We can see and hear this "Raphael of Music" at the piano, so many and so eloquent have been the descriptions given of his playing. It is easy to fancy him sweeping the ivory keys with his gossamer touch that enveloped with ethereal beauty the most unaccustomed of his complicated chromatic modulations. We can feel his individuality pulsating through every tone evoked by those individualized fingers of his as they weave measures for sylphs of dreamland, or summon to warfare heroes of the ideal world. We are entranced by his luxuriant tone-coloring, induced to a large extent by his original management of the pedals. We marvel at his softly whispered, yet ever clearly distinct pianissimo, at the full, round tone of its relative fortissimo, that was never harsh or noisy, and at all the exquisitely graded nuances that lay between, with those time fluctuations expressive of the ebb and flow of his poetic inner being.
No wonder Balzac maintained that if Chopin should but drum on the table his fingers would evoke subtle-sounding music.
And what an example he has left for teachers. Delicately strung as he was, he must often have endured tortures from the best of his pupils, but so thoroughly was he consecrated to his art that he never faltered in his efforts to lift those who confided in him to the aerial heights he had found. A vivid picture of his method of teaching is given in the lectures on "Frederic Chopin"s Works and Their Proper Interpretation,"
by the Pole, Jean Kleczynski.
The basis of this method consisted in refinement of touch, for the attainment of which a natural, easy position of the hand was considered by Chopin a prime requisite. He prepared each hand with infinite care before permitting any attempt at the reproduction of musical ideas. In order to place it to advantage he caused it to be thrown lightly on the keyboard so that the five fingers rested on the notes E, F sharp, G sharp, A sharp and B, and without change of position required the practice of exercises calculated to insure independence. The pupil was instructed to go through these exercises first staccato, effected by a free movement of the wrist, an admirable means of counteracting heaviness and clumsiness, then legato-staccato, then accented legato, then pure legato, modifying the power from pp to ff, and the movement from andante to prestissimo.
He was exceedingly particular about arpeggio work, and insisted upon the repet.i.tion of every note and pa.s.sage until all harshness and roughness of tone were eliminated. "Is that a dog barking?" he was known to exclaim to an unlucky pupil whose attack in the opening arpeggio of a Clementi study lacked the desired quality. A very independent use of the thumb was prescribed by him. He never hesitated about placing it on a black key when convenient, and had it pa.s.sed by muscle action alone in scales and broken chords whose zealous practice in different forms of touch, accent, rhythm and tone were demanded by him.
Individualization of the fingers was one of his strong points, and he believed in a.s.signing to each of them its appropriate part. "In a good mechanism," he said, "the aim is not to play everything with an equal sound, but to acquire beautiful quality of touch and perfect shading."
Of prime importance in his eyes was a clear, elastic, singing tone, one whose exquisite delicacy could never be confounded with feebleness.
Every dynamic nuance he exacted of fingers that fell with freedom and elasticity on the keys, and he knew how to augment the warmth and richness of tone-coloring by setting in vibration sympathetic harmonics of the princ.i.p.al notes through judicious employment of the damper pedal.
By precept and example he advocated frequent playing of the preludes and fugues of Bach as a means of cultivating musical intelligence, muscular independence and touch and tone discrimination. His musical heroes were Bach and Mozart, for they represented to him nature, strong individuality and poetry in music. At one time he undertook to write a method or school of piano-playing, but never progressed beyond the opening sentences. A message directly from him would have been invaluable to students, and might have averted many unlucky misapprehensions of himself and his works. Those of his contemporaries who have harkened with rapture to his playing have declared that he alone could adequately interpret his tone-creations, or make perfectly intelligible his method. Pupils of his and their pupils have faithfully endeavored to transmit to the musical world the tradition of his individual style. The elect few have come into touch with his vision of beauty, but it has been mercilessly misinterpreted by thousands of ruthless aspirants to musical honors, in the schoolroom, the students"
recital and the concert hall.
Whoever plays Chopin with sledge-hammer fingers will deaden all sense of his poetry, charm and grace. Whoever approaches him with weak sentimentalism will miss altogether his dignity and strength. It has been said of him that he was Woman in his tenderness and realization of the beautiful; and Man in his energy and force of mind. The highest type of artist and human being is thus represented. To interpret him requires simplicity, purity of style, refined technique, poetic imagination and genuine sentiment--not fitful, fict.i.tious sentimentality.
In regard to the much discussed tempo rubato of Chopin many and fatal blunders have been made. Players without number have gone stumbling over the piano keys with a tottering, spasmodic gait, serenely fancying they are heeding the master"s design. Reckless, out-of-time playing disfigures what is meant to express the fluctuation of thought, the soul"s agitation, the rolling of the waves of time and eternity. The rubato, from rubare, to rob, represents a pliable movement that is certainly as old as the Greek drama in declamation, and was employed in intoning the Gregorian chant. The recitative of the sixteenth century gave it prominence, and it pa.s.sed into instrumental music. Indications of it in Bach are too often neglected. Beethoven used it effectively.
Chopin appropriated it as one of his most potent auxiliaries. In playing he emphasized the saying of Mozart: "Let your left hand be the orchestra conductor," while his right hand balanced and swayed the melody and its arabesques according to the natural pulsation of the emotions. "You see that tree," exclaimed Liszt; "its leaves tremble with every breath of the wind, but the tree remains unshaken--that is the rubato." There are storms to which even the tree yields. To realize them, to divine the laws which regulate the undulating, tempest-tossed rubato, requires highly matured artistic taste and absolute musical control.
Too sensitive to enjoy playing before miscellaneous audiences whose unsympathetic curiosity, he declared, paralyzed him, Chopin was at his best when interpreting music in private, for a choice circle of friends or pupils, or when absorbed in composition. It is not too much to say for him that he ushered in a new era for his chosen instrument, spiritualizing its timbre, liberating it from traditional orchestral and choral effects, and elevating it to an independent power in the world of music. Besides enriching the technique of the piano, he augmented the materials of musical expression, contributing fresh charms to those prime factors of music melody, harmony and rhythm. New chord extensions, pa.s.sages of double notes, arabesques and harmonic combinations were devised by him and he so systematized the use of the pedals that the most varied nuances could be produced by them.
In melody and general conception his tone-poems sprang spontaneously from his glowing fancy, but they were subjected to the most severe tests before they were permitted to go out into the world. Every ingenious device that gave character to his exquisite cantilena, and softened his most startling chord progressions, was evolved by the vivid imagination of this master from hitherto hidden qualities of the pianoforte. Without him neither it nor modern music could have been what it is. An accentuation like the ringing of distant bells is frequently heard in his music. To him bell tones were ever ringing, reminding him of home, summoning him to the heights.
James Huneker, the raconteur of the Musical Courier, discussing the compositions of Chopin, in his delightful and inspiring book, "Chopin, the Man and His Music," calls the studies t.i.tanic experiments; the preludes, moods in miniature; the nocturnes, night and its melancholy mysteries; the ballades, faery dramas; the polonaises, heroic hymns of battle; the valses and mazurkas, dances of the soul; the scherzos, the work of Chopin the conqueror. In the sonatas and concertos he sees the princely Pole bravely carrying his banner amid cla.s.sical currents. For the impromptus alone he has found no name and says of them: "To write of the four impromptus in their own key of unrestrained feeling and pondered intention would not be as easy as recapturing the first "careless rapture of the lark.""
Unquestionably the poetry of Chopin is of the most exquisite lyric character, his leadership is supreme. So original was his conception, so finished his workmanship, so sublime his purpose, that we may well exclaim with Schumann, "He is the boldest, proudest poetic spirit of the time." "His greatness is his aristocracy," says Oscar Bie. "He stands among musicians in his faultless vesture, a n.o.ble from head to foot."
[Ill.u.s.tration: PAGANINI]
VIII
Violins and Violinists--Fact and Fable
That fine old bard who shaped the character of Volker the Fiddler in the Nibelungen Lay, had a glowing vision of the power of music and of the violin. Players on the videl, or fiddle, abounded in the days of chivalry, but Volker, glorified by genius, rises superior to his fellow minstrels. The inspiring force of his martial strains renewed the courage of way-worn heroes. His gentle measures, pure and melodious as a prayer, lulled them to sorely-needed rest.
And what a wonderful bow he wielded! It was mighty and long, fashioned like a sword, with a keen-edged outer blade, and in his good right hand could deal a deft blow on either side. Ever ready for action was he, and his friendship for Hagen of Tronje furnished the main elements of that grim warrior"s power. Together they were long invincible, smiting the foe with giant strokes, accompanied by music.
The modern German poet, Wilhelm Jordan, in his Sigfridsage, clothes Volker with the attributes of a violin king he loved, and represents him tenderly handling the violin. His n.o.ble portrayal of a violinist testifies no more fully to the mission of the musician than the creation of the Nibelungen bard. In August Wilhelmj, once hailed by Henrietta Sontag as the coming Paganini, Richard Wagner saw "Volker the Fiddler living anew, until death a warrior true." So he wrote in a dedicatory verse beneath a portrait of himself, presented to "Volker-Wilhelmj as a souvenir of the first Baireuth festival."
The idea of a magic fiddle and a wonderworking fiddler was strongly rooted in the popular imagination of many peoples, through many ages.
Typical ill.u.s.trations are the Wonderful Musician of Grimm"s Fairy Tales, whose fiddling attracted man and beast, and the lad of Norse folk-lore who won a fiddle that could make people dance to any tune he chose. In Norway the traditional violin teacher is the cascade-haunting musical genius Fossegrim, who, when suitably propitiated, seizes the right hand of one that seeks his aid and moves it across the strings until blood gushes from the finger-tips. Thenceforth the pupil becomes a master, and can make trees leap, rivers stay their course and people bow to his will.
Those of us who were brought up on English nursery rhymes early loved the fiddle. Old King Cole, that merry old soul, was a prime favorite, notwithstanding his fondness for pipe and bowl, because when he called for them he called for his fiddlers three and their very fine fiddles.
According to Robert of Gloucester, the real King Cole, a popular monarch of Britain in the third century, was the father of St. Helena, the zealous friend of church music. The nursery satire of doubtful antiquity is our sole evidence of his devotion to the art.
That John who stoutly refused to sell his fiddle in order to buy his wife a gown placed the ideal above the material. It is to be hoped Mrs.
John enjoyed music more than gay attire. Certainly the dame who was forced to dance without her shoe until the master found his fiddling-stick knew the worth of the fiddler"s art.
It may have been from a play on the word catgut that so many of these ditties represent p.u.s.s.y in relation with the fiddle. True fiddler"s magic belonged to the cat whose fiddling made the cow jump over the moon, the little dog laugh and the dish run away with the spoon. Rarely accomplished too was the cat that came fiddling out of the barn with a pair of bagpipes under her arm, singing "Fiddle c.u.m fee, the mouse has married the humble bee."
Scientists tell us that crickets, gra.s.shoppers, locusts and the like are fiddlers. Their hind legs are their fiddle-bows, and by drawing these briskly up and down the projecting veins of their wing-covers they produce the sounds that characterize them. Was it in imitation of these small winged creatures that man first experimented with the friction of bow and strings as a means of making music? Scarcely. It was the result of similar instinct on a larger human scale.
String instruments played with a bow may be traced to a remote period among various Oriental peoples. An example of their simplest form exists in the ravanastron, or banjo-fiddle, supposed to have been invented by King Ravana, who reigned in Ceylon some 5,000 years ago. It is formed of a small cylindrical sounding-body, with a stick running through it for a neck, a bridge, and a single string of silk, or at most two strings. Its primitive bow was a long hairless cane rod which produced sound when drawn across the silk. Better tone was derived from strings plucked with fingers or plectrum, and so the rude contrivance remained long undeveloped.
The European violin is the logical outcome of the appliance of the bow to those progenitors of the pianoforte, the Greek monochord and lyre, precisely as our music is the outgrowth of the diatonic scale developed by the Greeks from those instruments. Numerous obstacles stand in the way of defining its story, but it is known that from the ninth century to the thirteenth bow instruments gained in importance. They divided into two cla.s.ses--the viol proper, with flat back and breast and indented sides, to which belonged the veille, videl, or as it has been called, guitar-fiddle, and the pear-shaped type, such as the gigue and rebec. The latter is what Chaucer calls the rubible.
Possibly an impulse was given the fiddle by the Moorish rebab, brought into Spain in the eighth century, but ancient Celtic bards had long before this used a bow instrument--the chrotta or crwth, derived from the lyre, which was introduced by the Romans in their colonizing expeditions. As early as 560 A. D., Venantius Fortunatus, Bishop of Poitiers, wrote to the Duke of Champagne:
_"Let the barbarians praise thee with the harp, Let the British crwth sing."_
This instrument, whose name signifies bulging box, was common in Britain, and was used in Wales until a comparatively recent period. One of its distinguishing features was an opening in the lower part for the admission of the fingers while playing. A fine specimen is preserved in the South Kensington Museum, corresponding well to the following description by a Welsh poet of the fifteenth century: "A fair coffer with a bow, a girdle, a finger-board and a bridge; its value is a pound; it has a frontlet formed like a wheel with the short-nosed bow across.
In its centre are the circled sounding-holes, and the bulging of its back is somewhat like an old man, but on its breast harmony reigns, from the sycamore melodious music is obtained. Six pegs, if we screw them, will tighten all its chords; six advantageous strings are found, which, in a skilful hand, produce a varied sound."
In this same museum is a curious wedge-shaped boxwood fiddle, decorated with allegorical scenes, and dated 1578. Dr. Burney states that it has no more tone than a violin with a sordine. It is said to have been presented by Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Leicester, and bears both of their coats-of-arms in silver on the sounding-board. Besides her other accomplishments, the Virgin Queen, we are told, was a violinist. During her reign we find the violin mentioned among instruments accompanying the drama and various festivities, and viols of diverse kinds were freely used. Shakespeare, in Twelfth Night, has Sir Toby enumerate among Sir Andrew Aguecheek"s attractions skill on the viol-de-gamboys, Sir Toby"s blunder for the viola da gamba, a fashionable ba.s.s viol held between the knees. A part was written for this instrument in Bach"s St.
Matthew Pa.s.sion, and a number of celebrated performers on it are recorded in the eighteenth century. Two of these were ladies, Mrs. Sarah Ottey and Miss Ford.
Violers and fiddlers formed an essential part of the retinue of many monarchs in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Charles II., of England, had twenty-four at his court, with red bonnets and flaunting livery, who played for him while he was dining according to the custom he had known at the French court during his exile. Place was grudgingly yielded to the violin by friends of the less insistent viol. Butler, in Hudibras, styled it "a squeaking engine." Earlier writers mention "the scolding violin," and describing the Maypole dance tell of not hearing the "minstrelsie for the fiddling." Thus all along its course it has had its opponents and deriders as well as its friends.
The soft-toned viol had deeply indented sides to permit a free use of the bow, was mostly supplied with frets like a guitar, and had usually from five to seven strings. Its different sizes corresponded with the soprano, contralto, tenor and ba.s.s of the human voice. An extremely interesting treble viol much in vogue in the eighteenth century was the viola d"amore, with fourteen strings, the seven of gut and silver being supplemented by seven sympathetic wire strings running below the finger-board and tuned in unison with the bowstrings, vibrating harmoniously while these are played. A remarkably well preserved specimen of this instrument, made by Eberle of Prague, in 1733, and superbly carved on pegbox and scroll, is in the fine private violin collection of Mr. D. H. Carr, of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. It is one of the few genuine viola d"amores extant. The owner says of it: "The tone is simply wonderful, mellow, pure and strong, and of that exquisite harmony that comes from the throne of Nature. I know of no other genuine viola d"amore, and it compares with the modern copies I have seen as a Raphael or a Rubens with some cheap lithograph." These modern copies are the result of recent efforts to revive the use of this fascinating instrument. A barytone of a kindred nature was the viola di bordone or drone viol, so called because there was a suggestion of the buzzing of drone-flies, or humble bees, in the tones of its sympathetic strings, which often numbered as many as twenty-four. These violas recall the Hardanger peasant fiddle of Norway, of unknown origin and antiquity, whose delicate metallic under strings quaver tremulously and mysteriously when the bow sets in motion the main strings.
At one time every family of distinction in Britain deemed a chest of viols, consisting for the most part of two trebles, two altos, a barytone and a ba.s.s, as indispensable to the household as the piano is thought to-day. It was made effective in accompanying the madrigal, that delightful flower of the Elizabethan age. Singers not always being available for all of the difficult voice parts viols of the same compa.s.s supplied the lack. It was but a step for masters of music to compose pieces marked "to be sung or played," thus contributing to the forces that were lifting instrumental music above mere accompaniment for song or dance.
When musicians make demands musical instrument makers are ever ready to meet them, and the viol steadily improved. One who contributed to its progress was Gasper Duiffoprugcar (1514-1572) a luthier and mosaic inlayer, known in the Tyrol, in Bologna, Paris and Lyons. The belief that he originated the violin rests chiefly on the elaborately ornamented forgeries bearing his name, the work of French imitators from 1800 to 1840. There is an etching, supposed to be a copy of a portrait of himself carved on one of his viols with this motto: "I lived in the wood until I was slain by the relentless axe. In life I was silent, but in death my melody is exquisite."
The words might apply to the perfected violin, whose evolution was going on all through that period of literary and artistic activity known as the Renaissance. When or at whose hands it gained its present form is unknown. The same doubt encircles its first master player. Perhaps the earliest worthy of mention is one Baltzarini, a Piedmontese, appointed by Catherine de Medici, in 1577, to lead the music at the French court, and said to have started the heroic and historical ballet in France.
He is sometimes confounded with Thomas Baltzar, a violinist of Lubec, who, in 1656 introduced the practice of shifting in London, where he wholly eclipsed David Mell, a much admired clockmaker fiddler, although the latter, as a contemporary stoutly averred, "played sweeter, was a well-bred gentleman, and was not given to excessive drinking as Baltzar was." His marvelous feat of "running his fingers to the end of the finger-board and back again with all alacrity" caused a learned Oxford connoisseur of music to look if he had hoofs. Notwithstanding the jovial tastes of this German, he was appointed leader, by Charles II., of the famous violins, and had the final honor of a burial in Westminster Abbey.
Here reposed also in due time his successor in the royal band, John Banister, who had been sent by the king to France for study, and who was the first Englishman, unless the amateur Mell be counted, to distinguish himself as a performer on the violin. He wrote music for Shakespeare"s Tempest, and was the first to attempt, in London, concerts at which the audience paid for seats. Announcements of the initial performance, September 30, 1672, read: "These are to give notice that at Mr.
Banister"s house (now called the Musick School) over against the George Tavern in White Friars, this present Monday will be performed musick by excellent masters, beginning precisely at four o"clock in the afternoon and every afternoon for the future at precisely the same hour."
Credit for shaping the first violin has been given Gasparo Bertolotti (1542-1609), called Gasparo da Salo, from his birthplace, a suburb of Brescia, that pearl of Lombardy so long a bone of contention among nations. Violins were doubtless made before his time, but none are known to-day dated earlier than his. A pretty legend tells how this skilful viol-maker imprisoned in his first violin the golden tones of the soprano voice of Marietta, the maiden he loved and from whom death parted him. Her likeness, so the story runs, is preserved in the angel face, by Benevenuto Cellini, adorning the head. The instrument thus famed was purchased for 3,000 Neapolitan ducats by Cardinal Aldobrandini, who presented it to the treasury at Innspruck. Here it remained as a curiosity until the French took the city in 1809, when it was carried to Vienna and sold to a wealthy Bohemian collector, after whose death it came into the possession of Ole Bull.
Gasparo"s pupil, Giovanni Paolo Maggini (1581-1631), improved the principles of violin-building, and gave the world the modern viola and violoncello. A rich viola-like quality characterizes the Maggini violin.
De Beriot used one in his concerts, and its plaintive tone was thought well suited to his style. He refused to part with it for 20,000 francs when Wieniawski, in 1859, wished to buy it. To-day it would command a far higher price. It is stated on authority that not more than fifty instruments of its make now exist, although a large number of French imitations claim recognition.
While Gasparo was founding the so-called Brescian school, Andrea Amati (1520-1580), a viol and rebec maker of picturesque Cremona, began to make violins, doubtless to fill the orders of his patrons. He must have believed the pinnacle of fame reached when King Charles IX. of France, in 1566, commissioned him to construct twenty-four violins, twelve large and twelve small pattern. They were kept in the Chapel Royal, Versailles, until 1790, when they were seized by the mob in the French Revolution, and but one of them is known to have escaped destruction.
Heron-Allen, in his work on violin making, gives a picture of it, obtained through the courtesy of its owner, George Somers, an English gentleman. Its tone is described as mellow and extremely beautiful, but lacking in brilliancy.
As the Amati brothers, Antonio and Geronimo (Hieronymous) Amati continued their father"s trade, producing instruments similar to his.
The family reached its flower in Nicolo Amati (1596-1684), son of Geronimo. He originated the "Grand Amatis," and attained a purer, more resonant tone than his predecessors, although not always adapted to modern concert use. One of his violins was the favorite instrument of the French virtuoso Delphine Jean Alard (1815-1888), long violin professor at the Paris Conservatoire. It has been described as sounding like the melodious voice of a child heard beside the rising tide.
Another fine specimen was exhibited by Mr. J. D. Partello, in 1893, at the World"s Fair, in Chicago.