Scan 5
Musical Courier 1926-09-23: Vol 93 Iss 13, 1926
65 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026. Printed page 6. See the scan on archive.org.
A town on its own line is one of the directory's headings. That is where the town on a maker's page comes from.
1MUSICAL COURIER
2IS THERE A RENASCENCE OF PIANO MUSIC?
3By Dr. Adolf Aber
4(Translated by Alfred Kalisch)
6The effort of our youngest generation of musicians to emerge from the epoch of romanticism is gradually making its influence felt in the sphere of piano music; and in that sphere, too, opposition is developing between the romantic conception of the art, which is in their opinion "dead," and an ideal of music in which the tracing of the musical line only shall be of importance, and which shall eliminate from it all emotional and expressional value. We are now seeing structures in the nature of the suite penetrating into the sanctum of art-music, combined from the elements of jazz music and purely artistic inter-play of sounds, and we are also seeing piano fugue and toccatas arising in larger number than has been the case with piano music for centuries. We have lastly a large number of piano pieces with a programmatic content, which emanate in particular from the circles of the younger composers of Paris and Vienna. Thus, if we ask only what the titles of these piano pieces are, we see that the general picture of the newest piano music is almost precisely the same as that of the earliest key-board music of which the history is known, that is to say, the music of the fifteenth to the seventeenth centuries, and as a matter of fact critics have not failed to assert that we are here, as far as the newest piano music is concerned, in the presence of a consciously fostered renaissance which—just as the nineteenth century revived the epoch of Bach and Handel—has its gaze fixed on that epoch of musical history in which our harmonic system had not yet struck firm roots, and which still knew nothing of the larger forms of piano music, the sonata and concerto. This, then, is just the time when musicians themselves, and beyond them the thinking public in our concert rooms, should consider whether there is really such a connection between then and now, and whether the development which we are now observing in the newest piano music is organic or whether we have here one of these great misinterpretations of history which do almost more harm than quite unthinking, consciously unhistorical, instinctive music-making.
8We must first of all remember that in the earliest times, from which clavier music has come down to us (the fifteenth and the beginning of the sixteenth centuries), the instrument of the clavier per se had absolutely no importance. Compositions inspired by the technic or timbre of the clavier were quite unknown to that early period. What clavier literature has come down to us from that time is rather, as far as the overwhelming majority of it is concerned, music which was originally composed for purposes quite different from its performance on a key-board instrument. Even if the performance of this music on the clavier was possible, the reason for that lay in the great freedom of musical usage at that time, which as a matter of fact did not stop to enquire too closely whether the composition was to be sung, played by various instruments, sung with instrumental accompaniment, or designed for one single instrument. In accordance with the free practice at that time, all music composed for the organ was first of all used for performance on the clavier at home. Further, all dance music originally composed for several instruments, also compositions written for the lute, were without further ado transferred to the clavier. From the combination of several dances into one piece resulted the earliest form of the suite; from the instrumental preludes, the larger and musically more important preludes developed, and from the free postludes grew the toccata, which was originally the peculiar property of the virtuoso.
10We ought, strictly speaking, not to talk of "clavier literature" in the narrower sense of the word in this earlier period of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The fame of the masters of that period—Antonio Squarcialupi, Konrad Paumann, Paul Hofhaimer, Arnold Schlick, Jacob Buus, Adrian Willaert—rests solely on their compositions for the organ, and the fact that these compositions were for the most part also played on the other keyed instruments of the period is a purely secondary phenomenon. These compositions strike us, in spite of all their rhythmical flexibility and the unmistakable hints of a brilliant virtuoso style, as being, in consequence of their want of harmonic freedom (largely conditioned by the domination of the old church tones), as notably unorthodox. Every attempt to awaken them to new life is doomed to failure.
12ARRANGEMENTS
14This earlier clavier music, therefore, is essentially a literature of arrangements. The specifically pianistic element in it was restricted to a technic of ornamentation which had its origin chiefly in the need of giving prominence, by means of constant repetitions, and the decoration with little figures, of the broad phrases of a melody, to which due importance could not be given by reason of the impossibility of sustaining the tone. These are the chief characteristics of the clavier music of the German colorists of the time of Elias Nicolaus Ammerbach, of the great Italians, Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, Claudio Merulo and Girolamo Frescobaldi, and of the clavier music of the Germans, Froberger and Tunder, and of the Spaniard, Antonio Cabezon.
16While, therefore, it was impossible to draw strict boundary lines between the organ and clavier music of that period in Germany, Italy, Spain and France, and therefore one cannot speak of a recognition of an aesthetic code for the clavier music of these countries, there was arising in England a clearly marked province of art which is indissolubly connected with the key-board instruments and receives its laws from their technic. This is the English virginal music, the key-board music of the epoch of Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth, the chief source of which is for us the famous Fitzwilliam Virginal Book with its nearly three hundred examples of the various kinds of compositions of that time. Names like Thomas Tallis, William Byrd, Orlando Gibbons, John Bull, Thomas Morley, and John Munday represent the zenith of the development of this movement. What then are the principal characteristics of this music? Is this earliest independent key-board music known to us really in its essence anti-romantic? As a matter of fact the exact opposite is the case. The essence of this music rather is that, in contradistinction to the virtuoso decorative organ art destined for large places, it attempts to set into vibration all the finer chords of the life of human sensibility, and is from the very beginning in closest union with the high emotional values of the English folk song. This virginal music was bound to take into account the fugitive tone of the key-board, and the necessity of giving fulness to this tone by an almost excessive opulence of ornamentation, but it never lost sight of the value of a piece as a mood painting, and knew nothing of cold virtuosity and soulless play of sound. If the inner meaning of all home-made music is that the musician shall lose himself with complete love in all the details of the piece and shall exhaust every intellectual possibility of a theme or a harmonic sequence, and shall submit himself to the educational influence of the music—then English virginal music is the eternal standard of all domestic music; for in the variations on Folk Songs, which are its essential peculiarity, we have for the first time in the literature of music this living pre-occupation with the theme, and the careful thinking out of every detail, the complete exploitation of the emotional content, all of which we are wont to designate "intimate" music making. The key-board instruments placed in a small room and played by one who feels himself alone in this hour with this instrument, has thus in the history of music fulfilled the great mission of intensifying musical thought, of making clear to the musician and the friend of music the significance of even the smallest detail of figuration.
18A MISTAKE
20All the later achievements of musical characterization, the development from the beginning of the sixteenth century onward of a theory of the emotions properly so-called, was made possible only by the practical spade-work done by English virginal music. Our youngest composers of piano music, instead of attempting to link on to the virtuoso toccatas and fugues of the old Italian and German colorists—who, as must be said again and again, were only a subsidiary from the point of view of key-board music—should rather submit themselves to the intimate charms of this English virginal music, and again carry it a step farther by their own work, when they have once felt that they cannot get beyond the achievements of the classicalists and romanticists in the larger forms. Is there anyone to-day who knows what wealth of expressive music of the noblest kind lies hidden in this English virginal literature? Do we know the vital force of the mood which radiates from such pieces as The Bells of William Byrd, his Variations on the Carman's Whistle, the Nature Pieces of John Munday and Martin Peerson, and the Cradle Song of Tomkins? No doubt we might possibly have seen the origins of a great and powerful art of expression in key-board music in England and spread over all Europe as early as the seventeenth century if art-hating Puritanism and its development in its own home had not cut the ground from under its feet and silenced its poetic tones.
22The English virginal music which was saved from the wreck for the development of music has unfortunately, in its essence, nothing to show but the technical characteristics of the new clavier style. The Dutch composer, Jan Pieters Sweelinck, and through him the continental composers, adopted the characteristics of runs, the quick repetitions of single tones and the fascinating sonority of arpeggios; and the germs of a piano style of real significance were once again stifled in lavish passage work. It is worth noticing that in the seventeenth century organ music and clavier music again became closely associated on the continent until about 1700, the clavier again strikes off its fetters and goes its own way. The starting point of this development is the First Clavier Sonata in the Second Part of the Klavierübung (1692) of the Leipzig Thomas Kantor, Johan Kuhnau, soon after which Johann Sebastian Bach enriched the form with his Partitas; but it is significant, on the other hand, that Kuhnau's piano sonatas were not meant to be interpreted as pure pieces of musical sound. Kuhnau's famous set of Six Sonatas which bore the title of Musical Representations of Biblical Stories, are a proof of how piano music, as soon as it achieved independence, set itself extremely lofty aims in respect of expression, and that there can be no question in them—to use a perilous catchword of today—of "pure delight in playing." Moreover Bach's famous Capriccio on the Departure of his dear Brother should be specially remembered in this connection.
24At this period it is only the Italian clavier music which is mere virtuosity. In Bernardo Pasquini, with his sonatas built up as free improvisations on a figured bass, and in Domenico Scarlatti, with his finely modelled tone pictures, where the music rushes along in unbridled joy of life, we see the founders of the modern brilliant piano style.
26It was the great French clavecinists of the expiring seventeenth century who were destined to enter into the heritage of England. Chambonnieres, the clavecinist of Louis XIV, writes in his Pièces de Clavecin suites of the kind still customary in Europe at that time, but in the individual movements we see traces of keen intellectual kinship with all the various forces of human life, and in his works the lively stirrings of that particular kind of mentality which can only be accurately described by the French word "esprit." The same is the case with Chambonnieres' even greater successor, François Couperin. Here we have an almost direct continuation of the line of English virginal music, though indeed built up on an incomparably richer technic and adorned by a sense of beauty of tone which has been unequalled up to the present day in its power to exhaust the ultimate possibilities of the instrument. The more deeply we study the details of his works, the more does the genius with which he grapples musically with the most daring subject matter without degenerating into banality, compel our admiration. The farther we penetrate into the heart of this style, the clearer does it grow that it is in the renewal of this poetry of the piano that our contemporary composers of piano music will find their most grateful task. But in any case it is a dangerous historical error to think that it will be possible to find in the clavier music of the earlier epoch an ally in the war against musical expression which our present time is waging. Indeed, it is rather this epoch of clavier music which is best fitted to open our eyes to the value of instrumental music as a medium of expression.
28FRANCES PERALTA
29Metropolitan Opera soprano, snapped in front of the house at Bougival, near Paris, where Bizet wrote Carmen. Miss Peralta will open her season in America in January in that opera. She is now in Italy, following a pleasure trip through England and France.
31FOREIGN NEWS IN BRIEF
33London
34ALEXANDER BOROVSKY TO PLAY IN LONDON
35LONDON.—Alexander Borovsky, eminent Russian pianist, who won such success here last season, will give four London recitals in December besides playing with symphony orchestras in Glasgow, Edinburgh and the provinces. M. S.
37GOOSSENS COMPOSES MUSIC TO THE CONSTANT NYMPH
38LONDON.—A dramatized version of Margaret Kennedy's popular book, The Constant Nymph, is being produced here with music composed for it by Eugene Goossens. Goossens has also written a burlesque song for Noel Coward, the English playwright. M. S.
40MOISEIWITSCH'S TRIUMPHAL SOUTH AMERICAN TOUR
41LONDON.—After a highly successful tour of South America, Moiseiwitsch has just returned to London where he will give three recitals in September before his return to the U. S. A. He gave forty-seven recitals in Brazil, Uruguay, Panama and the Argentine, while his season in Rio de Janeiro was such a success that he had to give six additional concerts. M. S.
43Paris
44KOUSSEVITZKY LEAVES FOR AMERICA
45PARIS.—Serge Koussevitzky is on his way to Boston for his third season as conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. He sailed from France on the S. S. France, September 15. R. P.
47JEAN GILBERT TURNS THEATRICAL MANAGER.
48BERLIN.—Jean Winterfeld, who became one of the most prolific and successful operetta writers under the name of Jean Gilbert, has organized the first big theatrical trust Germany, including two operetta theaters in Hamburg and one each in Dresden, Frankfort and Bremen. The Hamburg and Bremen houses are at present playing Gilbert's own latest piece. In der Johannissnacht. At the Hamburg Volksoper he will produce, early in October, Leo Fall's posthumous operetta, Youth in May, and will later bring the company to Berlin and Vienna with the same piece. B.
50TURANDOT AT BERLIN MUNICIPAL OPERA.
51BERLIN.—Mafalda Salvatini, for many years one of the first sopranos at the Berlin State Opera, has been engaged to sing the leading role in Puccini's Turandot at the Berlin Municipal Opera. Leo Pasetti will come from Munich to make the decorations for this performance. M.
53NEW HAMBURG SOCIETY FOR OLD MUSIC
54BERLIN.—A new society, the Hamburg Collegium Musicum, has been formed in Hamburg, under the leadership of Albert Mayer-Reinach, for the purpose of performing old music, especially old Hamburg music. This winter they will perform a newly discovered singspiel by Telemann, Vespeta and Pimpinone. M.
56Vienna
57KLENAU'S OPERA ON TOUR
58VIENNA.—The School for Scandal, new comic opera by Paul von Klenau, after Sheridan's comedy of that title, is scheduled for its first performance anywhere, at the Frankfort Opera early in November. Prior to its first hearing the opera has already been accepted by no less than eight German opera houses, among them Munich, Karlsruhe and Breslau. The School for Scandal promises to be one of the most frequently heard operas on the German stage next season.
60VIENNA HAS NEW THEATRICAL AGENCY
61VIENNA.—Norbert Salter, concert and theatrical manager, formerly of Berlin, has removed to Vienna and opened a concert and theatrical agency there. P. B.
63VIENNESE ARTISTS FOR LA SCALA
64VIENNA.—Emanuel List, American bass of the Volksoper, has been engaged to sing at the Scala next season, appearing as King Mark and in other roles. Maria Németh, soprano, and Rosette Anday, contralto, both Hungarians and both members of the Vienna Opera, are also on the roster of the Scala for the winter. P. B.
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