History of the Pianoforte and Pianoforte Players E-Book

Oscar Bie

• Herausgeber: Librorium Editions
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

Those were great days in which the foundation-stone was laid at Bayreuth. Days in which the creative philosopher of the stage threw his sceptre over the Ninth Symphony; days when choice spirits met together, who tremblingly passed through the moment in which they saw something never heard of become reality; days of a joyous intoxication when Liszt and Wagner embraced each other with tears; days that Nietzsche calls the happiest he had ever spent, when something brooded in the air that he could trace nowhere else—something ineffable but full of hope—those days, alas! return no more. In those days music, that music which the million greet with cheers of rapture, stood enthroned on the Stage, which gives to art its public hold upon the world. The living, new-creating music has to-day once more fled to the concert hall, to the haughty and more select rows of aristocratic amateurs who listen to the symphonic poems of Richard Strauss. These are tender and delicate creations beside the dramas of Wagner. They are elves, they elude us, and there are those, who see them not. We have been driven to them as the highest musical expressions of our time.

Leseprobe

A HISTORY OF THE PIANOFORTE AND PIANOFORTE PLAYERS

A

HISTORY of the PIANOFORTEAND PIANOFORTE PLAYERS

TRANSLATED AND REVISED FROM THE GERMAN OF

OSCAR BIE

BY

E. E. KELLETT, M.A.

AND

E. W. NAYLOR

© 2023 Librorium Editions

ISBN : 9782385743031

Dedicated

TO

EUGENE D’ALBERT

Editors’ Preface

This work does not profess to be so much a literal translation as a somewhat free version of Dr Bie’s “Das Klavier.” The author, writing as he does for a German public, naturally uses a more philosophic style than would be generally intelligible in England. Availing themselves, therefore, of Dr Bie’s kind permission, the Editors, with a view to making the book more acceptable to English readers, have allowed themselves considerable liberty both in omission and in addition. For all portions of the text which are enclosed in square brackets they hold themselves responsible. The footnotes, except a few which are specially marked, have been added by Dr Naylor.

E. W. N. E. E. K.

Contents

Chap.

Page

I.

Old England—A Prelude

1

The Domestic Character of the Piano, p. 2. Queen Elizabeth at the Spinet, p. 3. Shakespeare and Music, p. 5. Mediæval Church Music, p. 7. Ecclesiastical use of Folk Songs, p. 8. Popular Contrapuntal Music, p. 9. The Folk Song and the Instrument, p. 10. The Organ and the Lute, p. 11. The Clavier and Secular Music, p. 12. Italian influence in England, p. 13. Cultivation of Music in England, p. 15. First Books of Clavier Music, p. 16. Classes of old English Pieces, p. 17. The Virginal, p. 18. History of the Clavier, p. 19. The Clavichord, p. 21. The Clavicymbal, p. 23. Virginal Pieces, p. 26. Thomas Tallis, p. 27. William Bird, p. 28. John Bull, p. 32. Other Composers, p. 38.

II.

Old French Dance Pieces

40

England and France, p. 41. The Dance, p. 43. The Dance and Common Life, p. 43. The Dance and the Stage, p. 45. The Danseuses, p. 45. Allusions in Dance Names, p. 48. Old Programme-Music, p. 49. The Titles, p. 51. Chambonnières, p. 52. Couperin, p. 53. Rameau and others, p. 65.

III.

Scarlatti

68

A Preface by Scarlatti, p. 68. His Life, p. 70. His Style and the Italian Musical Emotion, p. 71. Technique, p. 73. Love of Adventure, p. 74. The Opera, p. 75. The position of Music, p. 77. Chamber Music, p. 78. Clavier Pieces, p. 79. Frescobaldi and Pasquini, p. 80. Corelli, p. 82. The Da Capo Style, p. 84. Scarlatti’s Sonatas, p. 86. Other Italians, p. 89.

IV.

Bach

91

German Music, p. 91. Kuhnau, p. 92. Bach and Musical History, p. 93. Bach’s Life, p. 94. His Formal Principle, p. 95. The Inventions and Symphonies, p. 97. The Toccatas, p. 98. The Fugues, p. 100. The Wohltemperiertes Klavier, p. 101. The Original Editions, p. 102. The Suites, p. 104. The Fantasias, p. 109. Bach’s Forms, p. 111. Technique, p. 116. The Hammer Clavier, p. 121. Bach and the Modern Pianoforte, p. 112.

V.

The “Galanten”

126

The Change of Taste, p. 127. The “Professional Musician,” p. 129. Spread of Clavier Music, p. 131. Musical Periodicals, p. 131. Pianoforte Factories, p. 133. Stein and Streicher, p. 134. Handel, p. 137. Philip Emanuel Bach, p. 138. Haydn, p. 149. Mozart, p. 151.

VI.

Beethoven

157

Beethoven Contrasted with the old Composers of the Empire, p. 159. Cosmopolitan Life of the Pianist, p. 161. Viennese Pianists, p. 160. Public Contests of Pianists, p. 161. Dussek, p. 164. The Sonata of the Time, p. 165. Beethoven’s Nature, p. 167. Music as a Speech, 167. The “Development” of Motives, p. 171. Rise of the Tragic Sonata, p. 172. The Sportive Beethoven, p. 173. His Forms, p. 175. His Archaism, p. 177. His tendency to the “Galant” style, p. 179. His Last Works, p. 181.

VII.

The Virtuosos

183

Beethoven’s Technique, p. 183. The Clavier Schools of this period, p. 185. The groups of Technicians, p. 189. The Life of the Virtuoso, p. 192. Concerts and Improvisations, p. 196. Compositions, p. 197. Piano and Opera, p. 201. The Étude, p. 203. Clementi, p. 208. Cramer, p. 210. Hummel, p. 211. Czerny, p. 216. Kalkbrenner, p. 218. Weber, p. 218. Moscheles, p. 221.

VIII.

The Romantics

224

Romance, p. 224. Franz Schubert, p. 225. Robert Schumann, p. 231. Early Works, p. 231. Jean Paul, p. 232. “Davidsbund,” p. 235. Private Life, p. 237. The “Neue Zeitschrift für Musik,” p. 238. “Davidsbündler Tänze,” p. 238. “Carnival,” p. 240. F sharp minor Sonata, p. 241. “Fantasie Stücke,” p. 242. “Études Symphoniques,” p. 242. Bach and E. T. A. Hoffmann, p. 244. Kreisleriana, p. 245. Op. 17, p. 246. “Novellettes,” p. 248. Mendelssohn, p. 249. “Faschings-schwank,” and later Works, p. 254. Chopin, p. 255. His Art, p. 257. His Life, p. 258. George Sand, p. 259. Works, p. 261. Style of Playing, p. 264. Field, p. 265. Chopin’s Method, p. 266. [Sterndale Bennett], p. 268.

IX.

Liszt and the Present Time

271

Liszt and the three Types of Artists, p. 272. Life, p. 274. Liszt and Thalberg, p. 277. A Pianist’s Creed, p. 281. Paganini and Liszt, p. 282. Liszt’s Concerts, p. 286. Piano Works, p. 287. The Interpreters p. 292. Virtuosos of Older Style, p. 293. Rubinstein and Bülow, p. 294. Virtuoso and Teacher, p. 299. Tausig and d’Albert, p. 301. Modern Virtuosos, p. 301. Risler, p. 301. The Pianist’s Profession, p. 302. The Piano as a Social Factor, p. 303. Piano Instruction, p. 305. The Practical and Theoretical Schools, p. 306. The Common or “C major” keyboard compared with the “Janko,” p. 308. Present-day Piano Factories, p. 310. Steinway and Bechstein, p. 311. The Piano as a piece of Furniture, p. 313. Pianos de luxe, p. 315. The Market for Piano Literature, p. 316. Modern Piano Works, p. 317. Alkan, p. 317. The Post-Romantics, p. 318. The French School, p. 319. The Russians, p. 320. The Scandinavians, p. 321. The English and Americans, p. 322. The Germans, p. 322. Jensen, p. 322. Brahms, p. 322. Raff, p. 323. Living Germans, p. 324. Conclusion, p. 326.

Author’s Postscript: and Errata

328

Index

329

List of Illustrations

334

Guido of Arezzo and his protector, Bishop Theodal, playing on a Monochord. Vienna Hofbibliothek.

Old England: a Prelude

[The drift of the remarks immediately following, which the author entitles a “Prelude,” is, that Music is at the present time flourishing more at home than in public; that the playing of chamber compositions is more popular than the representation of huge operas; and that therefore it is a suitable time to consider the history and scope of the instrument which, more than all others, has made possible this cultivation of domestic music. He begins then by contrasting the huge performances of Wagnerian drama at Bayreuth with what he calls the “intimate” character of a private pianoforte recital at home.]

Those were great days in which the foundation-stone was laid at Bayreuth. Days in which the creative philosopher of the stage threw his sceptre over the Ninth Symphony; days when choice spirits met together, who tremblingly passed through the moment in which they saw something never heard of become reality; days of a joyous intoxication when Liszt and Wagner embraced each other with tears; days that Nietzsche calls the happiest he had ever spent, when something brooded in the air that he could trace nowhere else—something ineffable but full of hope—those days, alas! return no more. In those days music, that music which the million greet with cheers of rapture, stood enthroned on the Stage, which gives to art its public hold upon the world. The living, new-creating music has to-day once more fled to the concert hall, to the haughty and more select rows of aristocratic amateurs who listen to the symphonic poems of Richard Strauss. These are tender and delicate creations beside the dramas of Wagner. They are elves, they elude us, and there are those, who see them not. We have been driven to them as the highest musical expressions of our time.

Since the trumpet-notes of Bayreuth died away we have conducted our musical devotions on a smaller, more intimate scale. Already, beyond the concert hall, we see opening the private chamber, holiest of all, and the chamber music, which is to the music of the stage what etching is to painting. It is the old ebb and flow. As we passed from the single instrument to the orchestra, from Beethoven’s orchestra with its travail for expression to Wagner’s stage with its world-embracing aims, so we are now passing back from the stage to undiluted music first before thousands of listeners, then before hundreds only.

And now, if I had my way, I would bring the pianoforte before a small audience, say of ten persons, not in the concert hall but in the home, where the artist may give his little concerts, in the fitting hour of twilight, playing to a company every one of whom he knows. Under such circumstances, indeed, one can implicitly trust himself to the intimate character of the pianoforte. Then stream from it the sweet tones of the harp, then, like strings of pearls, come chains of roses from its notes, or Titanic forces seem to escape from it, and my soul lies wholly in the player’s finger-tips. Is it then that the piano is a contemptible instrument compared with the violin or the string-quartet? Do I then remember how it sings so hoarsely, and how its scales are so broken, and how the soul of its melody is so dead without the breath of the rising and falling tone?

Of course, if it expresses itself in the piano-concerto, on the podium of the orchestra, or even if it trusts itself, in trio or quartet, to the company of strings or wind, then it moves my compassion. A foreign atmosphere envelops it even if Beethoven’s concerto in E flat major is resounding; and a weakness haunts it, if in chamber music it alternates with the dominating melody of the singing violin. But when once the clang of the violin and of the Cor Anglais[1] has faded from our ears, and all comparison has been laid aside, then, and then only, the soul of the pianoforte rises before us. Every good thing must be considered per se apart from all comparison. Is it no good thing to have the whole material of tone before one’s ten fingers, to penetrate it, truly to penetrate it; to feel beneath one’s nerves all the subtleties of all music—the song, the dance, whispering, shrieking, weeping, laughter?—all, I mean, voiced in the tone of the pianoforte, the epic tone of this modern Cithara, which, in its own kind, embraces the lyrical nature of the violin and the dramatic nature of the orchestra? In such all-embracing power the piano is in the twilight chamber a strange and dear tale-teller, a Rhapsode for the intimate spirit, which can express itself in it by improvisation, and an archive for the historian to whom it unrolls the whole life of modern music in its universal speech from a point of view which gives us the whole in the average. Then only do I love the piano—then is it faithful, then noble, genuine, unique.

Queen Elizabeth of England is sitting in the afternoon at her spinet. She is thinking of the conversation which she has had this forenoon with Sir James Melville—a conversation which the latter has preserved for us in writing. He was in 1564 ambassador from Mary Stuart to Elizabeth. Elizabeth had asked him what was Mary’s style of dress, the colour of her hair, her figure, her way of life. “When Mary returns from the hunt,” he answered, “she gives herself up to historical reading or to music, for she is at home with lute and virginal.” “Does she play well?” asked Elizabeth. “For a queen, very well,” was the answer. And so, this afternoon, Elizabeth is sitting at the spinet, and playing Bird’s or Dr Bull’s Variations on popular airs. She plays from the very (or a similar) copy which to-day is marked in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge as Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book. She does not notice that Sir James and Lord Hunsdon are secretly listening. When suddenly she sees them standing behind her she stops playing. “I am not used,” she says, “to play before men; but when I am solitary, to shun melancholy.”

Fifty years before, Albert Dürer had given an illustration of Melancholy in his famous engraving. Melancholy, as dignified Depression, is sitting in the open air, surrounded by the implements for Manual Labour, Art and Science. It expressed the anticipated pain of the misfortune which lurks in the good fortune of knowledge and intelligence; the pain of the dawning Age of Wisdom, for which Erasmus, in his Praise of Folly, had already shown a just contempt. In his St Jerome, Dürer represents the deliverance from Melancholy. St Jerome, in the contemporary engraving, is sitting quietly and contentedly at home, while the sun shines through the circular panes,[2] the papers, books and cushions being so neatly disposed around, and the lion so wonderfully sleeping beside him. But—in the corner stands his house-organ or spinet!

Something of the spirit of the St Jerome breathes through the Elizabethan music—a tone of the Volkslied, or of that intimate world-sense, alongside of the decaying mediæval counterpoint (decaying as the Gothic architecture was decaying) like scenes of popular life or of lyrical beauty, which display themselves chiefly in the drama, in the midst of scenes of historic ceremonial. Everyone has observed what a subtle sense for soft musical tones is revealed throughout Shakespeare’s plays. The Duke in Twelfth Night loves the Volkslied, the old song, “old and plain,” which “the spinsters and the knitters in the sun, and the free maids that weave their thread with bones, do use to chant: it is silly sooth, and dallies with the innocence of love like the old age.” He heard it last night; he will hear it again to-day: “Methought it did relieve my passion much, More than light airs and recollected terms Of these most brisk and giddy-pacèd times.” And it is the fool who sings it to him—that typical figure of the love-thoughts and of the love-business of the people: the fool, who in every play has the largest store of old popular songs, and who in this very drama empties a very cornucopia of them. But Shakespeare’s holiest encomium on music is sung at night, in that idyllic scene at the close of the Merchant of Venice, between Lorenzo and Jessica. The moonlight sleeps upon the bank; the lovers sit in silence before Portia’s house and let the music steal upon their ears. “Soft stillness and the night become the touches of sweet harmony.” Lorenzo endeavours to cheer Jessica with the music. We can well believe that his impassioned words express the feelings of the poet himself, who has marked his Shylock, his Cassius, his Othello,[3] his Caliban, with the stain of a heedlessness of music:—

“The man that hath no music in himself,

Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,

Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils.”

Portia enters the moonlit garden and hears the gentle tones, not knowing whence they come. She feels keenly the eternal magic of invisible music which lies pillowed in silence and night. The whole scene is a hymn on the infelt soul of musical self-centredness, wherein man finds his best self.

So too, perhaps, stood Shakespeare by the spinet of his beloved, and to his musical sense the tones and the love are blended together, his loved one becoming transfigured into music:—

“How oft when thou, my music, music playest,

Upon that blessed wood whose motion sounds

With thy sweet fingers, when thou gently swayest

The wiry concord that mine ear confounds,

Do I envy those jacks[4] that nimble leap

To kiss the tender inward of thy hand,

Whilst my poor lips, that should that harvest reap,

At the wood’s boldness by thee blushing stand.

To be so tickled, they would change their state

And situation with those dancing chips,

O’er whom thy fingers walk with gentle gait,

Making dead wood more blessed than living lips.

Since saucy jacks[4] so happy are in this,

Give them thy fingers, me thy lips to kiss.”

It is in the Elizabethan age that the clavier begins for the first time to play a part in the world. In the English clavier-music, as in all English music at that time, there is a ravishing bloom, which vanished just as quickly from the popular concerts, never to appear again. Circumstances combined to favour it. A certain repose, a dependence upon art came upon the London society of that day, and at such times art penetrates easily into the privacy of the home. For centuries had the Low Countries held the sway of music; but the art of tone, which had made its way thither under the stars of Dufay, Okeghem, and Josquin des Près, remained in the service of the Church. It represented the rapid development of contrapuntal vocal harmony, as it had slowly developed itself into music per se from the figurations, which at the end of the tenth century began to found themselves on the canto fermo of the Gregorian material. Around the Gregorian pillars there had arisen a mathematical system of rules and proportions; of musical vaultings, symmetries, and mouldings, in which the ordering world-spirit seemed to have realised itself. As yet, however, there was no melody whose contour was unifying; no harmony whose development was to be foreseen; no singing voice resting on the support of an accompaniment. The voices ran according to the laws of their tempi, all equally important from soprano to bass; and their harmony only aided in reducing them to an average. The instrument of this great sacred music was the human voice, at first only the bearer of the tone, but then gradually here and there betraying a greater depth of feeling: and yet this great function of the voice had a value for expression which is not to be underrated. Even in this mathematical tone-system there lay the power of exhibiting nature as she is.

Orlando Gibbons. After Grignon’s engraving in Hawkins.

If art was to escape from these rudiments into more intimate circles, the appropriate social surroundings must be provided. The home must develop.

The public art of the Middle Ages had divided its favours between church and hall; it was in the church that counterpoint found its development; it was in the hall that the old popular song, without making special advance, maintained itself. The popular song ranged itself over against counterpoint, for it was pure melody, as we understand melody to-day, and it was well arranged as to rhythm in four or eight-bar “strains.”[5] In two ways, however, counterpoint and popular song might meet: the first might absorb the second, or vice versa. It is well known what took place when counterpoint absorbed the popular song: throughout the later Middle Ages popular songs, even the vulgarest, are taken up in masses or motets as motives for figures; nay, more, when they alternate, while the Gregorian cantus holds its own alongside, church hymns are named after popular songs, and we stumble everywhere upon masses named after their underlying melody,[6] “L’homme armé,” “Malheur me bat,” “O Venus,” and the like. But, as might be expected, these are taken up utterly into the framework of the voice-mathematic; their peculiar aroma disappears; they are thrown into contrapuntal form. Far from betraying a worldly element, such as Ambrose conveyed under allegorical paintings of old landscape in religious pictures, they betray on the contrary a total absence of the secular sense. To them the content of the melody is so indifferent that they never once display it.

Young Scholar and his Wife. Painting by Gonzales Coques (1614-1684), in the Royal Gallery at Cassel.

Secondly, the popular song on its own side stands apart from counterpoint. Since counterpoint is the recognised style of the time, popular song has no choice but to appropriate that means of expression. Hence arises the Madrigal, the most festive form of this appropriation, which sets popular themes to many parts, but with the utmost art. It exhausts all the requirements of better taste in secular music in the sixteenth century. Societies like the Arcadeltian[7] have resulted in an extraordinary growth of published material, and it is no mere accident that this process has continued in England, thanks to the exertions of a Madrigal Society, down to our own time. Yet the popular song was too opposed to the choral setting to feel itself at home in this form long and universally. It tended to unison or to the total absence of words; in the latter case it could still remain contrapuntal and became simply a tone-piece;[8] in the former the counterpoint existed, so to speak, simply at the pleasure of the melody, as it did in hundreds of old melodies throughout the world. These old popular songs, of remarkable origin in their plain melodious orderliness, became finally the precursors of modern music. While they marked the monodic principle, and gave to the expression the full value which it had in all early music, they accustomed the ears to the pleasure of the fully-outlined melody, and compelled the combination with this of an equally well-outlined harmony. Thus the way was prepared for the great discovery of the monodic opera, which arose in Florence about 1600.

But in that wonderful drama, which the emancipation of the secular or popular principle in the music of the sixteenth century presents, the instrument appears as the second agent, with its greater freedom as contrasted with the human voice. Choral counterpoint penetrates into the music of the future in the two ways of the one-part song and of the instrumental polyphony, which form a quite natural whole. In proportion as vocal music became more individual and more full of soul, the absolute instrumental music gained in meaning. But we must mark two impulses which necessarily condition each other. As the one-part song was, so to speak, a victory of the logic of expression over the metaphysic of many-parts, so the latter also was a transference of counterpoint to the instrument.

[In the late sixteenth century, counterpoint can scarcely be said to survive in any popular shape except that of the Catch or (endless) canon, the performance of which, when the complete melody is once learnt, is merely mechanical, and requires no great intelligence or attention from the singer. But to perform continuous contrapuntal music requires very great intelligence, and such concentrated attention as is seldom found in its perfection amongst mere singers. Instrumentalists therefore, as being superior in these indispensable qualities, were naturally called upon, first to assist, and then to displace the singers, who had allowed themselves to rest on their physical gifts rather than on the accomplishments of the intellect.][9] Thus it is the instrument which opens to the popular song and to the dance of the same kind, within the contrapuntal style, new paths of promise; and this principle of popular music, after it had held itself for a century in the almost neglected plain melody under the wintry covering of ecclesiastical counterpoint, becomes, in a moment, conscious of its immeasurable powers. Still, further, here there was the ground on which the popular song, so long differenced from counterpoint, gradually overcame it and was able to develop its principle freshly and clearly. In the opera we see it suddenly break with counterpoint; but this kind of art suffered by this suddenness, since it swung uneasily to and fro from the heights of the stage-reformation to the depths of virtuosity. Instrumental music escaped this sudden break, took up into itself counterpoint, transformed it out of itself, and passed on to meet a development far more regular and advancing with giant strides. What instrument, then, was best for the reproduction of the contrapuntal play of the voices? Next to choral song stood the organ, with its power of holding on its tones. Slowly, therefore, as we might expect, the organ steps into the contest with the church-choir. At first more clumsily, then more gently, its voices contrast and work into counterpoint. The organ also offers, as exchange for the sung chorus, direct transferences from motets of Josquin and Orlando Lasso. But so soon as the organ recollects that it is not vocal but an instrument, it begins—shall we say?—to run off into flourishes. All kinds of adornments and grace-notes start up, and finally the organist prides himself on departing utterly from the composer’s or author’s intention, and embroidering the theme at pleasure. A Prelude and a Fugue in this style appeared to the men of that time dreadful enough to linger over; as Hermann Finck writes, “they run sometimes by the half-hour, up and down over the key-board, trusting thus, with God’s help, to attain the highest, never asking where Dan Time, or Dan Accent, or Dan Tone, or Bona Fantasia, are staying in the meanwhile.” Further, when the organ had purified itself in the great epoch of German church-music, it had perforce to remain in the service of the Church. It felt the influence of the audience, which was brought into rhythm and harmony by the secular principle of music—that influence which, in the Protestant Choral and in the creations of Bach, made itself felt as a brilliant reaction of the secular musical sense on the church tradition.

Alongside of the organ came the lute, which for so long had been the chief instrument of the home. Yet the lute, with its tones drawn from so few strings, was unable to show itself very productive. It had provided the accompaniment of songs, and music in many parts had very early been arranged for it.[10] At all times, therefore, the lute had imitated the contrapuntal style, though in simple fashion, and occasionally certain passages had been accented with chords thrown in arpeggio-wise. Whether the lute accompanied a voice, or whether it took up the popular melody into itself to produce “absolute” music, it exhibited a style of its own, conditioned by its own limitations, even as, alongside of the organ, it had its own note-script.[11] It was not convenient accurately to retain on the lute every separate voice. An instrumental style was formed; men became accustomed to the sufficiency of this simplicity of tone; dances were written for the lute, as Hans Judenkunig in his lute-book offers a “Court-dance, Panana[12] alla Veneziana, Rossina ein welscher Dantz” and the like. As time went on, all well-known pieces were arranged for the lute, as they are to-day for the piano. Encyclopædias appear—as for example in 1603 the “Thesaurus” in ten volumes of “Besardus nec non praestantissimorum musicorum, qui hoc seculo in diversis orbis partibus excellunt, selectissima omnis generis cantus in testudine (the lute) modulamina continens.” Graceful figurations arise, which in France and Italy receive fine names, while the German lute-player sets himself strongly against these complicated “battements,” “tremblements,” or “flattements,” against this or that “passagio largo,” “stretto,” “raddopiato.” But, on the whole, much as the lute achieved, it could not suffice to compel the complete admission of the whole musical material into the home.

The heavy churchiness of the organ and the light secularity of the lute were thus constrained to unite themselves in an instrument which was sufficiently flexible to effect the representation of all the voice parts at once yet more easily than in the choir, and which could embrace the whole tonic scale so completely as to expand the limits of the voice both above and below. It must be a light, moveable instrument, a miniature of the organ. The clavier offered itself for this end; and in it organ and lute met in fruitful wedlock.

Such is the position and the meaning of the clavier in the great struggle for freedom of the secular music-principle which fills the sixteenth century. With this begins the history of the clavier, and simultaneously the history of the orchestra. The orchestra flourishes where the clavier flourishes, and vice versa. The combination of single instruments in a body, and that one instrument which alone can represent that combination, are manifestations of the same movement, namely, of the transference of the church choral tone-practice into the sphere of the secular, where in place of the counterpoint which ran on by the hour, an interlaced system of harmonies, a strict organisation of melodies, gradually assumed the mastery. The orchestra occupied itself with public representations; the clavier with the advance of the new music in the home. Already, in Venice, had instruments taken their share with the singers in the church; now chamber-music also began to flourish. Later, in France, the court-orchestra gained a special significance, and very shortly the clavier also made its importance felt. In Naples the orchestra appears simultaneously with the Italian opera, and shortly afterwards arises Scarlatti with his clavier-pieces. In Old England the orchestra was regarded with a special affection; and thus it is that in England the clavier first flourishes.

The early development of instrumental music in Venice cannot have been without its influence upon London, which not only cast an eye on the social and topographical aspect of the city of the lagoons, but also allowed itself to be consciously influenced by Italian culture. So early as 1512 we hear of Italian masques performed in the Palace at Greenwich; and when, in 1561, a tragedy by Lord Buckhurst[13] was performed with introductory pantomimes and orchestral music, we recognise the Venetian touch in the individual character of the instruments. In Act I. the violin, in Act II. horns, in Act III. flutes, in Act IV. oboes, in Act V. drums and pipes are set down.[14] The orchestra of Queen Elizabeth exhibits strong features of the mediæval physiognomy: there are sixteen trumpets (about equal to the number of the singers in the associated chorus) and three kettle-drums stand in close relation to them. It is the old official festival music once more. Eight violins, one lute, one harp, one bagpipe, two flutes, and three virginals are the relatively weaker supplanters of the more intimate orchestral type. The respective costliness appears from the account: the lute, £60; the violin, £20; the bagpipes, £12. The Italian operatic orchestra started on the opposite path, gradually getting rid of the stringed instruments and adopting wind. It was, however, very thin, and even in France the orchestra of the sixteenth century appears hardly more elaborate than a Papal orchestra of the fifteenth. It is the English orchestra that at this time stands at the head, not even the thirty instrumentalists of Munich being equal to it. Above all there seems to be growing a division of labour between orchestra and chamber-music, so much so that Prätorius, when in his great musical work (1618), he mentions such combinations of lute-choirs, calls this style of chamber-music especially English. “Die Engelländer nennens gar apposite à consortio ein consort,[15] wenn etliche Personen mit allerley Instrumenten, als Klavicymbel und Gross-spinett, grosse Lyra, Doppelharff, Lauten, Theorben, Bandorn, Penorcon, Zittern, Viol de Gamba, einer kleinen Diskant-Geig, einer Quer-Flöt oder Bock-Flöt, bisweilen auch einer stillen Posaun oder Racket zusammen in einer Compagny und Gesellschaft gar still, sanfft und lieblich accordiren, und in anmuthiger Symphonia mit einander zusammen stimmen.” Hence it appears that the orchestra and the chamber-music of old England were the chief things. In the former the wind prevailed, in the latter the strings; but the clavier had its place in both kinds. For the clavier, during many years, even when it had made good its position as a solo instrument, still took its part in orchestral combinations. Even in Hasse’s time the Kapellmeister at Dresden sat at the clavier.

Under such circumstances it is no wonder that the old English clavier should have flourished, or that it was in England that it first recognised its mission. The influence of this was great enough to bring about a speedy development on the continent. The cultivation of music was not only wide-spread, but also very ancient; so much so that the old musical writer Tinctor (1434-1520) expressly ascribes the origin of all contrapuntal music to England. The compositions of the thirteenth century were, in grace of melody, simplicity of rhythm, and modernity of harmony, far in advance of their age. (Compare the canon in six parts,[16] “Sumer is icumen in” of the Monk of Reading, before 1226.) It is noteworthy that the English possessed of old a popular, simple, melodious tendency in music which reminds us of Mendelssohn. This has made English music great and also small. Great, for at a time when the whole musical world struggled with the contrapuntal want of system in harmony and melody, the English were capable of preparing the way, in systematic, plastic form, for the new conquering secular principle. Small, because so soon as this principle became universally recognised, they laid themselves to sleep in the luxurious enjoyment of their tradition, and set up foreign ideals, such as Mendelssohn and Handel,[17] who were endowed with the like gifts.

Lady at the Clavier. Painting by Dirk Hals (?1656), in the Rijksmuseum at Amsterdam.

Madrigals of Elizabeth’s time are so familiar to us that Dr Ambros, of Prague, could produce them in Prague with great success, drawing from J. J. Maier’s German collection. That free geniality of the English in its ancient dress, which conceals all triviality, overcomes us even to-day. With the clavier-pieces it is the same. We are charmed with the extreme simplicity of their musical form, and we love them because they come before us in an archaic dress. They exhale an aroma whose popular sweetness mingles beautifully with the slight harshness of their naïve style. Allowing ourselves a touch of triviality, we find ourselves wondering that these works seem to be quite outside their own time, and in the modernness of their spirit surpass even the renowned contemporary performances of Gabrieli and the other Venetians.

In this London, the imitator and rival of Venice, we fall upon the first clavier-books that, as such, were ever collected in the world. Strictly speaking, they are not the absolute first. We read on the title-page of a collection of Chansons, Madrigals and Dances, issued at Lyons in 1560 by S. Gorlier: “Premier Livre de tablature d’Espinette.” We learn from Prätorius that the inscription, “For an Instrument,” which appears so often on old works, is not to be understood universally, but to be confined to the clavier. Nevertheless, it is in England that we first find in any numbers collections of expressly-marked clavier-pieces, springing from a special impulse of musical enthusiasm. First in interest stands the so-called Queen Elizabeth’s Virginal Book, one of the chief treasures of the Fitzwilliam Museum, lately transcribed into our own script for Breitkopf and Härtel. Granting that it may have been written after the time of Elizabeth, it yet, with its three hundred pieces, goes back to the earliest names of this school—Tallis, Bird, Farnaby, Bull. Next, in the library of the late Rimbault, an important English historian of music, we find, in manuscript, a Virginal Book of the Earl of Leicester, and another of Lady Nevill. Doubtless great lords and ladies had many manuscript collections of this kind, including copies of the favourite pieces of the day. But soon manuscript gave way to print. In 1611 appeared the first copper-engraved set of pieces ever seen in England. This was “Parthenia, or the Maydenhead of the first Musicke that ever was printed for the Virginalls. Composed by three famous masters: William Byrd, Dr John Bull, and Orl. Gibbons, Gentilmen of His Majestie’s most illustrious Chappell.” A modern edition of this collection was issued in 1847 by the indefatigable London Musical Antiquarian Society. From the materials collected by this Society Ernst Pauer, whose contributions to the history of the clavier have achieved a great repute, formed his collected edition of Old English Composers, which presents, in modernised form, special pieces by Bird, Bull, Gibbons, Blow, Purcell, and even Arne, who, though later, is not uninteresting.

Title-page of the first English engraved Clavier Music, 1611.

The pieces in these collections are of three kinds. First, free fantasias,[18] such as were also composed for organ and lute under the name of prelude, preamble, or even toccata (here denoting simply piece). In their essence fugal they are broken and intersected by florid passages. In the second class, a canto fermo was taken from a church melody, and developed after the approved fashion in fugal or figured style. Or, finally—and this is the most usual case, and the style most appropriate to the clavier—a number of variations, or even groups of variations, if the theme has several sections, are formed into a series. The theme itself is a popular song or dance. Popular songs, as they swept uncounted through England and Scotland, are inexhaustible. Even to-day they retain their freshness. To the whole piece they impart their tense and melodious rhythm. The dances—in common time called Pavans, in triple, Galliards—are frequently named after noblemen,[19] and are in their variations adorned with the same encomiastic flourishes as the songs.

The clavier, for which these English musicians wrote their pieces, was of the kind called a virginal. The virginal was a peculiarly handy kind of spinet. It is not to be assumed that, after the quibbling and flattering fashion of the time, it was so called in compliment to the Maiden Queen. The name is older. Possibly it is due to the fact that the small size of the instrument made it specially suitable for young girls. We find scarcely any pictures of men sitting at the clavier. In Italy the same name was in vogue; but we are not here concerned with the whole history of the nomenclature of old keyed instruments. We are only so far interested in the history of the instrument as it forms the basis for the rise of the literature, i.e. style of composition, which concerns us in its human aspect. The histories of the clavier, those of Rimbault, Oskar Paul, and others, place the history of the instrument in the foreground. Even Weitzmann has appended to the last edition of his “History of Clavier-Playing and Clavier-Literature,” a comprehensive chapter on this subject. But the history of the clavier is a very complicated matter if we are tedious on it, and a very simple matter if, without becoming inexact, we are brief upon it.

It is a union of the harp with the mechanism of key-action. Harps, in which the strings are plucked with the plectrum, are in some form or other as old as music itself, and appear in the most various shapes in the first dawn of civilisation. The mechanism of the keyboard, which by means of an easy leverage adapted to the human fingers, gives the player control over the sounds of pipes or strings, is not quite so ancient, since it presumes a certain inventive capacity; but it is old enough to be equally beyond our chronological powers. In Europe we find keyed organs as early as the first centuries after Christ. The application of this action to stringed instruments was completed in the monochord. The monochord, an instrument well-known to the earliest theoretical musicians, was a board with a string stretched across it on which the intervals could be clearly marked and sounded by mathematical division: the half marking the octave above the pitch of the whole length of the string; the third part of it giving a fifth above that octave; the quarter part giving a fourth above that fifth, namely a note two octaves above the pitch of the whole string; the fifth part sounding a major third above the last named note, viz., a seventeenth above the pitch of the whole length; and so on.

The simple monochord developed itself after the tenth century in two directions, the musical and the technical. Its development was musical, inasmuch as three or four strings took the place of the one in order to produce a chord instead of a simple arpeggio; an aim which the church music attained by the multiplication of instruments sounding only one note each at a time. It was technical, inasmuch as, in place of the constant alteration of the “bridge” which divided the string, keys were introduced, which not only divided the string at the desired spot, by a flat metal pin (called “tangent” from its action in simply “touching” against the wire), but also caused it to sound. With twenty keys and only a few strings, of course it was necessary for several keys to divide the same string, and to sound it at different points in its length; whereby the simultaneous sounding of several notes was brought into the proper limits. Though thus really many-stringed, the instrument still retained its name of monochord. Gradually the number of keys increased, and in increasing proportion the number of strings, which still remained of equal length. About the year 1450, probably, the clavier attained this, its earliest form of the monochord. It served an educational purpose. Virdung, Abbot of Amberg, who in 1511 published his German “Music with Illustrations,” is our authority for the development of the monochord up to the first true clavier-form—that of the clavichord—which is nothing more nor less than the many-stringed many-keyed “monochord” which we have just described. The self-contradictory “mono” was rejected, and ‘clavi’ substituted (Lat. clavis, a key). The clavis is the key which in the organ admits the wind to the pipes, in the clavier sets the strings in motion.

From the Weimar “Wunderbuch,” a Clavichord of about 1440. One of the oldest representations.

From the Weimar “Wunderbuch,” Primitive Spinet, of about 1440. One of the oldest representations.

The clavichord introduced a new means of “expression,” viz., the “Bebung” (trembling, shivering), which could be applied to any of the notes by a gentle after-pressure of the key, a mournful, soul-moving vibrato, which was only possible with the peculiar mechanism of the clavichord, where a “tangent” both divided the string and at the same moment instantaneously created the sound. A slight relaxation of this pressure on the key caused a slight lowering of pitch; a slight renewal of pressure a corresponding heightening. The German players of the eighteenth century could scarcely find it in their hearts to resign this delicate effect, even for the advantages of the modern pianoforte. Here for the first time the keyboard mechanism had succeeded in producing a modification of the tones by “touch” alone, and the keyed instrument had gained its soul. How confined were the old eight keys of the Hurdygurdy,[20] the favourite instrument till the rise of the lute, where the strings were strained against a rosined wheel turned by a crank (a sort of everlasting fiddle-bow), while the keys divided the strings into notes—an antiquated compromise between clavier and violin! How clumsy was the treatment of the organ-keys so late as the fourteenth century, in which, according to Prätorius, the keys were struck with the fist! But from this time the art of mechanics develops quickly, and the rapid increase of the number of keys in the clavichord shows us how speedily its supremacy was attained. The fall of the key was shallow, the quick-sounding tone encouraged ornamental flourishes, which were more easily played on the clavichord than on our heavy-touched pianoforte. Yet it was long before the number of strings became equal to that of the keys. Not till the eighteenth century (about 1725) do we find clavichords with a string to every key. (These are called free instruments, in contra-distinction to the old tied.)[21] It is obvious that the “tied” clavichords did not admit of all chords; but those which were impossible were discords, avoided on other grounds by the older music. To sound C and D flat together was impossible; but no one complained, for no one, for reasons of style, wished to try it. But, on very old clavichords, C and E are also incapable of being simultaneously sounded—a fact which gives us many a hint for the criticism of the oldest pieces.

In the form of a simple case, fit to be laid on the table, and later when fitted with its own stand, frequently painted on top and sides, or with its keys set in ivory and metal, the clavichord continues to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Although the strings were then duplicated, although it was possible to attain in the touch stronger or weaker, louder or softer, expression, yet it could not, with its far too great simplicity of tone, hold its place in the rapidly hurrying development of music. It had taken one thousand years to improve the monochord, five hundred more to produce a clavichord, two hundred and fifty more were required to bring the clavicymbal[22] form to its perfection; and yet a hundred and fifty for the clavicymbal to emerge into a Steinway or a Bechstein.

The clavicymbal represents a second form of the clavier, which begins its career about 1400. Its invention is directly due to the influence of the organ. When the clavier began to replace the organ in the home, a desire was felt for the stronger notes of the great wind-instrument. The clavichord was unequal to the task. A new technique was required. The strings, instead of being touched and divided, were plucked with quills, which stood out at the side from the jacks, at the end of the key-lever. For this purpose it was necessary of course that the strings should be tuned each to its proper note, and therefore have each its due length. The mechanism of plucking, and the measurement of the strings, give to the clavicymbal its character as distinct from the clavichord. The tone becomes rippling, metallically glittering, firm and yet rattling; nay, it might be called romantic, if it could sustain its poetical air, which it gains for us in the first instance by its strange character. But it was a defect that the tone was unsuitable for nuances; for, unlike the clavichord, it was unable to produce forte, piano, or the “Bebung.” Here a hint was taken from the organ. Stops, as with the organ, were added; these, as they were drawn out or pushed in, made it possible to use either one, two, or three strings on any single key, thus offering three gradations from piano to forte. Or, by the same means of a stop, a damper of leather or cloth was put on the strings, and thus an imitation of the lute was effected. Or, thirdly, both these appliances were united by providing two keyboards placed one over the other, on which at will the player could play loud or soft. Hence arose dozens of combinations. Strings were coupled in unison or octave, registers were made either for hand or foot, keyboards were made to shift, the shapes of the cases were either rectangular or in the “flügel” form (like our grand pianos) to accommodate the gradual shortening of the strings as they reached the higher octaves, the cases were either small, or larger, and furnished with magnificent stands, such as were brought out by the first famous clavier-manufactory, that of the Ruckers at Antwerp, who flourished at the end of the sixteenth century; there were almost as many names as shapes. Those with smaller cases were called Virginals, those in the shape of a swine’s head were called Spinets (“Spinet” referring to the plectrum of quill); while the larger instruments were “Clavi-cymbals” (cembalo, a “dulcimer”; though the clavicymbal was a harp-with-keys, not by any means a dulcimer, which is the progenitor of the pianoforte, a very different matter), or in Italy “Gravicymbels,” in England “Harpsichords,” in France “Clavecins.” The keyboard, at first incomplete in the lower “short” octave,[23] gradually spread itself over three or even five octaves. The fulness of tone was greater, but the touch necessarily heavier than of old. The new instrument was unsuited for the quick development of a natural system of “fingering.”

A Concerted Performance. Engraved by H. Goltzius (1558-1617).

The technique of clavier-playing advanced but slowly from the mere tapping of the finger-ends to the dexterity of to-day, which lays under contribution the whole arm as far as the elbow. In the first clavier and organ “school,” which was published by Girolamo Diruta in Venice about 1600, and which bears the title, “Il Transilvano, sopra il vero modo di sonare organi e stromenti di Penna,” are already to be found rules for the use of the fingers, for the holding of the hands, and as to the differences of organ and clavier-playing; but fifty years later, according to Weitzmann, Lorenzo Penna,[24] in his “Albori musicali,” knows no other rules than that the hand should be raised high, and that, as the right ascends the scale and the left descends, the third and fourth fingers should be alternately used, and vice versa with the third and second. Old pictures confirm this statement. In England we meet notable examples of the influence of this Italian fingering. The thumb, as the finger that passes under the others, is still for a long time an enfant terrible. The technique is still that of the zither, simply transferred to keys. It is not till the time of Bach that the special technique of percussion springs into existence.

It is astonishing to see what feats were attempted by the old English masters of the virginal in spite of their scanty means. We feel how they love this instrument, which, in spite of itself, pointed out to them the way to the Promised Land of music, namely, to the stiff rhythm and arrangement of the secular music. For example, we actually find in the virginal books pieces by the famous Amsterdam organist, Sweelinck, and arrangements of compositions by Orlando Lasso, as well as all kinds of transcriptions of Italian works; but the gems are the variations on popular songs and the dances. In the contemporary virginal music of Venice this relation is reversed. There the Ricercari (pieces for lute, organ, or harpsichord, displaying the tricks of counterpoint), the Toccatas, the Preambles, are overlaid by the heavy, clumsy harmonies of the Middle Ages; they stagger about in uncertain syncopations, dabbling with 5/4 time, and confused with the most intricate figurations. It is only towards the end[25] that they yield a clear formal idea. Not until the younger Gabrieli do we see rhythm more clearly defined.

In England, however, the fruitful songs and dances admit none of these flabby harmonies; all the ornamentation of the variations is accommodated to the simple fabric of the piece; the clear melody is allied with an equally clear harmony; and they are woven, by the quick and light tone of the virginal, into a musical movement which, in order to live, must include a thousand delicately elaborated nuances of thought.

Compared with the lute dances, which necessarily retained the stiffness of their fabric, there is here a blossoming field, a veritable new world. The organ gives the voice parts their character, the lute supplies their tone-colour, but the child of these two parents has its own standing and its own future.

About 1500 we meet with the first Old English clavier-pieces, as well as Aston’s Hornpipe, a variation on a popular song. A manuscript collection in the British Museum, known as the “Mulliner Book” (Mulliner was a master in St Paul’s School), offers us the earliest specimens of clavier-works of this kind, by various masters, from the middle of the sixteenth century. Many of the pieces by Thomas Tallis, the old master of this school, are exceedingly rhythmical. He was organist under four reigns—those of Henry VIII., Edward VI., Mary and Elizabeth. There is a canon in two parts, in lines which can be grasped at a glance, and which makes full use of sequential repetitions—a sure sign, from the early times of church music, of the advancing rhythmical consciousness. Gradually there is added to the canon a running bass, which at first sounds twice, and finally rolls forth quite unhindered, rendering the whole picture easily grasped by the eye. The unaided eye indeed, in these old pieces, is a good judge. Without being preoccupied by the archaism, which perhaps wearies the ear, it detects the intellectual art of the composer, as it were, at a certain distance. It observes the great and small curves of the voice-contours, sees the succession of the canonic themes, notices the parentheses in which long passages are confined, and the delight of the composer in the clearness of the pattern. It is indeed as a finely-sewn, carefully-fashioned pattern that we see an exercise of this kind, simply worked out, but richly adorned with broken chords—such, for example, as the figuration of the “Felix namque” which Tallis has as the third piece in the Fitzwilliam Virginal-Book. The nuances of the accompaniment rejoice in their ornamental existence.

William Bird, the pupil of Tallis, whose life reaches from 1538 or 1546 to 1623, would be reckoned as the father of modern piano-music, if only this English school had exerted some influence on art, and did not stand so isolated in musical history. We shall call him the first of the clavier-masters. Both organist and singer in the Royal Chapel, where both services were alternately demanded from all the adult musicians, he had a considerable interest in the monopoly of music printing and of the music paper duty which was granted by Elizabeth first to Tallis and then to him. A happy man he was not; he appears to have suffered more than most in the religious persecutions of the time. We have hardly a word in the authorities as to the hours of work of these old musicians; but indirectly we learn from the Act against Rogues and Vagabonds that private instruction was a not unusual parergon of the musicians.

Page from “Parthenia,” the first English engraved Clavier Music, 1611.

Prosniz, the collector of all clavier-literature, in his “Handbuch der Klavierlitteratur”—a work not to be implicitly relied on—calls Bird’s music coarse and tasteless. Weitzmann agrees, saying that it is composed with intelligence and art, but heavy and without soul. But this is the fate of all transition styles. If we observe, from the standpoint of modern music, the traces of the old style, as for instance the change of time and the “flabbiness” of the harmony in the Fantasia, which comes eighth in the Virginal Book, or the cross-passages in the interesting Piece 60, they are indeed coarse and tasteless. But we must endeavour in such things to put aside the modern point of view. Mediæval music is not a preliminary step to the modern, but something quite different. It is pictorial, as the other is plastic. If we would hear their “molluscous” harmonies, and their indistinctness of rhythmical arrangement, we must lay aside the rhythmical canons of modern music; we must accept the molluscous nature and want of distinctness as something purposed, and we must follow without preoccupation this web of voices, enjoying it note by note. The piece is so delicate, so quite in colour, that the last note is a shock to us. In fact, the conclusion of these pieces, with its formal clash, under which the harmonies and voices assemble themselves in a stiff group, is a contradiction to their inmost being, a desertion of the pictorial principle and—in a word—the germ of the coming style. In a greater degree than we can bring ourselves to believe, the ultra-modern expression-music is allied to this conception of the art of tone.

It is true that we justly judge Bird chiefly from the modern point of view, since we are investigating the progress of history, and therefore work for the new, the developing, rather than for the old. But it is precisely from this point of view that he presents such surprises that we are not at first able to form a decisive opinion about him. I find a quiet pleasure in observing his harmonies, which are felt rather than calculated, as, for example, the sudden D major chord in the famous song, “John, come kiss me now” (Virginal Book, No. 10), and in studying the delicate parallel legato passages, the gradual change of melody, the growing complexity, the unusual variations, the alternation of hands, the rhythmical developments. In the ninth variation there run together plain quavers, dotted quavers, and the melody above all.

New suggestions, aroused by the clavier, are constantly being introduced. Prelude xxiv. has a stiff structure. The Passamezzo-Pavan and Galliard (Nos. 56 and 57) present broken chords as a genuine clavier-motif, and the most delicate canonic repetitions by means of a thematic modulation from the key of F to that of G. Very neat is the descending D C A in the seventh galliard-variation alternating with E D B. Bird is particularly fond of writing a passage based on a chord of F, and immediately followed by another based on G. This is akin to the practice of the drone in bagpipes, and has analogy with the ancient “Pes,” or “pedal” two-part vocal accompaniment in “Sumer is icumen in.” The similarity to the bagpipe drone is rather striking in “The woods so wild” (Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, No. 67) or in “The Bells,” where the lower bell voices repeat themselves in a way that reminds us of the pedal bass of Chopin’s Berceuse.