Part 21

At Raff's suggestion, MacDowell visited Liszt in the spring of 1882. The dreaded encounter with the master proved to be a delightful surprise, as Liszt treated him with much kindness and courtesy. Eugen D'Albert, who was present, was asked to accompany the orchestral part of the concerto on a second piano. Liszt commended the work in warm terms: "You must bestir yourself," he warned D'Albert, "if you do not wish to be outdone by our young American." Liszt praised his piano playing too, and MacDowell returned to Frankfort in a happy frame of mind.

At a music Convention, held that year in Zurich, in July, MacDowell played his First Piano Suite, and won a good success. The following year, upon Liszt's recommendation, both the First and Second Modern Suites were brought out by Breitkopf and Haertel. "Your two Piano Suites are admirable," wrote Liszt from Budapest, in February, 1883, "and I accept with sincere pleasure and thanks the dedication of your piano Concerto."

The passing of Raff, on June 25, 1882, was a severe blow to MacDowell. It was in memory of his revered teacher that he composed the "Sonata Tragica," the first of the four great sonatas he has left us. The slow movement of this Sonata especially embodies his sorrow at the loss of the teacher who once said to him: "Your music will be played when mine is forgotten."

For the next two years MacDowell did much composing. Then in June 1884 he returned to America, and in July was married to his former pupil, Miss Marian Nevins, a union which proved to be ideal for both. Shortly after this event the young couple returned to Europe.

The next winter was spent in Frankfort, instructing a few private pupils, but mostly in composing, with much reading of the literature of various countries, and, in the spring, with long walks in the beautiful woods about Frankfort. Wiesbaden became their home during the winter of 1885-6. The same year saw the completion of the second. Piano Concerto, in D minor.

In the spring of 1887, MacDowell, in one of his walks about the town, discovered a deserted cottage on the edge of the woods. It overlooked the town, with the Rhine beyond, and woods on the other side of the river. Templeton Strong, an American composer, was with him at the time, and both thought the little cottage an ideal spot for a home. It was soon purchased, and the young husband and wife lived an idyllic life for the next year. A small garden gave them exercise out of doors, the woods were always enticing and best of all, MacDowell was able to give his entire time to composition. Many beautiful songs and piano pieces were the result, besides the symphonic poem "Lamia," "Hamlet and Ophelia," the "Lovely Aida," "Lancelot and Elaine," and other orchestral works.

In September, 1888, the MacDowells sold their Wiesbaden cottage and returned to America, settling in Boston. Here MacDowell made himself felt as a pianist and teacher. He took many pupils, and made a conspicuous number of public appearances. He also created some of his best work, among which were the two great Sonatas, the "Tragica" and "Eroica." One of the important appearances was his playing of the Second Concerto with the Philharmonic Orchestra of New York, under Anton Seidl, in December, 1894.

In the spring of 1896 a Department of Music was founded at Columbia University, of New York, the professorship of which was offered to MacDowell. He had now been living eight years in Boston; his fame as a pianist and teacher was constantly growing; indeed more pupils came to him than he could accept. The prospect of organizing a new department from the very beginning was a difficult task to undertake. At first he hesitated; he was in truth in no hurry to accept the offer, and wished to weigh both sides carefully. But the idea of having an assured income finally caused him to decide in favor of Columbia, and he moved from Boston to New York the following autumn.

He threw himself into this new work with great ardor and entire devotion. With the founding of the department there were two distinct ideas to be carried out. First, to train musicians who would be able to teach and compose. Second, to teach musical history and aesthetics.

All this involved five courses, with many lectures each week, taking up form, harmony, counterpoint, fugue, composition, vocal and instrumental music, both from the technical and interpretative side. It was a tremendous labor to organize and keep all this going, unaided. After two years he was granted an assistant, who took over the elementary classes. But even with this help, MacDowell's labors were increasingly arduous. He now had six courses instead of five, which meant more classes and lectures each week. Perhaps the most severe drain on his time and strength was the continual correction of exercise books and examination papers, a task which he performed with great patience and thoroughness. Added to all this, he devoted every Sunday morning to his advanced students, giving them help and advice in their piano work and in composition.

Amid all this labor his public playing had to be given up, but composition went steadily on. During the eight years of the Columbia professorship, some of the most important works of his life were produced; among them were, Sea Pieces the two later Sonatas, the Norse and the Keltic, Fireside Tales, and New England Idyls. The Woodland Sketches had already been published and some of his finest songs. Indeed nearly one quarter of all his compositions were the fruit of those eight years while he held the post at Columbia.

In 1896 he bought some property near Peterboro, New Hampshire--fifteen acres with a small farmhouse and other buildings, and fifty acres of forest. The buildings were remodeled into a rambling but comfortable dwelling, and here, amid woods and hills he loved, he spent the summer of each year. He built a little log cabin in the woods near by, and here he wrote some of his best music.

In 1904 MacDowell left Columbia, but continued his private piano classes, and sometimes admitted free such students as were unable to pay. After his arduous labors at Columbia, which had been a great drain on his vitality, he should have had a complete rest and change. Had he done so, the collapse which was imminent might have been averted. But he took no rest though in the spring of 1905 he began to show signs of nervous breakdown. The following summer was spent, as usual, in Peterboro but it seemed to bring no relief to the exhausted composer. In the fall of that year his ailment appeared worse. Although he seemed perfectly well in body, his mind gradually became like that of a child. The writer was privileged to see him on one occasion, and retains an ineffaceable memory of the composer in his white flannels, seated in a large easy chair, taking little notice of what was passing about him, seldom recognizing his friends or visitors, but giving the hand of his devoted wife a devoted squeeze when she moved to his side to speak to him.

This state continued for over two years, until his final release, January 23, 1908, as he had just entered his forty-seventh year. The old Westminster Hotel had been the MacDowell home through the long illness. From here is but a step to St. George's Episcopal Church, where a simple service was held. On the following day the composer was taken to Peterboro, his summer home, a spot destined to play its part, due to the untiring efforts of Mrs. MacDowell, in the development of music in America.

Mr. Gilman tells us:

"His grave is on an open hill-top, commanding one of the spacious and beautiful views he had loved. On a bronze tablet are these lines of his own, used as a motto for his 'From a Log Cabin,' the last music he ever wrote:

'A house of dreams untold It looks out over the whispering tree-tops And faces the setting sun.'"

XXII

CLAUDE ACHILLE DEBUSSY

"_I love music too much to speak of it otherwise than passionately_." DEBUSSY

"_Art is always progressive; it cannot return to the past, which is definitely dead. Only imbeciles and cowards look backward. Then--Let us work_!" DEBUSSY

It is difficult to learn anything of the boyhood and youth of this rare French composer. Even his young manhood and later life were so guarded and secluded that few outside his intimate circle knew much of the man, except as mirrored in his music. After all that is just as the composer wished, to be known through his compositions, for in them he revealed himself. They are transparent reflections of his character, his aims and ideals.

Only the barest facts of his early life can be told. We know that he was born at Saint Germain-en-Laye, France, August 22, 1862. From the very beginning he seemed precociously gifted in music, and began at a very early age to study the piano. His first lessons on the instrument were received from Mme. de Sivry, a former pupil of Chopin. At ten he entered the Paris Conservatoire, obtaining his Solfège medals in 1874, '75, and '76, under Lavignac; a second prize for piano playing from Marmontel in 1877, a first prize for accompanying in 1880; an accessory prize for counterpoint and fugue in 1882, and finally the Grande Prix de Rome, with his cantata, "L'Enfant Prodigue," in 1884, as a pupil of Guirand.

Thus in twelve years, or at the age of twenty-two, the young musician was thoroughly furnished for a career. He had worked through carefully, from the beginning to the top, with thoroughness and completeness, gaining his honors, slowly, step by step. All this painstaking care, this overcoming of the technical difficulties of his art, is what gave him such complete command and freedom in using the medium of tone and harmony, in his unique manner.

While at work in Paris, young Debussy made an occasional side trip to another country. In 1879 he visited Russia, where he learned to know the music of that land, yet undreamed of by the western artists. When his turn came to go to Rome, for which honor he secured the prize, he sent home the required compositions, a Symphonic Suite "Spring," and a lyric poem for a woman's voice, with chorus and orchestra, entitled "La Demoiselle Elue."

From the first Claude Debussy showed himself a rare spirit, who looked at the subject of musical art from a different angle than others had done. For one thing he must have loved nature with whole souled devotion, for he sought to reflect her moods and inspirations in his compositions. Once he said: "I prefer to hear a few notes from an Egyptian shepherd's flute, for he is in accord with his scenery and hears harmonies unknown to your treatises. Musicians too seldom turn to the music inscribed in nature. It would benefit them more to watch a sunrise than to listen to a performance of the Pastorale Symphony. Go not to others for advice but take counsel of the passing breezes, which relate the history of the world to those who can listen."

Again he says, in a way that shows what delight he feels in beauty that is spontaneous and natural:

"I lingered late one autumn evening in the country, irresistibly fascinated by the magic of old world forests. From yellowing leaves, fluttering earthward, celebrating the glorious agony of the trees, from the clangorous angelus bidding the fields to slumber, rose a sweet persuasive voice, counseling perfect oblivion. The sun was setting solitary. Beasts and men turned peacefully homeward, having accomplished their impersonal tasks."

When as a youth Debussy was serving with his regiment in France, he relates of the delight he experienced in listening to the tones of the bugles and bells. The former sounded over the camp for the various military duties; the latter belonged to a neighboring convent and rang out daily for services. The resonance of the bugles and the far-reaching vibrations of the bells, with their overtones and harmonics, were specially noted by the young musician, and used by him later in his music. It is a well-known fact that every tone or sound is accompanied by a whole series of other sounds; they are the vibrations resulting from the fundamental tone. If the tone C is played in the lower octave of the piano, no less than sixteen overtones vibrate with it. A few of these are audible to the ordinary listener, but very keen ears will hear more of them. In Claude Debussy's compositions, his system of harmony and tonality is intimately connected with these laws of natural harmonics. His chords, for instance, are remarkable for their shifting, vapory quality; they seem to be on the border land between major and minor--consonance and dissonance; again they often appear to float in the air, without any resolution whatever. It was a new aspect of music, a new style of chord progression. At the same time the young composer was well versed in old and ancient music; he knew all the old scales, eight in number, and used them in his compositions with compelling charm. The influence of the old Gregorian chant has given his music a certain fluidity, free rhythm, a refinement, richness and variety peculiarly its own.

We can trace impressions of early life in Debussy's music, through his employment of the old modes, the bell sounds which were familiar to his boyhood, and also circumstances connected with his later life. As a student in Rome, he threw himself into the study of the music of Russian composers, especially that of Moussorgsky; marks of the Oriental coloring derived from these masters appear in his own later music. When he returned to Paris for good, he reflected in music the atmosphere of his environment. By interest and temperament he was in sympathy with the impressionistic school in art, whether it be in painting, literature or in music. In Debussy's music the qualities of impressionism and symbolism are very prominent. He employs sounds as though they were colors, and blends them in such a way as literally to paint a picture in tones, through a series of shaded, many-hued chord progressions. Fluid, flexible, vivid, these beautiful harmonies, seemingly woven of refracted rays of light, merge into shadowy melody, and free, flowing rhythm.

What we first hear in Debussy's music, is the strangeness of the harmony, the use of certain scales, not so much new as unfamiliar. Also the employment of sequences of fifths or seconds. He often takes his subjects from nature, but in this case seems to prefer a sky less blue and a landscape more atmospheric than those of Italy, more like his native France. His music, when known sufficiently, will reveal a sense of proportion, balance and the most exquisite taste. It may lack strength at times, it may lack outbursts of passion and intensity, but it is the perfection of refinement.

Mr. Ernest Newman, in writing of Debussy, warmly praises the delightful naturalness of his early compositions. "One would feel justified in building the highest hopes on the young genius who can manipulate so easily the beautiful shapes his imagination conjures up."

The work of the early period shows Debussy developing freely and naturally. The independence of his thinking is unmistakable, but it does not run into wilfulness. There is no violent break with the past, but simply the quickening of certain French qualities by the infusion of a new personality. It seemed as if a new and charming miniaturist had appeared, who was doing both for piano and song what had never been done before. The style of the two Arabesques and the more successful of the Ariettes oubliées is perfect. A liberator seemed to have come into music, to take up, half a century later, the work of Chopin--the work of redeeming the art from the excessive objectivity of German thought, of giving it not only a new soul but a new body, swift, lithe and graceful. And that this exquisitely clear, pellucid style could be made to carry out not only gaiety and whimsicality but emotion of a deeper sort, is proved by the lovely "Clair de Lune."

Among Debussy's best known compositions are "The Afternoon of a Faun," composed in 1894 and called his most perfect piece for orchestra, which he never afterward surpassed. There are also Three Nocturnes for orchestra. In piano music, as we have briefly shown, he created a new school for the player. All the way from the two Arabesques just mentioned, through "Gardens in the Rain," "The Shadowy Cathedral," "A Night in Granada," "The Girl with Blond Hair," up to the two books of remarkable Preludes, it is a new world of exotic melody and harmony to which he leads the way. "Art must be hidden by art," said Rameau, long ago, and this is eminently true in Debussy's music.

Debussy composed several works for the stage, one of which was "Martyrdom of Saint Sebastien," but his "Pélleas and Mélisande" is the one supreme achievement in the lyric drama. As one of his critics writes: "The reading of the score of 'Pélleas and Mélisande' remains for me one of the most marvelous lessons in French art: it would be impossible for him to express more with greater restraint of means." The music, which seems so complicated, is in reality very simple. It sounds so shadowy and impalpable, but it is really built up with as sure control as the most classic work. It is indeed music which appeals to refined and sensitive temperaments.

This mystical opera was produced in Paris, at the Opéra Comique, in April, 1902, and at once made a sensation. It had any number of performances and still continues as one of the high lights of the French stage. Its fame soon reached America, and the first performance was given in New York in 1907, with a notable cast of singing actors, among whom Mary Garden, as the heroine gave an unforgettable, poetic interpretation.

Many songs have been left us by this unique composer. He was especially fond of poetry and steeped himself in the verse of Verlaine, Villon, Baudelaire and Mallarmé. He chose the most unexpected, the most subtle, and wedded it to sounds which invariably expressed the full meaning. He breathed the breath of life into these vague, shadowy poems, just as he made Maeterlinck's "Pélleas" live again.

As the years passed, Claude Debussy won more and more distinction as a unique composer, but also gained the reputation of being a very unsociable man. Physically it has been said that in his youth he seemed like an Assyrian Prince; through life he retained his somewhat Asiatic appearance. His eyes were slightly narrowed, his black hair curled lightly over an extremely broad forehead. He spoke little and often in brusque phrase. For this reason he was frequently misunderstood, as the irony and sarcasm with which he sometimes spoke did not tend to make friends. But this attitude was only turned toward those who did not comprehend him and his ideals, or who endeavored to falsify what he believed in and esteemed.

A friend of the artist writes:

"I met Claude Debussy for the first time in 1906. Living myself in a provincial town, I had for several years known and greatly admired some of the songs and the opera, 'Pélleas and Mélisande,' and I made each of my short visits to Paris an opportunity of improving my acquaintance with these works. A young composer, André Caplet, with whom I had long been intimate, proposed to introduce me to Debussy; but the rumors I had heard about the composer's preferred seclusion always made me refuse in spite of my great desire to know him. I now had a desire to express the feelings awakened in me, and to communicate to others, by means of articles and lectures, my admiration for, and my belief in, the composer and his work. The result was that one day, in 1906, Debussy let me know through a friend, that he would like to see me. From that day began our friendship."

Later the same friend wrote:

"Debussy was invited to appear at Queen's Hall with the London Symphony Orchestra, on February 1, 1908, to conduct his 'Afternoon of a Faun,' and 'The Sea.' The ovation he received from the English public was exceptional. I can still see him in the lobby, shaking hands with friends after the concert, trying to hide his emotion, and saying repeatedly: 'How nice they are--how nice they are!'"

He went again the next year to London, but the state of his health prevented his going anywhere else. For a malady, which finally proved fatal, seemed to attack the composer when in his prime, and eventually put an end to his work. We cannot guess what other art works he might have created. But there must be some that have not yet seen the light. It is known that he was wont to keep a composition for some time in his desk, correcting and letting it ripen, until he felt it was ready to be brought out.

One of his cherished dreams had been to compose a "Tristan."

The characters of Tristan and Iseult are primarily taken from a French legend. Debussy felt the story was a French heritage and should be restored to its original atmosphere and idea. This it was his ardent desire to accomplish.

Debussy passed away March 26, 1918.

Since his desire to create a Tristan has been made impossible, let us cherish the rich heritage of piano, song and orchestral works, which this original French artist and thinker has left behind, to benefit art and his fellow man.

XXIII

ARTURO TOSCANINI

The sharp rap of Arturo Toscanini's baton that cuts the ear like a whiplash brought the rehearsal of the NBC Symphony Orchestra to a sudden, shocking stop. Overtones from chords of Wagner's "Faust Overture," killed in mid-career, vibrated through the throat-gripping silence.

The men stared at their music, bowed their heads a little in anticipation of the storm. "Play that again," the Maestro commanded William Bell, the bass tuba player, who had just finished a solo. On Mr. Bell's face there was an expression of mixed worry and wonderment. Mr. Toscanini noticed the troubled anxious look.

"No, no, no," he said, with that childlike smile of his that suffuses his whole face with an irresistible light. "There is nothing wrong. Play it again; please, play it again, just for me. It is so beautiful. I have never heard these solo passages played with such a lovely tone."

There you have a side of Mr. Toscanini that the boys have forgotten to tell you about. For years newspaper and magazine writers (in the last couple of seasons the Maestro has even "made" the Broadway columns!) have doled out anecdotes concerning his terrible temper.

From these stories there emerged a demoniacal little man with the tantrums of a dozen prima donnas, a temperamental tyrant who, at the dropping of a stitch in the orchestral knitting, tore his hair, screamed at the top of his inexhaustible Latin lungs, doused his trembling players with streams of blistering invective.

That's how you learned that, to the king of conductors, a musician playing an acid note is a "shoemaker," a "swine," an "assassin" or even something completely unprintable.

So far as they went the stories were true. Mr. Toscanini, as all the world knows by now, is the world's No. 1 musical purist. Nothing but perfection satisfies him. He hates compromise, loathes the half-baked and mediocre, refuses to put up with "something almost as good."