CHAPTER IX
IMITATORS AND NATIONALISTS
Inevitable results of Schumann, Chopin and Liszt--Heller, Raff, Jensen, Scharwenka, Moszkowski, and other German composers--The influence of national characteristics: Grieg, his style and his compositions; Christian Sinding--The Russians: Balakireff, Rubinstein, Tschaikowsky, Arensky, Glazounoff, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, and others--Spanish traits; I. Albéniz; pianoforte composers in England and the United States.
It is scarcely to be wondered at that the work of Chopin, Schumann, and Liszt has eclipsed that of most of their contemporaries, nor that three such remarkable composers should have left a standard for pianoforte music by which little else for the piano since that day can afford to be measured. One feels that the German Romantic spirit could find no expression more complete than that which Schumann gave it; that the beauties of sound in the pianoforte could not be again put into such emotional form as Chopin put them; that the instrument itself could not be made to do more than Liszt had made it do. These things are nearly true. One cannot therefore expect to find in the music of their obscure contemporaries such superlative greatness as has made theirs known to the whole world. One expects to find, and does find, in the music of their successors imitations of their method, style, or technique. The literature for the piano has been stuffed to overflowing with music of this kind. Only now and then may a little of it be distinguished by a touch of originality, either of personal, or, more frequently, of national or local idiom.
STEPHEN HELLER AND JOACHIM RAFF
I
In Germany the romanticism of Schumann, combined with the technique of Liszt, has about run its course. With the exception of Brahms, no composer of high order has there given his attention to the pianoforte. Starting with Stephen Heller (1814-88), the most lovable contemporary and friend of Chopin, the list of composers for the pianoforte touches upon Joachim Raff (1822-82), Adolf Jensen (1837-79), Philipp and Xaver Scharwenka, Maurice Moszkowski, Friedrich Gernsheim, for an instant on Richard Strauss and longer upon Max Reger.
One protests against the obscurity into which Stephen Heller’s music is rapidly falling. It is too charming to be let go. Yet it has too little strength to stand much longer against the fate that has already pushed Mendelssohn aside. Heller published over one hundred and fifty pieces or rather sets of pieces for the piano. Nearly all of these are in short forms; many of them are not more than a page long. Many of the sets are given fanciful titles. One finds several sets--opus 86, opus 128, and opus 136--of Woodland Sketches (_Im Walde_); two _Promenades d’un solitaire_, _Nuits Blanches_, _Reise um mein Zimmer_, and Thorn, Fruit and Flower pieces, after Jean Paul Richter. Besides these there are many sets of short studies, the most melodious simple studies that have ever been written, for which both student and teacher should still feel grateful; and there are numerous Preludes, Tarantelles and Dances.
Heller’s thoughts are fresh and winning, his style is remarkably clear and well adapted to the keyboard. Among the preludes in all keys, opus 81, the second, third, fifteenth, eighteenth, and twenty-second are far more effective than the majority of Mendelssohn’s ‘Songs Without Words.’ The Tarantelles, and one or two of the _Promenades_, are even brilliant. We mention these because they are before us. But on the whole Heller’s pianoforte style is not distinguished by anything except clearness. The parts for the left hand are monotonous, the accompaniment figures rarely more than commonplace. Perhaps these things are evident only by comparison of his music with Chopin or Schumann.
Unhappily there is another weakness besides these. His rhythms are unvaried, and his structures of phrases desperately regular. Here, we think, lies the secret of its softness, its lack of virility and power to stand against time. Heller repeats himself. He cannot take one step without (in most cases) going back to take it over again. The process is all the more distressing to the listener because Heller’s steps, or his strides, are so invariably of the same length, and so inexorably deliberate. His harmonies are very like Mendelssohn’s, and his melodies are often sweet.
In a way the world has dealt more hardly with Joachim Raff than with Heller; because not more than twenty-five years ago Raff was one of the most played of all composers. Not only his pianoforte works. His symphonies, especially _Im Walde_ and _Leonore_, held quite as high and strong a place in the public favor as the symphonies of Tschaikowsky do at the present day. And now even his pianoforte works are discarded.
There is a great number of them, including all sorts of salon music, a concerto, and numberless transcriptions. His style is exceedingly brilliant, showing markedly the influence of Liszt, with whom Raff was on various occasions closely associated; but his ideas are almost never more than commonplace. Oskar Bie speaks of the unfortunate _Polka de la reine_. It is perhaps typical of Raff at his worst, yet there is elsewhere in his music suggestion enough of what this worst can be. It is hard to believe that the man who wrote eleven symphonies could have written the romance opus 126, No. 2.
On the other hand, a piece like that called _La fileuse_ is in every way acceptable. It is beautifully scored for the piano, worthy of Liszt himself in that regard; and the treatment of the short motive which lies at the base of it all, like the harmonies and modulations, is all fresh and welcome to the ear. Among the shorter pieces there are many that are clean-cut in style and that have a sort of sturdy charm even today. Parts of a minuet in opus 126, and the gavotte in opus 125, prove that he could write rhythmical music much better than the _Polka de la reine_. On the whole one thinks of Raff as writing too easily for his own good. Of this sort of vain facility Heller’s music is quite free, and also of the false shine which in Raff’s music is so often the result.
Adolf Jensen was a man of far more sensitive cast than Raff. His music is finer, especially his songs. As a melodist he stands between Schumann and Robert Franz, and indeed must be considered as one of the best results of German romanticism in music. The influence of Schumann is perhaps strongest in his work; but that of Chopin, and even more that of Wagner in the later songs, can be detected. His style is not distinctive, but it is expressive. It is strange to read in the dedication prefixed to the _Romantische Studien_, a plea for fantastic, emotional and mysterious life in pianoforte music. The best of his keyboard music is the Wedding Music, opus 45, written for four hands. Other works are the _Wanderbilder_, opus 17, the _Idyllen_, opus 43, and the _Eroticon_, opus 44. There are besides these a sonata, opus 25, and a German suite, opus 36.
Xaver Scharwenka and Maurice Moszkowski are among the successful composers for the pianoforte of the last fifteen years or more. Scharwenka’s first concerto, opus 35, in B-flat minor has been highly praised. The second, third, and fourth have not made quite so good an impression. Moszkowski is master of a most brilliant and facile style on the keyboard. His waltzes, especially those in E major and that in A major, his concert-studies, especially the _Etincelles_, and the finished and brilliant Barcarolle have been played far and wide with delight to both pianist and audience. Yet neither Scharwenka nor Moszkowski has advanced pianoforte technique, nor has either of them been the discoverer of new effects. There are some charming pieces by Friedrich Gernsheim. One series, called _Symbole_, has just a touch of that impressionism which has given the music of the French composers its great charm.
The celebrated pianist Eugen d’Albert has composed pieces in almost severely classic style, which have a manly, vigorous ring. A few early works of Richard Strauss for the piano are hardly sufficient to suggest that he might have done for that instrument what he came to do for the orchestra. One looks in vain through the many pianoforte works of Max Reger for any new treatment of the instrument. His pieces are descended from Bach and Brahms, descended thence and passed through the shaping medium of a remarkable mathematical mind.
Here, perhaps, among the Germans mention may be made of Arnold Schönberg. He has written two sets of pianoforte pieces, the second of which is the more remarkable. His genius is polyphonic, therefore his music of this kind does not bring out the subtle qualities of the piano which appealed to Chopin and which Debussy has further revealed. His pianoforte compositions may be considered as a household arrangement and presentation of his extraordinary theories, hardly as music suggested by the instrument itself.
Evidently the Romantic movement in Germany, having expressed itself almost thoroughly in pianoforte music through Schumann, passed on to a new expression through Wagner, whose powerful genius, flying wide of the keyboard, has since presided over and shaped the future of German music. Only with Brahms, then, has the piano spoken a new word in its own tongue.
II
After the middle of the nineteenth century an effort becomes noticeable in many nations to inject some freshness or newness into music by employing harmonies, turns of melodies and odd rhythms of a distinctly local or national flavor. Awaiting the advent of a new genius of international significance who should revolutionize music, or resurrect it from a stagnation little better than death, such an effort toward national expression was the most successful safeguard against imitation and subservience. Moreover, it was productive of enthusiasm, which is a quality of youth in music. Accepting forms and technique as matters of course, composers threw themselves with joy into the expression of the spirit of their beloved land.
Naturally in those countries which had inherited from the ages a store of folk-music the new movement was the most striking. Scandinavia and Russia were especially rich in such an endowment. Their folk-songs were strongly marked and individual, and in so far as their composers drew upon them the new music was differentiated from music founded upon the classical German examples. In both Scandinavia and Russia composers were divided. Some regarded this folk-material with disdain and adhered to a faith in the inexhaustibleness of traditional inspiration. Others threw themselves heart and soul into the music of their nation, with a flaming ambition to reveal its unique beauties and power to the world.
Among the Scandinavians Niels Gade (1817-1890) first claims attention as a composer for the pianoforte. And yet only for a moment. His pianoforte pieces, including several sets of short pieces--_Frühlingsblumen_, opus 2, _Aquarellen_, opus 19, and _Volkstänze_, opus 31, one _Arabesque_, opus 27, and a sonata, opus 28--have but the faintest touch of the music of Denmark. Even the _Volkstänze_ are urbane and refined. It was against this subservience to Mendelssohn that Edvard Grieg rebelled. Grieg, therefore, who had no more skill than Gade, and perhaps was fundamentally no more richly gifted, stands out somewhat brilliantly among the composers for the pianoforte since the time of Schumann, Chopin, and Liszt. His music is sharply defined by national idioms. Whatever the value of his own personality may be, his music is thus given a definite shape and an independence, those signs of character which are unfortunately but very feebly displayed in the music of most of the German post-romanticists.
The proof that this definiteness was acceptable to the world is to be found in the persistent popularity of Grieg’s pianoforte compositions. Most of these are in short forms and are relatively easy to play; which facts must also be held in some measure responsible for their popularity. There are several sets of ‘Lyrical Pieces,’ the best of which are _opera_ 12, 38, 43, and 47. The later sets, _opera_ 54, 57, 62, 65, and 68, show a falling off which is noticeable in all of Grieg’s work after middle life. There is a set of ‘Humoresques,’ some Northern Dances, and some ‘Album Leaves.’
It may be said of these in general that they are neatly composed, clearly phrased and balanced, sometimes polished; and that they are well-written for the keyboard. The spice of all is in the national idiosyncrasies of Norwegian music: the peculiar melodic avoidance of the sixth and second notes of the scale and the harmonies which result from such omissions; persistent rhythms emphasized by empty fifths in the bass, or by repetitions of short phrases with almost a barbaric effect; an interchanging of groups of two and three notes; finally a general harmonic boldness in which the bodily shifting of the music from one degree of the scale to another is prominent, and a host of odd accents.
There are several longer works in which these national characteristics are not less obvious, but in which they are so expanded and interwoven as to make less strikingly folk-music. Among these must be mentioned the sonata in E minor, opus 7, the concerto in A minor, opus 16, the Ballade, opus 24, and the suite, _Aus Holberg’s Zeit_, opus 40. The sonata is well written, and the classical form is well sustained in the first movement. One does not find organic development, but, on the other hand, one finds no empty service music. The themes and the transitional passages are full of life, and strongly Norwegian. There is, unhappily, a dreary passage in 6/8 time in the development section which makes a dull use in the bass of the second phrase of the first theme. The coda is in brilliant pianoforte style. The poetic slow movement is also well-scored. The minuet is a Norwegian dance and the finale is stormy.
The concerto may be taken as the finest of Grieg’s pianoforte works. It is a treasured addition to the stock of concertos, valued not only for the piquancy of Norwegian rhythms and harmonies, but for a successful handling of the form, a brilliant and yet a poetical treatment of both pianoforte and orchestra. Norway speaks in all the themes and in very nearly all the figures as well, but she speaks through a man who shows himself here a sensitive poet and a skillful artist. There seems to be a touch of Schumann in the first part of the first movement.
The Ballade is in the form of variations on a Norwegian theme. It is in many respects the best of his works for the piano, though the treatment of the keyboard nowhere shows originality. The influence of the _Variations sérieuses_ of Mendelssohn is strikingly evident. The theme itself, for all its plaintive Norwegian character, is so near the type of the theme in the Mendelssohn variations as perhaps to suggest to Grieg the same treatment of it. The sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth variations are especially _à la_ Mendelssohn, as far as treatment is concerned. After these, however, he seems to have forsaken the _Variations sérieuses_ for Schumann’s ‘Symphonic Variations.’ Nevertheless, the work as a whole is Grieg, and only the external features suggest the home from which some of its glory may have trailed. The last variations are broad in style and fiery, hardly suggestive of the miniature perfection of the earlier shorter pieces.
From the Holberg suite one picks out the prelude as a fine piece of pianoforte music. The other movements are effective and pleasing, but the prelude is worthiest of Holberg. The suite as a whole reminds one of a classic temple, flying the flag of Norway.
No other Norwegian composer has been so widely popular as Grieg. It is true that already amateur and professional alike have discovered the sameness of his mannerisms and his procedure; but such compositions as the concerto and the ballade are strong enough to bear the music above these heavy shackles. They are fairly to be considered as contributions to the literature of the instrument of unusual worth.
Christian Sinding enjoys a popularity second among Norwegian composers only to that of Grieg. He has more cosmopolitan predilections, and he has worked in broader forms. Perhaps for those reasons he is less distinctive. However, most of his pianoforte music has been cast in short forms--usually a little more developed than those of Grieg. There are numerous sets of three or of six pieces, of studies, of interludes, of odd little caprices, dances and scherzos. The set opus 32 contains the _Marche grotesque_ and the _Frühlingsrauschen_, among the best known of his compositions. All the _Mélodies mignonnes_, opus 52, and several of the caprices among the fifteen published as opus 54, are interesting. He shows an understanding of keyboard effects, usually in the broad style, with sharp accents, wide-flowing runs, and chords; but there is a sameness about his music which seems to spring from a lack of ingenuity in rhythm and in phrase building. He is technically far more skillful than Grieg, but his pianoforte music lacks the individuality which Grieg’s invariably has. Sinding’s concerto in D-flat, opus 6, is a big and brilliant work, ingeniously wrought upon a single idea, but it lacks the highly colored spirit and life of Grieg’s.
III
The Russian composers of the last half century have almost without exception written something for the pianoforte; but their national characteristics have found a more vivid expression in orchestral music and music for the theatre than in keyboard music. Their technique has been the technique of Liszt and Chopin, and a great part of them have written in the style of Schumann. The national fervor did not kindle all to the same intensity. Rubinstein and Tschaikowsky represent almost two nationalities, and yet even Tschaikowsky held himself aloof from the enthusiasms of the great Five.
From the pen of Glinka, the leader of the Russians, their first pioneer, there was no pianoforte music. But his friend, the equally famous Dargomyzhsky, wrote a Tarantella, for three hands,[38] which Liszt transcribed. Thus enter the Russians into the history of pianoforte music, at a time when Schumann, Chopin, and Liszt had about exhausted the possibilities of expression on the keyboard in terms of music as it was then, and was for fifty years more to be understood.
Nevertheless each of the great five, Balakireff, Borodine, Moussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakoff, and César Cui, has contributed more or less to the keyboard. The ‘Islamey Fantasy’ of Balakireff is perhaps the most brilliant and the most significant work of the lot. The themes are original, but they have the strong Oriental coloring which has given to much of Russian music its splendor. This fantasy has a sort of barbaric power. The first section is built up out of countless repetitions of a short motive, most brilliantly scored, which whirls and whirls like the dervishes until we are mad as they. And this is resumed again, after a somewhat more tranquil section, and whirled more and more madly, until the time seems to break, and give way to a stamping. It is the work of a lover of folk-music as well as a man who knew the piano almost as well as Liszt did.
Balakireff’s pianoforte transcription of Glinka’s ‘A Life for the Czar’ is a masterpiece of its kind, and there are transcriptions of Glinka’s songs as well. There are two scherzos, of which the second--in B-flat minor--is remarkable; a Concert Waltz dedicated to d’Albert, and a wonderful ‘Dumka.’
The others of this group were far less able pianists, and their contribution to the literature of the instrument was small. There is a set of variations by Rimsky-Korsakoff, and also a group of short pieces, opus 11, in the style of Schumann; and Moussorgsky wrote a _Kinderscherz_ and an _Intermezzo_. There is a touch of Russian in these. The works of César Cui are even more cosmopolitan. They include a set of preludes, two suites, one dedicated to Liszt, the other to Leschetizsky, and a number of simple pieces, among them twelve _Miniatures_. But the _Dumka_ and the _Islamey_ of Balakireff stand far above all the other pianoforte music written by the five, not only from the point of view of style, but as an expression of national spirit.
Anton Rubinstein (1830-1894) desired to be known as a composer rather than as a virtuoso, but his once often-heard compositions, works for the pianoforte, overtures, symphonies, and operas, are rapidly losing their hold on the public, and it seems likely that they will not be remembered even so long as his playing will. The distinctively Russian element in them is well-nigh concealed beneath the many strands of western influence, and indeed he was himself so much in doubt and so easily influenced that hardly his own personality finds a consistent or thorough expression in his music. Some of the études in opus 23 may continue to be cherished by the pianist as excellent practice pieces. The concert music of other kinds, even the once greatly popular suite of dance pieces, _Le Bal_, with its brilliant polka, mazurka, waltz, and galop, is already less and less performed. The two Barcarolles, opus 30, No. 1, and opus 50, No. 3, still enjoy some favor. The _Kammenoi-Ostrow_ and the Melody in F will keep his memory green in many a family circle so long as they are included in family music books. Of the five concertos, that in D minor, No. 4, is by general consent by far the best, and seems at present the only one of his works, excepting one or two of the songs, that will be able to retain much longer the respect of musicians or pianists.
It is far different with Tschaikowsky. He wrote only moderately well for the keyboard, but the emotional fire of his music is of the kind that burns long. The short pieces, of which there are some half dozen sets, are not of any great significance, though many of them, specifically the vigorous _Troïka_, op. 37, No. 11, and the _Humoresque_ in G, op. 10, No. 2, are full of charm. The sonata in G major, opus 37, is a difficult and a fiery work. There are three concertos for pianoforte and orchestra: one in B-flat minor, opus 23, one in G major, opus 44, and one in E-flat major, opus 75. Of these the first is by far the best, and is indeed the most significant of all his compositions for the instrument.
The form of the concerto is classical, but the spirit is Russian in spite of it. One feels it in the character of the themes,
## particularly of the chief theme of the last movement, with its barbaric
rhythm and its savage repetitions of short motives. The piano is handled in a more or less grandiose way, yet never in some respects was it handled more grandly. The chords of the introduction are almost unique in their splendor. There are bold and difficult passages in octaves, and great climaxes which demand unusual physical endurance. On the other hand, there are passages of extremely effective finger work, even though the figuration as a whole can hardly be called original or distinguished. The cadenza in the first movement, the variations and trills in the slow movement, and, most of all perhaps, the fleet runs just before the coda of the last movement, these are all remarkable accomplishments for a composer who called himself no pianist. The whole was a favorite of von Bülow’s, who played it for the first time in public, by the way, at a concert in Boston. Among other of Tschaikowsky’s pianoforte compositions von Bülow had also an admiration for the Theme and Variations, which is the sixth of the six pieces, opus 19. The second and third concertos are weakly constructed and ineffective; but by reason of the first, Tschaikowsky’s name will live for long in pianoforte music.
[Illustration]
Anton Rubinstein’s Hand. _Photographed from a plaster cast_.
The compositions of the younger school of Russian composers are far too numerous to be passed in review. In no country has there been a more active or a more fruitful musical life; and nearly all of the many composers have written sometimes much, sometimes little, for the pianoforte. In general these composers may be divided into two groups, one of which is clearly still guided by the musical ideals of Western Europe, still more or less dependent on Schumann and Chopin; the other drawing its enthusiasm and its inspiration from the great Five.
The most prominent in the former group is Anton Arensky (b. 1861), who is master of a smooth, flowing pianoforte style, and who has the art of writing melody for the pianoforte. Among his short pieces Walter Niemann[39] mentions three published as opus 42, the Esquisses, opus 24, twenty-four pieces, opus 36, and the well-known _Basso ostinato_ in which he finds no trace of German influence. To these may be added the little piece, _Près de la mer_, from opus 52, and the effect concert study, opus 36, No. 13. With Arensky Niemann also reckons Genari Karganoff and Paul Juon.
Alexander Glazounoff (b. 1865) has more fire than Arensky, but in spite of his pronounced loyalty to Russian ideals in music, the influences of Schumann and Chopin are evident in his pianoforte style. Apart from several short pieces, he has written a Theme and Variations, opus 72, and two sonatas, one in B-flat, opus 74, and one in E, opus 75, both of which are more distinguished by fluent writing than by characteristically Russian ideas. The Prelude and Fugue, opus 62, is the most unusual and the most profound of his works for pianoforte.
The pianoforte works of Serge Rachmaninoff are essentially Russian, in many ways a fulfillment of the promise given by Balakireff’s. The style is brilliant and always effective. Melodies, harmonies are unusual, and his rhythms are bold and full of at times a savage life. He may be said to have won attention as a composer for the pianoforte by the Prelude in C-sharp minor; of which it must be said that endlessly as it has been played it still remains a piece of profound meaning and effect. He has published at least twenty-three preludes, of which this still remains the best-known, with the possible exception of that in G minor. Here again there is a spirit not common to Western Europe; one hears it in the steady powerful rhythm, the outbursts of sound, the strange intensity of the melody of the middle section.
The two sonatas, opus 28 in D minor, and opus 36 in B-flat minor, seem on the whole less powerful and vigorous than the three concertos, of which the third, opus 30, in D minor, is truly a gorgeous work. There are, besides these big works and the preludes, some études, opus 33, some variations on a theme of Chopin, opus 22, and a few salon pieces, mostly in brilliant style.
Anatole Liadoff (b. 1855) and Nicholas de Stcherbatcheff (b. 1853) also draw generously upon their native music. The former is more of a painter in music, fond of color; the latter is fond of short forms and is master of a dainty style. More intensely national than these, though, strictly speaking, not Russian, is the Lett Joseph Wihtol (b. 1863). He has interested himself deeply in the folk-songs of his own province, which are more like Swedish than Russian folk-songs; and his most considerable work is a set of variations, opus 6, on a Lettish theme. Niemann[40] likens them to the Ballade of Grieg.
Finally, among the most interesting of all the Russian composers, although in some respects the least Russian among them, is to be reckoned the late Alexander Scriabin. His works for the pianoforte comprise a great many sets of short pieces, some études, a concerto, and ten sonatas. On the whole they give a very distinct impression that Scriabin is not a creative genius of the highest order; and he has given over the fresh, albeit humble, life of the music of his native land only at first to imitate Chopin, Schumann, and Brahms; and later to devise a sort of music which is unusual without wholly justifying itself.
Most of these works are brilliantly written for the keyboard, but until in the later works he has begun to develop a new harmonic system they offer no difficulties but those of Chopin and Liszt. The études, opus 12 and opus 42, are an epitome of his technical equipment. His many experiments in rhythms and in harmonies never seem to ring quite true; and almost instinctively one takes them to be a substitute for musical expression. The first set--opus 12--is not very startling. Already in these pieces he shows the influence of Brahms. The second deals with triplet groups of octaves and single notes for both hands, one group containing two octaves with a single note between, the next two single notes with an octave between, thus progressing alternately through the piece. The complexity is in many ways a rhythmical one, for two groups in sequence will seem to be divided into three beats, each accented by an octave. The third is a study in the movement of the arm such as is required in many of Brahms’ pieces. The sixth, a study in sixths, is perhaps more after the manner of Chopin, though it lacks entirely the grace and inner melodiousness which is above all else characteristic of Chopin’s music. The tenth is by all means the most difficult, a truly brilliant study in double notes for the right hand. One finds in several of the studies of this set that the initial direction of the left hand accompaniment figures is downward. This is a characteristic feature in Scriabin’s style, and in part accounts for a strange ethereal, not to say pale, quality in his pianoforte music. His harmonies instead of being solidly founded in the bass, seem to drift downward from the upper part.
The difficulties of the second set of studies, opus 42, are almost exclusively rhythmical, and may be taken as a further development or an expansion of the rhythmical processes to be found in many of the Brahms variations on a theme of Paganini. In the first study the left hand is phrased into five groups against triplets in the right, and in the eighth there is a combination of a rhythm of five beats with one of nine. There is no doubt that the rhythmical systems of European music are restricted and unvaried, and that there is a vast field in the future of music for the development of more subtle and complex systems. Therefore Scriabin’s experiments point forward. If only he had a little more spontaneous sense of melody and harmony to make of these rhythmical studies something more than experiments! In this series the falling of the accompaniment figures is even more noticeable than in the earlier one.
The harmonies in both series tend to be most unusual without being self-sufficient. They run parallel to the system of earlier masters without seeming related to it. The meaning of this statement will perhaps be clear by a reference to two of the short studies in opus 65. In the first of these the right hand plays continuously in ninths, in the second it plays in sevenths--major, not minor. The effect of both is presumably melodic; that is, we are to listen to a melody, played not in octaves, but in ninths or sevenths, the latter of which may be said to be almost the harshest interval in music. Now this is not so much an expansion of harmony as it is a concentration on a particular interval, which is, as it were, extracted from all relation to our harmonic system and given an isolated independence. Then it is made to stalk alongside the general progression of the music. This is no hour to speak of forced effects in music. Music is expanding about us and touching notes we never dreamed of, and we may hardly venture to criticize without running the risk of finding in the end that we had a cloddish ear, insensitive to a nascent beauty since grown resplendent. Yet in all open-mindedness it is hard not to find Scriabin’s harmonic procedures arbitrary and often dry as dust.
Few of his short pieces are genial. There is a sort of stiffness in them and they are strangely barren. Leaving aside the early ones which are close to Schumann and Chopin, one comes upon a _Satanische Dichtung_, opus 36, which is lineally descended from Liszt’s Mephisto waltz, then upon two short pieces, opus 57, the one called _Désir_, the other _Caresse dansée_; a Poem and a Prelude, opus 59; and Two Poems, opus 63, the first called _Masque_, the second _Etrangeté_. These last seem to us the best.
There are ten sonatas, of which we have examined the fifth, seventh, ninth, and tenth. The fifth seems to owe its origin to that _Poëme de l’extase_ which inspired one of his orchestral pieces. There is enormous dramatic fire, but it is a fire that has little heat. The seventh shows throughout that arbitrary selection of the harsh seventh we have noted in the study opus 65, No. 2; but the second theme has a rich beauty. Scriabin has directed that it be played now with a celestial voluptuousness, now very purely, with profound tenderness (_douceur_). The ninth and tenth seem very fine music. The former is touched with morbidness. Scriabin intended it to be expressive of some most extraordinary shades of mood or feeling, if we may judge by his indications here and there. We may well ask what is a _langueur naissante_, or again how we may express in music _une douceur de plus en plus caressante et empoisonée_. In the tenth we have to do with a _volupté douloureuse_, and many other remarkable phrases of intellectualized emotion; but the sonata is a powerful and a moving work, suggesting kinship with the symphonic poems of Richard Strauss. Scriabin’s style is always finished. In general he demands more of the pianist than the piano, that is he has not called forth the intimate and finest qualities of the instrument but has treated it as an orchestra. There are pronounced mannerisms, such as a fondness for descending chromatic motives, and that downward dropping of accompaniment figures before noticed. All in all, his pianoforte music is likely to shine more and more brilliantly, as a highly specialized but isolated achievement.
IV
The Russian and Scandinavian composers, especially Balakireff and Rachmaninoff, and Edvard Grieg, have been the most successful in introducing some freshness and youth into pianoforte music by means of national idioms of melody, harmony, and rhythm. Among the Poles, Ignace Paderewski has shown himself, on the whole, too cosmopolitan in manner, though many of his works, especially the brilliant concerto in A minor, contain Polish matter. Dvořák was too little a pianist to enrich the literature of pianoforte music with more than a few slight dances and Humoresques of Bohemian character. Recently Ernst von Dohnányi, a most brilliant pianist, has done more. Two concertos in splendidly brilliant style and two sonatas are among the most significant of his publications. The Italian Giovanni Sgambati (b. 1843) has shown himself wholly classical in his interests and natural tendencies, drawing his technique, however, considerably from Chopin. From Spain, however, a breath of freshness has come into pianoforte music. The works of Isaac Albéniz are among the most brilliant and most effective of all compositions for the instrument. The most considerable are the four sets of pieces called _Iberia_, and of these the second and third contain the best. All are so thoroughly saturated with Spanish harmonies, rhythms and melodies that taken as a whole this brilliant collection suffers from too much sameness. Yet there is some variety of mood. There is melancholy in the lovely melodies of the _Almeria_, a certain fineness in both the _Triana_ and the _El Albaicin_, an incredible coarseness in _Lavapies_. Albéniz’s treatment of the piano is astonishing, considering the directness with which his music appeals to the senses. One would not believe, to hear the music played, into what desperate intricacies the pianist has had to cut his way. And all to hang a garland on a tune, but a tune that heats with the very heart of Spain, and a garland that is a cloak of all the colors ever seen at a bull-fight. Grieg is an expatriate beside Albéniz. Never has such intensity of national life, joy, passion, pride, and melancholy threatened to burst the very limits of sound.
Composers in England have not written a great deal for the pianoforte. Sir A. C. Mackenzie’s Scottish Concerto is an outstanding work, and recently Cyril Scott and Percy Grainger have added works to piano literature which have charm and interest. Scott experiments with modern systems of harmony, but Grainger has chosen to make use of the uniquely beautiful songs and dances of England, Scotland, and Ireland. His arrangements of many of these are effective; and as music they have the perennial freshness of the melodies about which they are woven.
In the United States but one name stands out prominently among the composers for the pianoforte. This is Edward MacDowell, who wrote numerous short pieces, études and concert pieces, as well as three big sonatas and two concertos. MacDowell’s treatment of the keyboard can hardly be said to be original, but the concertos, and among the shorter pieces the _Hexentanz_ prove to be highly effective. Many of the short pieces, which are grouped together in sets, are charming. On the whole there is little suggestion of a new spirit in the work of this composer of a new land. Now and then he uses negro rhythms, as in the ‘Uncle Remus,’ sometimes he uses Indian motives, as in the ‘Indian Lodge’ of the ‘Woodland Sketches.’ His forms and his style are perhaps more akin to those of Grieg, with whom, indeed, his music will be often compared, than to the earlier Romantics. Unfortunately, however, instead of in a national idiom, he speaks in an intensely personal one. Short phrases and rhythms which are seldom varied seem almost to hamper his music, almost to clog its movement. On the other hand, as in some of the ‘Sea Pieces,’ he writes sometimes in a broad and open style, seeming to shake off the fetters of too intense a mannerism.
Ethelbert Nevin wrote several sets of short pieces, ‘In Arcady,’ ‘Venezia,’ and others, which have at least the charm of simple, sweet melody.
Mr. Arthur Foote and Mrs. H. H. A. Beach have shown themselves masters of an effective pianoforte style, a mastery that has on the whole been rare in this country.[41]
FOOTNOTES:
[38] The third hand part was written for one who did not know how to play the piano, and has but one and the same note throughout the piece.
[39] _Die Neurussische Klaviermusik._ In _Die Musik_, 1903, No. 8.
[40] _Op. cit._
[41] For a detailed discussion of American composers the reader is referred to Volume IV of this series.
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