The pianoforte and its music

Front matter

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Part 1

PAGE in. The Pianoforte of To-Day 29

PART 11

IV. The Earliest Clavier Music 53

V. The English Virginalists 62

VI. French and Italian Clavecinists ... 87

VII. The German School — Bach and Handel . 100

VIII. Classicism and the Sonata 122

IX. Beethoven— an Intermezzo 146

X. The Romantic School 180

XI. National Schools 229

Part III

XII. Virtuosi and Their Development . . .261 vu

Illustrations

A Pianoforte by Cristof ori F^anHspua

In the Crosby Brown Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

VACS

Evolution of the Musical Bow • . • • Facing 12

Group of Clavichord Keys 18

A Harpischord Jack 18

Hammer-action of a Grand Pianoforte ... 45

Jean Philippe Rameau Facing 88

Domenico Scarlatti '' 98

Franz Liszt ** 144

After a drawing by S. MitUg.

Francois Frederic Chopin ** 200

Ignaz Jan Paderewski " 242

Carl Tausig " 262 b

Part I The Instrument I

IN this book I have undertaken a study of the origin and development of the pianoforte, the music composed for it, and the performers who have brought that music home to the imderstanding and enjoyment of the people who have lived since the instrument acquired the predominant influence which it occupies in modem culture. There is that in the title of Jhe series of works to which this little book belongs which justifies a trust in the graciousness, gentleness, and serious-mindedness of those who shall, haply, read it; and therefore I begin with a warning that an earnest purpose lies at the bottom of my undertaking: I am more desirous to instruct than to entertain, though I would not assert that in this instance instruction and entertainment need be divorced. Nevertheless, it was this desire that determined the method which I shall follow in the discussion and which I shall believe to be successful in the degree that it excites the imagination and quickens the perceptions of my readers without burdening the faculty which historical study, as commonly conducted, taxes most severely — that is to say, the faculty of memory. I shall care little for dates and much for principles. Names shall not affright me, and I shall not attempt to

when it comes to enumerating or describing the instruments which some centuries ago filled the place in musical practice now occupied by that instrument universal — the pianoforte. Yet I shall strive to point out why and how the structural principles of those instruments influenced the music which they were called upon to utter, and pointed the way to the art of to-day. It is one of the cheering and amiable features of historical study pursued in this manner that it refuses to be kept in the dusty road tramped by date-mongers and takes into account the utterances of poets, the testimony of ancient carvings and drawings, as well as the records of prosy chroniclers. Many are the by-paths which lead into the avenue of scientific fact — varied and lovely are the vistas which they open.

We are concerned in this portion of our study with the story which shall tell us how the pianoforte came into existence. As we know it, this instrument is practically a product of the nineteenth century; yet poetical traditions which have come down to us from the earliest civilizations are at one with the conclusions of scientific research in telling us what was the common origin of the instruments to which the pianoforte has borne relationship since music began. Let me, before showing this, classify these instruments. They are known technically as "stringed" instruments, because their tones are generated by the vibrations of tense strings, or chords. Now:

(a) Instrumentsof the viol family yield tones when their strings are rubbed;

(b) Those of the harp family when they are twanged, plticked, or picked;

(c) Those of the dtdcimer family when they are struck.

All these instruments are interrelated, and at one time or another in its long history the instrument which we call the piano for short (but which ought always to be called the pianoforte, for reasons which shall appear presently) has embodied the fundamental principle of each. There are differences, however, which determine further divisions. Thus, some stringed instruments yield many more tones than they have strings through the mediumship of a finger-board which enables a player to shorten the vibrating segment of each string by pressure upon it with the fingers — " stopping," as it is called by the musicians; some have fewer tones than strings, the latter being doubled, or even trebled, in unison for the sake of greater sonority; some are plucked or twanged with the bare fingers, some with a bit of metal, ivory, or wood, anciently called a plectrum. The feature which diCFerentiates the pianoforte from its companions is the keyboard. This is a mechanical contrivance by which the blow against the strings is not only delivered, but by means of which it can also be regulated so as to produce gradations of power and a considerable range of expression. It is to the first of these capacities that the instrument owes its name — the "pianoforte" (piano e forte as it was first called) is the "soft and loud." This is very rudimentary talk, but its significance will appear later.

If, now, I were asked to give a brief but comprehensive definition of the pianoforte, whose origin, growth, and present status are to occupy our attention in the first large subdivision of this study, I should say that it is an instrimient of music the tones of which are generated by strings set in vibration by blows delivered by hammers controlled by a keyboard, the mechanism of which is so adjusted that the force of the blow and the dynamic intensity of the resultant tone are measurably at the command of the player. Also that it has a soimd-board, or resonance-box, to augment the tone after its creation.

The beginning of such an instrument may be sought for in the legends of antiquity, the somewhat confusing records of mediaeval scholastics, and the rude inventions of the savages who live to-day to tell us something about things which antedate the civilization of which our time has been so boastful. Mediaeval records are equidistant between the imaginative and scientific periods. Now, imagination not only

bodies forth The forms of things unknown,

but also preserves a record of things forgotten. I am, therefore, pleased first to invite its aid.

The god of music of the ancient Greeks was also their archer-god. Recall the description of Apollo's answer to the supplication of Chryses in the first book of the " Iliad." The aged priest implores the god to avenge the wrong done by Agamemnon.

Hear me, thou bearer of the silver bow,

he prays; and thus the poet describes the god's answer to the appeal:

Phoebus Apollo hearkened. Down he came, Down from the summit of the Olympian mount, Wrathful in heart; his shoulder bore the bow And hollow quiver; there the arrows rang Upon the shoulders of the angry god As on he moved. He came as comes the night, And, seated from the ships aloof, sent forth An arrow; terrible was heard the dang Of that resplendent bow.

It was not a mere chance that the poet equipped the god of music with a bow, nor yet a striving after picturesque effect. A Homer would not have juggled so with words and images. Apollo bore the bow on this occasion because it fell to him to mete out retribution; but he was the god of music because he bore the bow. I cannot recall where, but I have seen somewhere another of these beautiful old Greek legends which presents Apollo listening entranced to the musical twang of his bowstring, which gave out sweet sourids even while it sped the arrow on its errand of death. Also there comes to mind the passage in the "Odyssey" which describes Ulysses's trial of his own bow after the suitors of Penelope had put it by in despair — when he drew the arrow to its head and the string rang shrill and sweet as the note of a swallow as he let it go. A version of an old legend given by Censorinus says that the use of the tense string of his bow for musical purposes was suggested to Apollo by the twang made by the bowstring of his himtress sister Diana.

Tales like these preserve a record which antedates history as commonly understood. The bow was the first stringed instrument of music — that is what these tales tell us; and note how the old lesson is illustrated in the life of to-day: There lives no boy brought up where the bow is a plaything who has not made Apollo's discovery for himself. For all such boys it is a common amusement to pluck at the bowstring and catch the faint musical tone which results by putting the bow to the ear or between the teeth. The savage probably did the same thing thousands of years ago; he certainly does it now pretty much all the world over. In the Smithsonian Institution at Washington there is a musical instrument which used to be described in the catalogue as a guitar of the Yaquima Indians of Sonora, Mexico. It is nothing else than a bow provided with a tuning peg. While picking the string with his right hand the savage varied the pitch of the tone by slipping the left along the string. Travellers have found half a dozen tribes in Africa whose principal instrument of music difiFers but in little from the bow. Some savages, indeed, use the same bow in their music-making that they do in war and the chase. The n-kungu of the Angola negroes is a springy piece of wood bent by a string of twisted fibre. Near one end another bit of fibre is lashed around the bow, drawing the string tighter, and a hollow gourd is fastened to the wood to augment the sound. Here we have the primitive resonator, or sound-box. The performer holds his rude instrument upright in his left arm, the gourd resting on his left hip, or his stomach, and while he twangs the string with a splint of wood he slips the fingers of his left hand along it to raise and lower the tone. In the Crosby Brown collection of musical instruments, housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, there is an instrument from Brazil which has its coimterpart in two specimens from the Gaboon River, Africa, preserved in the National Museum at Washington. It is made from the midrib of a large palm leaf. In the Washington specimens strips of the outer skin of the midrib are cut loose and raised up on a vertical bridge, the ends being left attached. Around the ends and the midrib are little bands of plaited fibre by which the vibrating length of the strings can be adjusted. As in the Angola instrument, a gourd forms the resonator. The himting-bow has here grown into an instrument capable of giving out eight tones. The instrument was introduced in America by slaves who came from Africa; this, at least, is the contention of Professor Mason, of the National Museimi.

The theory which finds the origin of all musical instriunents of the stringed tribe in the bow of the savage has a triple commendation: the Hellenic myths suggest it; reason approves it; the practice of modem savages confirms it. Suppose primitive man to conceive the desire to add to the number of tones possible to his improvised musical instruments so as to enjoy that sequence or combination which, when pleasingly ordered, we call melody or harmony — how would he go about it? Most naturally by adding strings to his bow; and a bow with

lO more than one string is already a rudimentary harp. As Homer came to our support in the first instance, so the ancient sculptor helps us now. The oldest rock pictures which archaeologists have found in Egypt show us harps that retain enough of the bow form plainly to suggest their origin. The body of the instrument is still shaped like a bow; the single string has received three fellows; the gourd of the n-kungu has developed into a sound-box of wood. The instrument was carried on the left shoulder and its strings were plucked with the fingers. The mural paintings and sculptures of Egypt discover many varieties of harps, some showing a marvellous degree of perfection, but even the largest and finest lacks the pole which completes the triangular form of the modem harp and is essential to its strength and rigidity.

There is no relic of the bow in the shapes of the harps and lyres of the Greeks and Romans, but, instead, suggestions of the tortoise-shell which, according to the familiar legend told by ApoUodorus, gave Mercury the idea exemplified in the classic lyre. According to this story, the god one day accidentally kicked a tortoise-shell stretched in the interior of which there remained some cartilages after the flesh had been dried out by the sun. These chords gave forth a sound, and Mercury at once conceived the idea of the lyre, made the instrument in the shape of a tortoise-shell and strung it with the

II dried sinews of animals. This legend originates the two principles of a vibrating string and a resonator simultaneously, and is obviously of a later date than the myth which made Apollo

The lord of the unerring bow,

The god of life, and poetry, and light.

But we ought now to look away from all the ancient instnunents whose strings were twanged or plucked, whether with the unarmed fingers or with plectra of various kinds, and seek for the earliest form of an instrimient embodying the principle of a struck string. The oldest illustrations of this manner of producing musical soimds that have been discovered are Assyrian. Among the basrelief sculptures taken from the tumuli which mark the places where Nineveh, Nimroud, Khorsabad, and Kuijundschik once stood (they are now safely housed in the British Museimi, to the great glory of the English people) is one representing a portion of a. triiunphal procession in honor of Saos-du-Khin, an Assyrian king whose reign began 667 years before Christ. In this group there is what I have ventured to look upon as an Assyrian dulcimer player. The instrument, apparently a sound-box with strings stretched across the top (though they are depicted as bending over each other in the air in agreement with ancient notions of art, which made perspective wait upon delineation of actualities),

™l.W;ON OF THE

""SICAI BOW.

was suspended in front of the player by a band from the neck, since both hands are occupied in playing upon it — the right hand striking the strings with an instrument apparently about a foot long, the left seemingly checking the vibrations of the strings.

If this instrimient was really a dulcimer, it may stand as the true prototype among the civilized ancients of the modem pianoforte. Varied in shape, with many names, it has lived till to-day. It is still popular in the Orient. It is the Persian santir; it was the Greek psalterion, and its use was general throughout Europe as early as the sixth century. The Italians called it the dolcimelo, compounding the word out of the Latin dulce and the Greek melos. The ruder Germans, taking a suggestion, probably, from the motion of the players' hands, which suggested that of the butchers' in the preparation of their favorite viand, called it Hackbrett — that is, chopping board. By this time the instrument had attained its present form, a box of thin boards pierced on the top with sound holes, having wire strings stretched over bridges, played upon with two hammers with slender handles and cork heads. Once it was played upon with two sticks slightly bent at one end, making an elongated head, one side of which was covered with cloth. By striking the wires with the cloth-covered surface soft eflEects were obtained — a, noteworthy device in this history, for it suggested the pianoforte to the mind of one of its inventors. The capabilities of the dulcimer may be studied to-day in the music of the ubiquitous gypsy band.

We have now seen something of the origin and growth of two of the vital principles of the modem pianoforte — the principle of a vibrating string as a medium of tone generation and of a blow against the string as a means of tone production. For a third distinguishing principle, that by which the two media are brought into mutual service, the journey of discovery must again be into the classic past. The keyboard was borrowed from instruments of the organ kind, and its antiquity cannot clearly be determined. Organs were the possession of both Greeks and Hebrews before the Christian era, and their existence in anything beyond the simplest forms, as exemplified in the syrinx, presupposes some contrivance for admitting and excluding wind from the pipes at the will of the player. At first, and even after the instrument got into literature, this contrivance may have been a series of rods which could be drawn forth and pushed back under the mouths of the pipes, but in the sixth century a.d. Cassiodorus, in a commentary on Psalm cL, wrote a description of a pneumatic organ which leaves no doubt that the commentator was familiar with something like our key-action. He mentions the presence in the interior of the instrument of "movements of wood which are pressed down by the fingers of the player" in order to "express agreeable melodies." We do not know when the keyboard was invented, but certain it seems that the organ keyboard was too cumbersome a contrivance to be applied to a stringed instrument for several centuries after the beginning of the Christian era. This application, in the form of interest to us, took place about the eleventh century, and the instrument to which keys were then applied was a scientific rather than a musical instrument. It was the monochord, which had been used in the mathematical determination of the relation of tones ever since the time of Pythagoras — that is, ever since the sixth century before Christ. As its name indicates, the monochord had but a single string. This was stretched over two bridges, on a sound-box. By stopping this string in the middle the octave of its fimdamental tone was produced; two- thirds gave the fifth, three-fourths the fourth, and so on, the harmonic interval being perfect in proportion to the simplicity of the numerical ratio. It was a simple matter to add strings to the monochord to facilitate its manipulation in the comparison of intervals, and two theoretical writers in the second century A.D., Aristides Quintilian and Claudius Ptolemy, refer to an instrmnent having four strings tuned in unison which was used in the study of tonal ratios. It was once customary to attribute nearly all inventions in music to Guido d'Arezzo, the monk to

IS whom we are indebted for our sol-fa syllables. He is credited, too, with having applied keys to the monochord which, on being pressed down, lifted a bridge against the string from below, simultaneously making it sound and dividing off the portion whose tone it was desired to hear. Whether or not he made this discovery is not proved, but that he was familiar with a keyed instrument is plain, from the fact that he left a writing for his pupils, counselling them to practise their hands in the use of the monochord.

i6

II

WE have now before us the primary form of the instrument which, despite its simplicity, contested longest for supremacy with the pianoforte after the latter had entered the arena. The mechanism of the monochord of the eleventh century was to all intents and purposes the mechanism of the clavichord {claviSy key; chorda, a string), which might still have been seen occasionally in the music-loving houses of Germany in the middle of the nineteenth century.

The key was a simple lever, one end of which received the pressure of the finger, while the other, extending imder the strings of the instrument, was armed with a bit of metal placed upright and at right angles with the string. When the key was pressed down the blow dealt by this bit of metal, called a " tangent," set the string to vibrating, and at the same time measured oflF the segment of the string which had to vibrate to produce the desired tone. The tangent also acted as a bridge, and had to be held against the string so long as the tone was to continue. On its release the tone was inmie-

The lastrument diately muffled, or damped, by strips of cloth which were intertwined with the wires at one end.

Down to the end of the sixteenth century, though the strings were multiplied, the name monochord was still used, and, though the range of the instni-

A Haipsidtord Jack

ment had reached twenty-four notes, the strings were still tuned in unison. Gradually, however, the strings for the acuter tones were shortened by a bridge placed diagonally across the sound-board, this contrivance being borrowed, it is said, from another keyed instrument, called the clayicymbal, 18 which was, in eflfect, a triangular system of strings to which a mechanical device had been applied which plucked or snapped the strings, somewhat in imitation of a harp player.

It is to instruments of this class that I now address myself, for it was for them that the earliest music was written which has survived in the repertory of the pianist, and it was upon them that the predecessors of the great virtuosi about whom I shall speak played. But it would be idle to attempt to explain all the dififerences between them. They were a numerous tribe and the members bore numerous names, of which those that have endured longest in the literature of music, and which, indeed, were spoken by our grandparents as glibly as we say piano now, were spinet and harpsichord. We shall be spared a lot of curious and vain brain-cudgelling if we look upon these names, as also clavicytherium, clavicembalo, gravicembalo, ^pinette, and virginal, as no more than designations in vogue at different times or in different countries, or at the most as names standing for variations in shape or structure of the instrument which filled the place before the nineteenth century that the pianoforte does now.

In all the instrimients of this class the strings were picked with tiny points of quills (generally, though the material varied) held in bits of wood called "jacks," which moved freely in slots piercing the sound-board, and rested upon one end of the

The Instnimant key levers. The quill was a tiny thing, not more than a third of an inch in length, thrust through a narrow tongue which moved on a pivot through a slot in the upper part of the jack. When at rest the quill point lay a trifle below the string and at a slightly acute angle with it. The key pressed down, the jack sprang upward, and the quill in passing twanged the string. When the key was released the jack dropped back to its place and the quill slipped under the string, ready for a repetition of the movement. To enable it to do this was the mission of the little tongue in which it was set. This was held in place flush with the front face of the jack by a delicate spring of wire or hog's bristle. The tongue could move backward, but not forward, but, the quill being pointed a little upward, when it fell back upon the string the spring gave way, the tongue moved back a bit, and the quill regained its position below the string. If you will read Shakespeare's 128th sonnet it will help you to keep in mind the action of these jacks, though at times the poet's description seems to confound them with the keys. Two hundred years ago the perfection of instruments of the clavier class — that is, instnunents with strings played upon by manipulation of keys — was thought to have been reached. This, at least, is the recorded judgment of writers of that period. From a mechanical point of view, indeed, some of these instnunents were marvels; but as music became

Mediieval Precursors less and less mere pretty play of sounds, and gave voice more and more to the feelings of composer and player, the deficiencies of virginal, spinet, and harpsichord became manifest. Even the most elaborate and perfect of the quilled instruments, the harpsichord, was a soulless thing. It was impossible to vary the quantity and quality of its tone suflSciently to make it an expressive instrument, and it is very significant to this study in all its aspects that the greatest musicians of two centuries ago, while they were obliged to compose for the harpsichord and give it their preference in the concert-room, nevertheless, as we know from Bach's example (but of that more anon), used the crude and simpler clavichord as the mediiun of their private communings with the muse.

Imperfect and weak as it was, the clavichord had yet the capacity in some degree to augment and diminish the tone at the will of the player. The tone of the other instruments was not ineptly described as "a scratch with a note at the end of it." Eflforts unceasing were made to increase and give variety to the tone, but in vain. The defect was fundamental. The earliest attempts at improvement seem to have been directed to the jacks. The quill-points had an unfortunate habit of wearing out rapidly, and when a player sat down to his instrimaent in a fine frenzy of inspiration he sometimes had to stop and put in new quills as well as time it. So substitutes for goose and crow quills were sought for, and fish bone, stiff cloth, leather, metal, and other materials were tried. The principle, however, always remained the same, and the defect was never remedied: the jacks twanged the strings, and twanged them with uniform loudness. For the sake of variety in tonal effects dampers of various kinds were also invented to check and modify the vibration of the strings after they had been twanged; and, later, strings were added which could be plucked simultaneously with the original set by an additional row of jacks. These added strings were first tuned in unison with the others, so that just twice the amount of tone resulted from their use, but Ruckers, of Antwerp, the most famous harpsichord builder of his time, conceived the idea of adding an extra system of strings tuned in the octave above, which could be coupled to the original system at will. The front of the harpsichord, which was the instrument to which most of these improvements were attached, came in time to look something like the console of an organ, with its draw-stops, pedals, and knee-swells.

The builders also used different kinds of metal in their strings for the sake of added effects, and since the quantity of tone could not be varied by the touch of the player, the swell-box idea was borrowed from the organ, the entire sound-board of the instrument being covered with a series of shutters like the so-called Venetian blinds, which could be opened and closed by the player by pressure of his foot. All these mechanical contrivances were little better than makeshifts. They did not go to the real seat of the diflSculty, and the inventive ingenuity which prompted them spent itself largely in the creation of fantastic contrivances whose worthlessness is demonstrated by the fact that they have long since ceased to occupy the attention of musicians. Devices which enabled the harpsichord player to imitate the voices of the flute, trumpet, bagpipe, bassoon, oboe, and fife, the rattle of drums and castanets, and even the noises of a rain-storm, were admired by the idle and curious, but to the serious musician they were mere mechanical curiosities only.

Several of the contrivances, however, were afterward utilized in the pianoforte for nobler ends. The shifting of the keyboard by means of a pedal, which is now used in the grand pianoforte to divert the blow of the hammer from one or two of the unison strings {una corda, or the "soft pedal," as it is commonly called), was first applied to the harpsichord for the purpose of transposition. Cloth dampers which were used to modify the tone of the harpsichord are interposed between the hammers and the strings of a square pianoforte for soft effects.

For many decades builders of spinets and harpsichords strove — their successors, indeed, are still striving — to overcome a deficiency which is inherent in the nature of the instrument. As I have said elsewhere,* despite all the skill, learning, and ingenuity which have been spent on. its perfection the pianoforte can be made only feebly to approximate that sustained style of musical utterance which is the soul of melody and finds its loftiest exemplification in singing.

To give out a melody perfectly presupposes the capacity to sustain tones without loss in power or quality, to bind them together at will and sometimes to intensify their d)mamic, or expressive, force while they sound. The tone of the pianoforte, like that of all its precursors, begins to die the moment it is created. The discoveries in the field of acoustics which have been made within the last century, and the introduction of the hammer-action in place of the jacks, have wrought an improvement in this respect, but the difficulty has not been obviated, and cannot be within the family to which the keyed instruments which we have been considering belong. A string plucked or struck in order to produce a sound is at once beyond the control of the player. To keep it within control the string must be rubbed. It is because of the importance which this truth assumed in the mind of one of the inventors of the pianoforte, and his experiments with an instru-