been compared to a triumphal march and was quite different from the critical drubbing which the German composer, Richard Wagner, was then receiving in Paris. During the next few years he made tours in Austria and Russia, returning to Paris to produce his La Dam- nation de. Faust. This work did not win anythine more than very slight approval at the outstart. During the entire time Berlioz was abroad he strove to win popular favor in Paris by sending back bulletins of his great successes in foreign countries, but Paris was apathetic, and the more Berlioz knocked at her doors the sounder was her sleep. His next foreign ventures took him to England, whither he went four times between the years 1848 and 1855, meeting with success as a conductor. SLIGHT RECOGNITION AT LAST. In 1856 France began to show her appreciation of Berlioz by making him an Academician and later the Librarian of the Conservatoire. In 1854 Berlioz’s first wife died, and after a very short time we find him mar- NN ried again to a singer with very slender gifts, Mlle. Martin Recio. Despite the fact that she insisted upon taking the leading réle in the performances of her hus- band’s works—often with disastrous results—he was greatly devoted to her. Berlioz was profoundly affected by her death in 1862. He became still more disconsolate when the work upon which he spent the best labors of his life, Les Troyens, a grand opera in two parts (I. La Prise de Troie. II. Les Troyens a@ Carthage) failed after a very few per- formances (Paris, 1863). Not even the success of his little opera, Béatrice et Bénédict, performed with much favor at Baden in Germany, could revive his inspira- tion. Les Troyens was his last work of consequence, and its failure worried the composer so that a rapid de- cline of his health followed. THE DEATH OF BERLIOZ. It has been said that it is a failing with the French to show their appreciation after death, but that after all is a common failing of all peoples. Berlioz died in Paris on March 3rd, 1869, and received a most pompous funeral. Ten years later all Paris turned out to an immense concert of his works given in the Hippodrome in commemoration of his death. Busts, statues, and all of the other pitiful means of petrifying his memory may be found around the great city that so long permitted him to starve in neglect. BERLIOZ AS A CONDUCTOR. Much more might be said of Berlioz as a conductor than of Berlioz as a composer. He gloried in huge orchestras and once had one so large that it was necessary for him to have electrically operated metro- nomes stationed in different parts of the orchestra so that by controlling the beat from the conductor’s desk he might be sure of maintaining the tempo. In prescribing the instruments for his ideal festival or- chestra he calls for the following: 120 violins, 40 violas, 45 ’cellos, 18 three-stringed basses, 15 four- stringed basses, 4 octo-basses, 6 large flutes, 4 third flutes, 2 piccolos, 2 piccolos in D flat, 6 oboes, 6 corni inglesi, 5 saxophones, 4 tenoroons, 12 bassoons, 4 clarinets in E flat, 8 ordinary clarinets, 3 bass clari- nets, 16 horns, 8 trumpets, 6 cornets a piston, 12 trom- bones, 3 ophicleides, 2 bass tubas, 30 harps, 30 piano- fortes, 1 organ, 8 pairs of kettle drums, 6 drums, 3 long drums, four pairs of cymbals, 6 triangles, 6 sets of bells, 12 pairs of antique cymbals, 2 very low great bells, 2 gongs, 4 Turkish crescents—460 pieces in all. Surely the modern claims of Richard Strauss are modest in the extreme. BERLIOZ AS A COMPOSER. The work of Berlioz has been variously estimated by different critics. His greatest service to music was unquestionably his work in orchestration, where he was at once bold, artistic and ingenious. Those who place a low valuation upon his gifts as a composer do not hesitate to say that he provided the basis for much of our latter day orchestral treatment. His sense of color was extraordinary and in a way glossed over his technical deficiencies in composition and his lacix of melodic inventiveness. While many of the melo- dies of Wagner became the common property of the masses, it is difficult to point to a single theme ot Berlioz outside of the Kakoczy March which has been adopted by the public as its own, and the Rakoczy March is in fact a Hungarian inspiration. The Ra- kocsy March was so named because at first it was a lament for one of the great Hungarian heroes, Ra- koczy. Originally it was a slow and solemn tune played upon an instrument (the tdrogaté) resembling the oboe. It first appeared about two hundred years ago, but in the early part of the last century the same theme occurs as a march. Berlioz seized upon the theme and introduced it in his Damnation de Faust. The march then became the craze of Europe and Berlioz was given the credit of having been the com- poser. In justice to him it should be said that had it not been for his highly colored and skillful or- chestration the famous tune might never have become so popular. In his autobiography Berlioz gives vivid pictures of the uproarious enthusiasm with which the march was received. This does not mean that the music of Berlioz does not contain moments of greatness, but his lack of the substantial characteristics which have made the fame of such masters as Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, Franck and others permanent, must always dim the reputation of Berlioz. What Berlioz might have been had he had the right technical training early in life must always be one of those discomforting problems which baffle solution. BERLIOZ AS A WRITER. We are tempted to say that no more fascinating book has ever been written by a great composer than Berlioz’s Auto- biography. His delineation of his own desires, mental atti- tudes and emotions is so remarkable that it has the charm, of a Thackaray, a Heyse and a Maupassant combined. It is one of the most interesting narratives of its kind. All through the work one is convinced that Berlioz is writing about the man he would like to be rather than the man he really is, but in this very angle of treatment we have re- vealed to us one of the intimate views of the composer’s character. Berlioz was in many ways a poscur. His appe- tite for renown amounted to an obsession hardly excelled by that of Wagner who, after all, could forget himself in his work. Nine volumes of the writings of Berlioz have been published, but the most interesting by far is the Autobi- ee Ae which reads from cover to cover like a fascinating novel, His attitude toward other composers was unique. He placed little value upon Chopin, Schumann, Schubert, Bach or Handel. In many cases nis investigations had been so superficial that he was hardly qualified to judge. Of Bee- thoven, Weber and Gluck he could hardly say enough. His radical position in musical art made him the subject of much caricature, as well as invective. His replies were witty and sharp and he never seemed to lack ammunition, to fire back at his enemies. DIFFICULTY IN ARRANGING A BERLIOZ PROGRAM, It is a comparatively simple matter to arrange a program of the works of Richard Wagner which may be played in the parlor or the studio, although Wagner wrote but little outside of his huge music dramas. With Berlioz, however, the case is quite different. Without the color and fascination of the orchestra most of his works seem to be lacking in that broad human interest which would make them suitable for the ordinary recital or club program. In addition to this practically everything which might be adapted to a Berlioz program is either difficult or awkward for the performer. The Trdaumerei and Caprice for Violin, Opus 8, is about grade seven and is one of the most attractive recital numbers written by Berlioz. The Rakoczy March comes in various grades of difficulty and is almost always effective. The Gnomenchor und Sylphentane from the Damnation of Faust comes in a splendid arrangement by Carl Tausig, of which a new edition has heen made by Xaver Scharwenka. This, however, is suited only to the concert pianist. The Serenade of Mephistophele has been arranged for piano by Dr. William Mason. This arrangement, while not particularly difficult, is not especially effective. The Villanelle from Summer Nights is a really ex- cellent song from the musical standpoint, although dif- ficult for the singer, owing to the incessant high range. 12 Berlioz’s best song La Captive, one of his mastef- pieces, calls for a voice of large range and power. It is a concert song in the bigger sense of the term. The student should remember, however, that most all of Berlioz’s orchestral works are wonderfully effective. rich, and brilliant when heard on the orchestra. In fact, there is no department of musical composition that was not quickened by the efforts of this remark- ably active man. Ernest Newman, the well known English critic, has shown how Berlioz brought new life to the Opera, the Symphony and the orchestra itself. It is hardly advisable to attempt a Berlioz pro- gram without elaborate resources. BERLIOZ’S SHORTCOMINGS. One of the best estimates of Berlioz’s shortcomings may be found in the biography of W. H. Hadow, Esq, used in the Grove Dictionary. Mr. Hadow writes: “There is, indeed, a singular perversity in Berlioz’s music, due partly to a twist in his disposition, partly to deficiency of early training. He had, for example, a spring of pure and beautiful melody, and in La Captive in the love scene from Romeo, in the great septet from Les Troyens, he showed that he could employ it to noble purpose. Yet, time after time he ruins his cause by subordinating beauty to emphasis, and is so anxious to impress that he forgets how to charm. The Even- ing Song in Faust is spoiled by the very cadences that were intended to make it effective. The beginning of the Pilgrim’s March in Harold is delightful, but the last strain offends like a misplaced epigram. No doubt there are other artists who have yielded to similar temptation. Chopin used often to end his dreamiest improvisations with an unexpected discord. Heine often closes with a freakish jest, a song full of pathos or romance. But these men did it out of sheer mis- chief. Berlioz did it because it seemed to him the nat- ural outcome of his thought. TEST QUESTIONS. 1. State the nature of the French Government dur- ing the early years of Berlioz’s life. 2. What assistance did Berlioz receive from his family? 3. What instruments did Berlioz play? . Who was Berlioz’s principal teacher? How long was Berlioz at the Conservatoire? Tell something of Berlioz’s romantic marriage. Describe Berlioz’s remarkable productivity. How did France recognize Berlioz. ON Ams 9. State Berlioz’s rank as a conductor and as a com- poser. 10. Why is it impracticable to give short programs of his compositions apart from the orchestra? BERLIOZ IN HIS PRIME. Py TUTTO MUM UR GRUUATGRUD RO RUERORAETAUUETANLE =A ese faq \ BRAHMS’ PERIOD. Tue Germany of to-day is a strong fed- eration of German states under the imperial dominion of the Kaiser. One hundred years ago Germany was no more or less than that section of Europe tenanted by people of the German race, divided into small kingdoms and principalities, of which Austria was always considered a part. It had suffered from the terrific blows that Napoleon delivered to his enemies and was staggering along under the influence of the reactionary Austrian minister Metternich, who was so suspicious that he even prevented musical festivals with the fear that they might be revolutionary gatherings. The political renaissance of Germany really began with the entrance of that master of diplomacy, Otto von Bismarck. When Brahms was born Bismarck was at the begin- ning of his iron career. Under the great Chancellor, Prussia became the force which resulted in the German Empire in 1871. All these things occurred during the life of Brahms, and it is not difficult to believe that much of the great power which marks his works came from the dynamic political atmosphere of his time, an atmosphere also capable of influencing a totally dif- ferent type of composer such as Brahms’ great contem- porary, Richard Wagner. BRAHMS’ ANCESTRY. Brahms’ family name appears in some forms as Brahmst. At least it may be so found upon the program of a concert given in 1849. The master’s father was an able but little known musician, Johann Brahms. He played the viola, violin, ‘cello, flute, horn and contra-bass. Here and there he managed to pick up an odd job in addition to his regular work as a performer on the double bass at the theatre and in the Philharmonic concerts, and as a member of the town military band, Despite his versatility and ab litv, Brahms’ father was so poor that he was ‘not above ‘passing the hat” when he played in summer gardens. Brahms’ mother was delicate, ordinary, and it is said walked with a conspicuous limp. She was seventeen years older than her husband. History records little of her other than that she was affec- tionate, blue-eyed, pious and entitled to that greatest German distinction of feminine virtue, tuchtige hausefrau (tidy housewife). BRAHMS’ BIRTHPLACE. As you look upon the ramshackle building in which Brahms was born, it should be remembered that, l’ke so many other German edifices of the kind, it was a Wohnung or a tenement. The Brahms family occupied only a few rooms, and their home was very close indeed to abject poverty. This ‘home’ was located on a dismal little Jane in the city of Hamburg. Brahms was born there Tuesday, May 7th, 1883. His mother was then forty-four years old. His father twenty-seven. BRAHMS’ EARLY TRAINING. Brahms’ first teacher was a pianist named Cossel, who gave the boy his first lessons when he was seven years old. At ten he was so advanced that he played a study by Herz at a Charity concert. During the same year his self-sacrificing teacher, realizing what splendid talent the boy had, took him to the nearby city of Altona to Marx- sen, who had been Cos- sel’s own teacher in the past. Brahms played for the old master and was assured that he had bet- ter continue under Cos- sel. However, his father’s friends were not satis- fied and a concert was given in the Bier Halle “Zum Alten Rabe,’ the proceeds of which were to be applied to the edu- cation of the young mu- sician. With the req- uisite funds in hand Marxsen was approached again and consented to accept the boy as a pupil for one lesson a week, BRAHMS AND JOACHIM AT THEIR FIRST MEETING. SAMA A Johannes Brahm — — \ > TOT TTT I ty “Blessed is he, who without hate shuts lwumself from the world,’—GoETHE. but stipulating that he should also take two lessons a week from Marxsen’s former pupil Cossel. Finally Marxsen took the boy under his care, teaching him without compensation. The world owes a great debt to Cossel since it was only through his magnificent self-sacrifice that this was brought about, and through his persistence that the parents of the boy were pre- vented from sending him upon a tour as a prodigy, which might have proved ruinous. Marxsen was a thorough musician who had had an excellent training in Vienna. He took an unusual in- terest in the boy and saw to it that his general educa- tion in the regular school work was not neglected. He obliged him to transpose long pieces of music at sight. At the age of fourteen Brahms gave his first concert, playing the following program: PADUGTO iO gl MOMO Ongar ecineacls sete rare RoSENHAIN Rantasie om Walliams Gell. csecemen sense DOoHLER SAAC oe (eas UOliGhee Sa aendeodoccaaeanes o MarxXSEN ITCH IS er ila, OSB OES RAO DOS O00 OK ob oan Aamo oe HERz UOTO GRR OCA Maem TEP A OS 0 86. OUP OCEANS JS. BAcE Variations on a Volkslied.......... JoHANNeEs BRAHMS In 1853 Brahms went upon a tour with the Hungarian violinist, Eduard Remenyi, a great relief from his previous years of musical hackdom, teaching at the rate of twenty-five cents a lesson and playing in lokals (cafes). Remenyi introduced Brahms to Joachim, who recognized his great talent. Joachim in turn introduced the young composer to Liszt and to Schumann, Schumann was immensely impressed with his works and wrote an article lauding Brahms in the “Neue Zeitschrift fiir Musik,’ entitled Newe Bahnen (New Roads). During ithe four years, 1854-1858. Brahms was Court Music Director for the Prince Lippe-Detmold. In 1862 Brahms went to Vienna to be near his friend, Theodor Kirchner. In the Austrian musical capital he was honored with the post of Direc- tor of the Sing Akademie, and later with that conduc- tor of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde. \*rom 1864 to 1869 he spent part of his time in Hamburg, Zurich, Baden-Baden and other cities, but Vienna became his ultimate home. He made numerous tours as a pianist, but his playing was for the most part too serious in character to win him the great enthusiasm that the virtuoso expects from the public. His life was marked by his natural distaste for notoriety and the turmoil of the world. He ignored the degree of Doctor of Music when it was offered to him by Cambridge 13 IN MTT MTT < University (1877), but accepted that of Ph.D from Breslau University (1881.) In 1886 he was Knighted by Prussia (Order of Merit). He was the polar antithesis of Richard Wagner, to whom tranquility was a welcome but an unattainable attribute. The difference between Brahms and Wagner was the difference between the silent majesty of peace and the glorious clamor of war. Yet Wagner unquestionably placed himself and his music in more definite contact with the human needs of his time than did the ascetic Brahms, working in art prin- ciples often far to complicated for those of more frail intellects to comprehend. BRAHMS’ PERSONALITY AND APPEARANCE. Brahms’ appearance was impressive despite the fact that his head was abnormally large and his body small and stocky. His complexion was ruddy, his eyes blue and penetrating, and his hair slightly gray in his ad- vanced years. The fact that his name appeared on several church registers and that similar names of other branches of the same family have been found in records of different churches apparently contradicts the assertion that he was of Jewish ancestry. Brahms was inordinately fond of walking, particu- larly walking in the country, after the manner of Bee- thoven. He rarely missed a day without a stroll of some length. Mountain climbing was another of his favorite pastimes. As he grow more fleshy in his later years he found climbing difficult and would often stop his friend to see some remarkable view when he was really “out of breath’ and unable to go further. He was so fond of the open air that he always made it a point to dine in the garden when the weather permitted. Brahms was somewhat careless in his dress, and for this reason avoided any form of society where he might be obliged to abandon his free attire, often accented by a picturesque loose flannel shirt without a tie of any kind and a broad brimmed soft hat, which he wore in his hand rather than upon his head. In- deed, he is said io have avoided a trip to England to accept the proffered degree of Doctor of Music from Cambridge University, because he feared he would be obliged to wear a dress suit. Indeed, he was one of the most striking figures of the Vienna of his day. He would often appear with a somewhat dingy, brownish-gray shawl thrown over his shoulders and clasped in front with an ordinary pin. Brahms was naturally retiring and was fond of quoting Goethe’s line, ‘Blessed is he who without hate, shuts himself from the world.” Although Brahms avoided notoriety he had many friends and enjoyed a controversy above all things. In his youth he had a tendency to be brusque and sar- castic, but with later years this irrascability was soft- ened by good humor. Brahms was a man of wide interests. He was keenly alive to the great innovations of the nineteenth century, the telephone, the telegraph and the phonograph. Brahms was kindly to his servants and such a lover of children that he often permitted them to impose upon him. Once he was seen on all fours playing horse for a small boy who, whip in hand, sat astride the master’s back. Yet, like Beethoven, he never mar- ried. He disliked cere- mony of any kind and es- caped it whenever pos- sible. BRAHMS AS A PIANIST. A casual examination of Brahms’ pianoforte compositions reveals at once that he employed chords that ofttimes seem so remote from the con- ventional chord masses utilized by the average composer that the piano BRAHMS WHEN A CHILD. student finds new and often very complicated ar- rangement of the keys, demanding significant exten- sions of his technic. It was known that Brahms de- tested the conventional, and even in his simplest com- positions sought a characteristic and distinctly different atmosphere. This, perhaps, gives us a better insight to his methods of playing than do the varying accounts ot his performances. In any event Brahms could never be called a virtuoso in the sense that we apply the term to Liszt, Rubinstein, Paderewski, or even Chopin. Joachim said of his playing when Brahms was a very young man, “His piano playing was so tender, so full of fancy, so free, so firey, that it held me enthralled.” Clara Schumann, whom Brahms worshipped almost as a foster-mother, was not so deeply impressed. Yet once, when Brahms was playing alone at the Schu- mann’s, Clara, who was in another room, exclaimed, “Who are those people in there playing duets!” BRAHMS’ AS A TEACHER OF THE PIANOFORTE, One of Brahms’ pupils, Florence May, has written the most comprehensive life of the master. In it she describes his teaching in a manner that no teacher may read without profit. “Brahms united in himself each and every quality that might be supposed to exist in an ideal teacher of the pianoforte, without having a single modifying drawback. He was strict and absolute; he was gentle and patient and encouraging; he was not only clear, he was light itself; he knew exhaustively, and could teach and did teach, by the shortest possible methods. every de‘ail of technical study; he was unwearied in his efforts to make his pupil grasp the full musical meaning of whatever work might be in hand; he was even punctual.” “Remembering what Frau Schumann had said of his ability to assist me with my technic, I told him before beginning with my lessons, of my mechanical difficul- ties, and asked him to help me. He answered, ‘Yes, that must come first,’ and after hearing me play through a study from Clementi’s Gradus ad Parnassum, he im- mediately set to work to loosen and equalize my fin- gers. Beginning that very day he gradually put me through an entire course in technical training, showing me how I should best work for the attainment of my end at scales, arpeggi, trills, double notes, and octaves. At first he made me practice during a good part of my lessons, while he sat watching my fingers, telling me what was wrong in my way of moving them, indi- cating by his own hand a better position for mine, absorbing himself entirely for the time being in the object of helping me.” . “His method of loosening the wrist was, I should say, original. I have at all events, never seen or heard of it excepting from him, but it loosened my wrist in a fortnight and with comparatively little labor on my part. How he laughed one day when I triumphantly showed him that one of my knuckles, which were then rather stiff, had quite gone in, and said to him: ‘You have done that.’ ” “He had a great habit of turning a difficult passage round and making me practice it, not as written. but with other accents and in various figures, with the re- sult that when I again tried it as it stood the difficulties had always considerably diminished and often entirely disappeared.” “He was never irritable, never indifferent, but al- ways helped, stimulated and encouraged. One day. when I lamented to him the deficiencies of my formal mechanical training and my present resultant finger difficulty, ‘It will come out all right,’ he said, ‘it does not come in a week, nor in four weeks.’ ” “He was extremely particular about my fingering, making me rely on all my fingers as equally as possi- ble. One day whilst watching my hands as I played him a study from the Gradus, he objected to some of my fingering and asked me to change it. I imme- diately did so, but said that I had used the one marked by Clementi. He at once said that I must not change it and would not allow me to adopt his own. A good part of each lesson was generally devoted to Bach, to the Well Tempered Clavier or the English Suites; and as my mechanism improved Brahms gradually increased the amount and scope of my work, and gave more and more time to the spirit of the music I studied. His phrasing as he taught it to me, was, it need hardly be said, of the broadest, while he was rigorous in exact- ing attention to the smallest details. These he some- times treated as delicate embroidery that filled up and decorated the broad outline of the phrase, with a large sweep of which nothing was ever allowed to interfere. Light and shade were also so managed as to help to bring out its continuity. Be it, however, most emphati- cally declared that he never theorized on these points; he merely tried his utmost to make me understand and play my pieces as he himself understood and felt them. He would make me repeat over and over again, ten or twelve times if necessary, part of a movement of Bach, till he had satisfied himself that I was beginning to realize his wish for particular effects of tone or phrasing or feeling. When I could not immediately do what he wanted he would say, ‘But it is so difficult,’ or ‘It will come,’ tell me to do it again until he found his effect was on its way into being and then leave me to complete it.” “Brahms, recognized no such thing as what is some- times called ‘neat playing’ of the compositions of Bach, Scarlatti and Mozart. Neatness and equality of finger were imperatively demanded by him and in their utmost nicety and perfection, but as a preparation not as an end. Varying and sensitive expression was to him as the breath of life, necessary to the true interpretation of any work of genius, and he did not hesitate to avail himself of such resources of the modern pianoforte as he felt helped to impart it; no matter in what particu- lar century his composer may have lived, or what may have been the peculiar excellencies or limitations of the instruments of his day.” “He particularly disliked chords to be spread unless marked so by the composer for the sake of a special effect. ‘No arpeggios, he used invariably to say if I unconsciously gave way to the habit, or yielded to the temptation of softening a chord by its means. He made very much of the well-known effect of two notes slurred together, whether in a loud or a soft tone, and I know from his insistence to me on this point that the mark had a special significance in his music.” BRAHMS’ FRIENDS. Despite Brahms’ natural modesty and constant en- deavors to escape the ‘“‘lime-light” he had many friends. The best known of these were Remenyi, Joachim, Liszt and Clara Schumann, all of whom are well known. Theodor Bilroth, one of Brahms’ most inti- mate companions, was an enthusiastic musician and writer who accompanied Brahms on many of his walks and who was favored with an extensive correspondence. J. V. Widmann was another whose friendship Brahms cultivated. Brahms’ great journalistic champion was the renowned Viennese critic, Dr. Eduard Hanslick, whose defence of his friend was as strong as his at- tacks upon Wagner were bitter. Brahms had a high BRAHMS’ BIRTHPLACE. 14 admiration for Ernest von Wildenbruch, the Austrian playwright, whose works were es- pecially stimulating to. him. THE BRAHMS-WAG- NER CONTROVERSY. It was natural that those who found Wagner's modern ideas incompatible with their own should seek a champion whom they might put for- ward as an opponent of Wagner. As a matter of fact, the entire controversy was fought out upon jour- nalistic lines and was never based upon personal animosity. Brahms was a_ great admirer of Wagner and rarely missed a first perform- ance of his works when given in Vienna. Brahms died in Vienna April 3d, 1897. BRAHMS WHEN A YOUNG MAN. BRAHMS’ COMPOSITIONS. An English writer (Edwin Eyans, Sr.) bas recently pub- lished the first of a series of three large volumes, giving a detailed description of the works of Johannes Brahms. Only by studying a work of this kind can one form a con- ception of the great number of the collected works of this master. His works have been given opus numbers up to 122. There are some twenty-three works without opus numbers. Many of these opus numbers .represent several different compositions in a set. He hada peculiar habit of producing works of a kind in pairs, as two symphonies, two sets of songs, two sets of pianoforte pieces. When his first symphony was produced it made such an impression that it was immediately called “The Tenth Symphony,” im- plying that it was a worthy successor to the nine Beethoven Symphonies. Brahms wrote four symphonies and four con- certos, representing his powerful, reserved, unostentatious style—a style majestic and substant’al, but often so lofty that critics of superficial training have- described some of Brahms’ compositions as ‘‘muddy.” Brahms’ chamber music deserves a chapter in itself since it revives the classical forms in a manner worthy of his greatest predecessors. He never wrote any operatic work, but it is believed that he would have done so had he been able to Wess a worthy libretto. His Deutsches Requiem places him at once among the great composers of choral works. His songs are par- ticularly beautiful and individual. Among the best are Sapphic Ode, Wie bist du Meine Ki niyen, Magelone-Leider, Botschaft Vier Ernste Gesange, Feldeinsamkeit, In Watl- deinsamkeit, Die Mainacht, Von Ewige Liebe, Wieyenlied, Without doubt Brahms’ best known compositions are his Hungarian Dances. These appeared in 1867 as piano duets, and were later arranged for orchestra by the composer. The melodies were for the most part not original with Brahms, and the original edition frankly states that they were “arranged by Brahms,” thus making the frequent ac- cusations of plagiarism unnecessary. The grandeur which characterizes Brahms’ orchestral works is not absent from his piano pieces. There is, how- ever a peculiar quality about his compositions for the most popular instrument, that have kept them apart from the novice. Many music-lovers seemingly have to develop a taste for them, as one does for rare tropical fruits and scents, In some pieces one has the feeling that Brahms has taken up the art of Sehumann as expressed in that master’s Kreisleriana and Fantasia in C and carried it to very lofty altitudes of complexity. A BRAHMS’ PROGRAM. Duet, Hungarian Dance, No. 2........ " Grade 4 Sone, Sapphic Ode. We tarts sce ee Grade 4 Piano Soto, Valses, Opus 39 (No. 2 and 4).. Grade 4 Sone, Wie bist du meine Kénigin........... Grade 5 CuHorus, The Little Dustman (Female Voices) Grade 3 Piano Duet, First Movement C Minor Sym- Phony Now 1h. So 38) ork ate apes eet eee Grade 8 Prano Soto, Hungarian Dance, No. 7........ Grade 5 (Arranged by Philipp.) Piano Soto, Andante from the First Sonata.. Grade 6 (Arranged by Mathews.) Sone, In Waldcinsamkett.......0..+0s0e00ee5 Grade 5 Piano Soto, Cappriccio (Opus 76, No. 2).... Grade 7 Piano Soto, Ballade, Opus to, No. 1.......... Grade 6 Piano Duet, Opus 39 (No. 13 and No. 10).. Grade 4 BOOKS UPON BRAHMS. Life of Johannes Brahms, by Florence May, two volumes, many illustrations. Brahms by J. Lawrence Erb. Brahms, by Herbert Antcliffe. Johannes Brahms, by Dr. Hermann Dieters. Johannes Brahms, by J. A. Fuller-Maitland. The Works of Johannes Brahms, by Edwin Evans, Sr. (three volumes.) TEN TEST QUESTIONS. 1. Name a great German Statesman who was a contem- porary of Brahms. » 2. When and where was Brahms born? State some facts about his immediate family. 3. Who were Brabms’ early teachers? 4. What great German composer introduced Brahms’ compositions to the musical public of Europe? 5. Give a description of Brahms’ personal appearance. 6. How did Brahms rank as a pianist? 7. Tell something of Brahms as a teacher, 8. Name some famous friends of Brahms. 9. How many opus numbers did he write? 10. When and where did Brahms die? sail Fs TT LE PUTT TET TTS FG ® CHOPIN’S PERIOD. Cuoprn’s later artist life is so closely knit into that of Paris—so clearly identified with the artistic atmosphere of the French metropolis, that his period is really that of the great “City of Light’ when it was the intellectual magnet of the entire world. During the first half of the last century the economic machiney of the French government was being welded into new shapes by successive wars and Paris itself was in reality a huge political forge, communicating its force, its scin- tillating brilliance, its creative fascination to a host of powerful thinkers, including the epic Hugo, the realistic Maupassant, the sardonic Heine, the humanistic Balzac, the iconoclastic Wagner, the socialistic Baudelaire, and other brain men were destroying the old and—when it was permitted to them, building the new. Added to these powerful influences was that of the Salon, that peculiarly French institution so beneficial to art work- ers. The scintillating women who made the occasional gatherings of artists in their Salons productive of so much mental awakening were in themselves capable of high literary achievements. Mme. de Stael, fighting for liberty; the cigar-smoking George Sand; Daniel Stern, brilliant at times and again trivial, belong to a class quite apart from the du Barrys and the Recamiers to whom the salon was purely a social diversion. Chopin’s debt to the Salon of his day can hardly be estimated. CHOPIN’S ANCESTRY. Added to the Parisian influences which affected Chopin, we have the tragic power which came to him from the land of his birth—then in the struggle which proved so fatal to poor Poland. Chopin’s father, Nicholas Chopin, went from his birthplace in France to Warsaw in 1787, where he found employment as a bookkeeper in a snuff factorv. Later he became captain of the National guard end finally a teacher of French, holding appointments in the Warsaw Lyceum and in the military schools. He also eonducted a private boarding school. While acting as a teacher he met Justine Kryzanowska (or Krzyzanowska) a member of an old Polish family and made her his wife in 1806. ; Some writers have attempted to show that Chopin's father was descended from a Polish family named Szop or Szopen, which had emigrated to France some generations before his birth. CHOPIN’S BIRTHPLACE. Zelazowa Wola, where the master was born, is a little village about twenty-eight miles from Warsaw in Rus- sian Poland. The date of his birth has been the cause of numerous disputes, some declaring it to be 1810, as inscribed upon his tombstone in Paris, and others March 1, 1809, as given in the Grove Dictionary. Chopin’s baptismal certificate apparently gives the date as February 22, 1810, and that is accepted in some of the latest dictionaries. CHOPIN’S EARLY TRAINING. Chopin’s first teacher was Adelbert Zwiny, a Bohemian, who boasted of be- ing a violinist, a pianist and a com- poser. His ability has been belittled by many commentators. However, he suc- ‘ceeded in advancing the child’s technic so that he was able to play a concerto by Gyrowetz (a friend of Mozart and Capellmeister at the Viennese Royal Court Opera). How extraordinary really was the playing of “Fritzschen,” as his friends nicknamed him, may be ‘estimated when it is learned that he was dubbed “the Second Mozart,” and that Mme. Catalani, the Tetrazzini of her day, presented him with a watch in- scribed with her name—a trifling gift for one who frequently received as much as $1,000 for singing “God Save the King” and “Rule Britannia.” When only fourteen, Chopin played for the Czar Alexander and received a diamond ring. “Flats off, gentlemen, a genius.’—ROBERT SCHUMANN. Chopin’s second teacher was Joseph Elsner, director of the Warsaw Conservatory—an able musician who had had a University training. The boy was twelve years old when he started in with his new mentor, who in- structed him particularly in harmony and. counterpoint. Liszt said of this teacher, “Elsner taught Chopin those things that are the most difficult to learn and most rarely known; to be exacting to oneself and to value the advantages that are only to be obtained by dint of patience and labor.” It is generally suggested that Chopin’s general edu- cation was somewhat neglected, but this is hard to believe when we remember his father’s pedagogical con- nections. The boy was known to have been familiar with French and Latin and had a smattering of math- ematics and geography. CHOPIN’S LATER LIFE. In 1825 Chopin played in public again, this time choos- ing a Moscheles Concerto. An interesting episode of CHOPIN’S BIRTHPLACE. 15 HUAUUUOAOUUDONOUORULOREVD ODO NGQOOINONETE ‘ mc 5 this concert was the fact that he improvised upon a “wonderful new instrument” called the 7Eolodion, a nondescript combination of the pianoforte and the primitive reed organ long since forgotten. Aside from a few local excur- sions to the homes of friends and patrons Chopin did not venture out into the world until 1828 when the timid youth went to Berlin, seeing Spontini, Zelter and Mendelssohn, but not daring to introduce himself to them. Here he heard new musical works that were a revelation to him. The next year he went to Vienna where he was persuaded to give a concert which proved immensely successful. It was determined that Chopin should give a farewell concert in Warsaw before his contemplated first tour as a virtuoso. This was given in 1830 and was so well patronized that two more “Farewell” concerts were given. The two Chopin Concertos (E minor and F minor) were already in existence at that time, but they were not played as a whole but rather in parts with solos or songs interspersed between the movements. When leaving Poland for the last time Elsner and his pupils are said to have waylaid Chopin’s coach and sung a cantata, composed especially in his honor, They also gave him, according to the story, a loving cup filled with the soil of his expiring fatherland, soil that only a few years later was dusted over the casket that car- ried the body of the tone poet to its last resting place in Pére Lachaise.