Scan 26
Musical Courier 1893-05-17: Vol 26 Iss 689, 1893
29 lines. Read by computer on 25 September 2026. Printed page 27. See the scan on archive.org.
1Schumann, Chopin and Virtuosity.
2By A. R. Parsons.
4ROBERT SCHUMANN'S first aim was to succeed before the public as a virtuoso, whence his lasting enthusiasm for Moscheles and Paganini, and his dream, at one time, of making a virtuoso tour, not only through Europe, but also as far as America.
6To increase his virtuosity he sought to conquer his fourth finger by keeping it motionless with the aid of a cord fastened to the ceiling above his instrument. He carried this idea into practice for a number of hours one day. The result was that he never recovered the use of that finger. As Schumann thenceforth had no further personal interest in virtuosity, it really does seem to have fallen correspondingly into disfavor with him. From that time we may date the rise of the Ascetic or Shumannesque style of piano writing, as opposed to the Epicurean or Chopinesque style, which latter style, however, never really became as florid, after all, as Beethoven's piano style.
8Thenceforth a sarcastic critic might say, as a piano fox who had lost his virtuoso tail in a trap of his own setting, Schumann set himself the task of showing all other piano foxes how unnecessary virtuoso tails were in general. Or, to drop the figure, he seems to have undertaken to show how to dispense with virtuosity in piano music by discarding decoration, and in its place doubling the tones of his harmonies until two hand music approximates as closely as possible to four hand music, the mere appearance of evil being avoided by usually writing sixty-fourths and and one hundred and twenty-eighths notes as quarters and eighths, and then directing the pianist first to play them as fast as possible at the start and then toward the end, for the sake of climax, to play the same kinds of notes faster still, culminating in a presto by way of conclusion.
10As compared with the work of Chopin, who remained a virtuoso to the end, Schumann's anti-virtuoso style might be said to consist in renouncing ornament, and cramming the outlines of his piano work with as many tones for each harmony as they could well contain without suffocation. Hence, the same sarcastic critic might affirm of some notable cases among Schumann's compositions that, except when they are in the hands of a virtuoso of the first rank, they are as heavy gaited as Mark Twain's jumping frog after he had been surreptitiously stuffed with bird-shot pealing the laying of a wager on the distance he could leap.
12The recipe for Chopin's virtuoso style, on the other hand, seems to have been something like this: First, design the composition; then go through it as with a fine tooth comb, carefully thinning out the tones which can possibly be spared without impoverishing the harmony; and, finally, for all needless labor creating duplications of tones thus eliminated introduce an equivalent amount of graces, embellishments and ornaments, for endowing the musical organization with poesy as well as philosophy, with tactful courtesies as well as dignity, and gravity and seriousness.
14Heaven forbid that anyone should understand that we would deprecate Schumann in order to appreciate Chopin! Heaven be praised instead for the wealth of art which results from the existence, side by side, of such inimitable and diverse products of genius as the compositions of Schumann and Chopin!
16It remains a fact, nevertheless, that both Chopin and Schumann began their careers as virtuoso players, and that the chief source of the subsequent differentiation of their respective styles of piano composition was the fact that Chopin remained a virtuoso to the end, while Schumann foolishly crippled his hand and thenceforth found his artistic teeth more or less set on edge by the sour grapes of technic. When Robinson Crusoe stranded on the desolate island he managed to dispense with Parisian fashions.
18I believe I am betraying no confidence when I state that Rafael Joseffy is extremely fond of Schumann's wonderfully beautiful composition entitled "A Humoresque;" at the same time Joseffy feels convinced to his very finger tips that Chopin would have written certain passages in the "Humoresque" in a different way, without altering the idea in the least. He is perfectly sure how Chopin would have set those measures for the piano, and is fond of playing the composition in that way; but it is a matter of conscience with him to avail himself of such alterations only in the works of masters as legitimately enhance the effects intended, but never to make use in public of mere facilitations. Now, as most of you are well aware, said Joseffy has remarkable technic. All the same, he has not yet performed in public that particular favorite of his, the "Humoresque" of Schumann.
20Such a comparison as has been instituted between Schumann and Chopin must not be pressed too far. If, perchance, some Schumann enthusiast in this audience feels shocked to have a single spot pointed out on the face of the sun of his musical firmament, I humbly apologize to him for whatever I have said that savored of irreverence, and I simply ask him to grant, with reference to Schumann's works, that they prove it better for a piano composer to have been a virtuoso, and then like glorious Schumann have risen above it, than never to have played the piano decently at all.—"Brainard's Musical World."
22In the Realm of Sound.
24THE supremacy of one sense over all the others is now so completely established that the world of our waking moments is a world of sights, even as the world of our dreams is a world of visions. We are always looking, and but rarely listening; always attending to the shapes and colors before our eyes, seldom noticing the sounds which reach our ears. The visible has become the real, while the audible and the tangible appear but as casual properties of the visible. We find it difficult, even with Berkeley's aid, to realize that there is anything in our perception of the outer world which is due to any other sense than that of sight. We should find it still more difficult to realize how much would be left of our minds if sight were cut off altogether, and we were dependent on hearing and touch and muscular reaction for our commerce with the external.
26But perhaps this very fact, that we have learned to live mentally by sight, causes us to underestimate the quality and amount of the thinking we could have performed without its aid. Even psychologists forget that hearing is indeed a constructive sense as well as sight; that a concord is as much a product of intuition as a binocular image; that the chord of the diminished seventh is as complete an object as the rainbow. It may be that, if our mental apparatus had been left to develope itself from suggestions received through the ear alone, it would have advanced further than the student of our present psychology would be disposed to admit, though no doubt the advance would have been on different lines, and its expression would be something only remotely resembling our actual speech. The present complete ascendency of sight prevents us from realizing that there may have been, and probably was a time in the past history of man when sounds were of far more importance relatively to sights than they are at present.
28As we retrace the steps of civilization we leave behind us one by one groups of sights and thoughts which depend on sights; at each backward step we lose a multitude of the images which are now presented to our eyes or represented to our inner vision; but the sounds remain, and in the absence of rivalry they acquire an additional import-
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