The ‘Viennese period’ and the three great classics—Joseph Haydn; Haydn’s clavier sonatas; the Variations in F minor—W. A. Mozart; Mozart as pianist and improvisator; Mozart’s sonatas; his piano concertos—Ludwig van Beethoven; evolution of the modern pianoforte—Musical qualities of Beethoven’s piano music; Beethoven’s technical demands; his pianoforte sonatas; his piano concertos; conclusion.
The association of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven with Vienna affords historians a welcome license to give to a conspicuous epoch in the development of music a local habitation and a name. Their work is commonly granted to constitute a more or less definite era known as the Viennese period. All three speak, as it were, a common idiom. There is a distinct family likeness between their separate accomplishments. They were personally acquainted. Haydn and Mozart were warm friends, despite the difference in years between them. Mozart was among the first in Vienna to recognize the greatness latent in Beethoven, who later was for a while even the pupil of Haydn. Moreover, all three reckoned among their friends the same families, even the same men and women. The three great men now sit on golden chairs, enshrined in the same niche, Beethoven considerably to the fore.
The insulation which circumstances of time and space may seem to have woven about them proves upon investigation to be quite imperfect. To begin with, Bach was but a year dead, D. Scarlatti still alive, and Rameau with more than a decade yet to live when Haydn was writing his first mass and along with it clavier sonatas for the benefit of his few pupils. Mozart had written his three immortal symphonies in 1786, before Emanuel Bach had ceased publishing his sonatas for Kenner und Liebhaber. On the other end, Moscheles was a famous though very young pianist before Beethoven had half done writing sonatas; and Carl von Weber’s Freischütz had begun to act upon the precocious Richard Wagner before Beethoven had completed his ninth symphony, his last sonata, his great mass and his great quartets.
Merely as regards pianoforte technique the period was a transitional one. Even the Beethoven sonatas as late as opus 27 were published for either harpsichord or pianoforte. Both Mozart and Beethoven were influenced by men who, in a narrow sense, seem far more than they to belong to a modern development. Clementi, for example, deliberately burned his harpsichords and clavichords behind him in the very year Beethoven was born, and from then on gave up his life to the discovery of new possibilities and effects upon the pianoforte, by which his pupils Cramer and Field paved the way for Chopin.
Yet, all signs to the contrary, the Viennese period remains a period of full fruition, and this because of the extraordinary genius of the men whose works have defined it. Each was highly and specially gifted and poured into forms already made ready for him a musical substance of rare and precious quality. In considering keyboard music we have to deal mostly with this substance, in fact with the musical expression of three unusual and powerful personalities.
It is to be regretted that Haydn and even Mozart have been in no small measure eclipsed by Beethoven. This is especially true of their keyboard music. It may be questioned whether this be any more just for being seemingly natural. There are many reasons to account for it. The most obvious is the more violent and fiery nature of Beethoven, his explicit and unusual trials. These, wholly apart from his music, will for ever make the study and recollection of him as a man of profound interest. Haydn can urge but a few young years of hardship for the human sympathy of generations to come. Mozart’s disappointments, so sickening to the heart that puts itself in tune with him, have after all but the ring of hard luck and merit disregarded, to which the weary world lends only a passing ear. But Beethoven’s passionate nature, his self-inflicted labor of self-discipline, his desperate unhappiness and the tragic curse of his deafness, are the stuff out of which heroes are made.
So his music, reflecting the man, is heroic in calibre. Even its humor is titanic. It will impress by its hugeness and its force many an ear deaf to more engaging and more subtle language. Its poignancy is unmistakable, nearly infallible in its appeal; so that Beethoven is a name with which to lay even the clod under a spell.
But another reason why Mozart and Haydn lie hidden or but partly perceived in the shade of Beethoven, is more recondite, is, in fact, paradoxical. This is no other than the extreme difficulty of their music. Clara Schumann, writing in her diary of the music of Richard Wagner, which she rejected in spite of the world’s acclaim, conceived that either she or the world at large had gone mad. To one who writes of the difficulties of Haydn’s and Mozart’s sonatas a similar idea is likely to occur. At the present day they are put into the hands of babes and sucklings, in whose touch, however, there is no wisdom. Yet if ever music needed a wise hand, it is these simple pieces; and a lack of wisdom has made them trivial to the world.
The art of the pianist should be, as Emanuel Bach declared, that of drawing from his instrument sounds of moving beauty, beautiful in quality, in line and in shading. His tools are his ten fingers which he must train to flexibility, strength and security. It is right that as soon as he can play a scale or shake a trill, he should put his skill to test upon a piece of music. So the teacher lays Haydn and Mozart under the clumsy little fingers of boy and girl. ‘Stumble along there on your way to great Beethoven, whom you must approach with firm and tested stride.’ That is the burden of the pædagogic lay. It echoes in the mind of riper age, Haydn and Mozart have been put aside, like the perambulator, the bib and the high table chair; or, like toys, are brought out rarely, to be smiled upon.
If they are toys, then maturity should bring a sense of their exquisite beauty and meaning, and may well shudder at the destruction youth made imminent upon them. This it all too rarely does, because only ten fingers in ten thousand can reveal the loveliness of these sonatas, and because, also, ears are rare that now delight in such a revelation. You must give to fingers the skill to spin sound from the keyboard that is like the song of birds, or, if more vocal, is more like the voice of fairies than the voice of man. It is easier to make thunder; and even mock thunder intimidates. So your player will pound Beethoven, and lightning will flash about his head as the sarcastic Heine fancied it about Liszt’s. Some will scent sacrilege and cover their ears from the noise. But let the soulless man play Mozart and his hearers will cover their mouths, as all well-bred people are trained to do when boredom seeks an outlet.
Technically Haydn and Mozart may be held to have condemned their music to the sort of galley-service it now performs. Both wrote perhaps the majority of their sonatas for the use of their pupils. Bach wrote the ‘Well-tempered Clavichord’ with what seems to be the same purpose; but Bach’s aim was constantly to educate and to expand the power of the students under his care; whereas both Haydn and Mozart may be often suspected of wishing rather to simplify their music than to tax and strengthen the abilities of their high-born amateurs. There is something comical in the fact that even with this most gracious of intentions both were occasionally accused of writing music that was troublesome, i.e., too difficult. Haydn may have been grieved to be found thus disagreeable. Mozart’s letters sometimes show a delicate malice in enjoyment of it. But one can hear Beethoven snort and rage under a similar reproach.
Yet the wonder is that sonatas so written should be today full of freshness and beauty. This they undoubtedly are. Composed perfunctorily they may have been, but the spirit of music is held fast in most of them, no less appealing for being oftener in smiles than tears. And if to evoke this spirit in all her loveliness from a box of strings chance to be the ideal of some player, let him take care to bring to the sonatas of Haydn and Mozart the most precious resources of his art and he will not call in vain.
The prevalent mood in Haydn’s music is one of frank cheerfulness. His native happy disposition, his kindliness and his ever-ready, good-natured humor, won him friends on every hand. These qualities in his music recommended it to the public. For the public wanted light-hearted music. Italian melody had won the world. Haydn’s happy, almost jovial melodies and his lively, obvious rhythms spread over the world almost as soon as he began to write.
From the start, however, he treated his art seriously. He was never a careless writer, though he had the benefit of little regular instruction. Clavier sonatas he had composed for his pupils were so much copied and circulated in manuscript that a piratical publisher finally decided money could be made from them. He had written quartets for strings, which were received with favor at soirées given by Porpora and men of rank. He won the approval of men like Wagenseil, Gluck, and Dittersdorf. All his work, though simple, is beautifully and clearly done.
He was not, like Mozart and Beethoven, a great player on the harpsichord or piano. In this respect, and, indeed, in many others, he is a little like Schubert. Both men wrote extremely well for the keyboard. The music of both has an unusual stamp of spontaneous originality. In Haydn’s music as in Schubert’s the quality of folk-melodies and folk-rhythms is very distinct. In spite of most obvious differences in temperament and in circumstances, they speak of the same race unconsciously influenced by Slavic elements.
The collection of thirty-four sonatas for pianoforte published by Peters includes, with perhaps one exception, the best of his work for that instrument alone. On looking over them one cannot but be struck by the general similarity of any one to the others. Some are more frankly gay, more boyish, than others; some tempered by seriousness. It may be added, however, that those of a later period do not seem generally more profound than those of an earlier one. The later ones are more elaborate, sometimes musically more complicated, but a single mood is on the whole common to them all.
The same is in part true of Mozart’s sonatas. Except as these show distinct traces of the various influences under which he came from time to time, they do not differ strikingly from each other. There is over both Haydn’s and Mozart’s keyboard music a normal cast of thought, as there is over the music of Couperin. In this they suffer by comparison with Beethoven, as Couperin suffers by comparison with Bach. One would have no difficulty in choosing ten Beethoven sonatas, each one of which is entirely distinct from the others, not by reason of form or style or content, but by reason of a very special emotional significance. One could not choose ten Haydn sonatas of such varied character. One does not, in other words, sit down to the piano with a volume of Haydn sonatas, expecting to confront a wholly new problem in each one, to meet a wholly new range of thought and feeling, passing from one to the other. One looks for the same sort of thing in each one, and with few exceptions one finds it.
To what is this due? To the nature of the man or to the circumstances under which most of the sonatas were written? Or is it due to public taste of the day and the consequent attitude of the man towards the function of music? To answer these questions would lead us far afield. But it is doubtless in large measure owing to this fact that Haydn, and Mozart too, have been thought to concern themselves primarily with form in music. And Beethoven has again and again been described as the man who overthrew the supremacy of the formal element in music, to which his predecessors are imagined to have sworn prime allegiance.
It is a great injustice so to stigmatize Haydn and Mozart. The beauty of their music is far more one of spirit than one of form. In his own day Haydn was thought to be an innovator, not in the matter of form, but in the spirit with which he filled forms already familiar. This may be said to be the spirit of humor. Weitzmann[30] cites an interesting passage in the Musikalisches Handbuch for the year 1782 which speaks of Haydn as ‘A musical joke-maker, but like Yorick, not for pathos but for high comic; and this in music most exasperating (verzweifelt sehr). Even his adagios, where the man should properly weep, have the stamp of high comedy.’ And a most joyous humor fills the Haydn sonatas full to overflowing. That is the secret of the charm they will exert on any one who takes the time to study them today, a charm which has little to do with formal perfection.
Let us look into a few of the sonatas. Most of them were written between 1760 and 1790. The few written earlier than 1760 are so obviously teaching pieces that, though they won him fame, we need not trouble to study them. Take, however, a sonata from the set published in 1774, known as opus 13, in C major (Peters No. 15). The whole first movement is built upon two rhythmical phrases which by their lilt and flow cannot fail to delight the dullest ear. There is the dotted sixteenth figure of the first theme, a theme frankly melodious for all its rhythmical vivacity; and later the same opening notes, with playful triplets added. Nothing profound or serious about it, but yet a wealth of vitality; and nearly all accomplished with but two voices.
The adagio seems not at all conspicuous, yet compare it with an adagio of Clementi to see how much genuine life it has. Then the rapid little last movement, with its rocking, tilting figures, all as sparkling as sunlight. Here again, only two voices in most of the movement.
Another sonata in the same set in F major (Pet. 20) is a little more developed. The quick falling arpeggio figures following the first theme are a favorite, comical device of Haydn’s. The second theme, if so it may be called, is only a series of scampering notes, with a saucy octave skip at the end; the whole full of smiles and laughter. The fine harp-like runs in the development section are reminiscent of Emanuel Bach. Haydn is noticeably fond of sudden and abrupt changes of harmony. There is one in the first section of this movement. But often he is surprisingly chromatic, more subtle in harmony than the naïve character of his music would lead one to expect him.
In the opus 14, published in 1776 by Artaria, there are some joyous sonatas. The first theme of one in G major (Pet. 11) suggests Schubert by its sweetness. There is a minuet instead of a slow movement, and the final presto is a theme with lively variations. The Alberti bass on which the fourth variation floats is irresistibly naïve. Another sonata in E-flat seems richer. It is hardly less naïve and less humorous than the others in the set, but there is a warmer coloring. The overlapping imitations in the fourth, fifth, and sixth measures are strangely poignant, especially as they appear later in the restatement. There is a minuet instead of a slow movement, of which the trio is especially beautiful. The way in which the first phrase seems to be prolonged into five measures, once more suggests Schubert.
It is, of course, nearly impossible to characterize the sonatas in words, or to distinguish any striking feature in one which may not be found in another. There are two sonatas in E-flat (Pet. 1 and 3) among the last he wrote. These appear at first sight more profound than the earlier ones, but it is hard in studying them to find them so. They are more fully scored, more fully developed, perhaps more moderately gay. But it is still the Haydn which spoke in the earlier ones. Premonitions of Schubert are again evident in the second of these sonatas (Pet. 3), in the second section of the slow movement, and in the brief passage in E-flat minor in the minuet. There are very fine moments in the first movement, too. It will be observed that the second theme is very like the first. This is frequently the case with Haydn, a feature which points to his dependence on Emanuel Bach. Even in his symphonies it shows itself, conspicuously in the great symphony in D major, No. 7, in Breitkopf and Härtel’s edition. In the sonata in question, however, there is no lack of secondary material of varied and decided character; for example, the transitional section between the first and second themes; the broad closing theme of the first section, with its alternate deep phrases and high answers; and the carefully wrought measures which open the development section.
The effect of the measures which bring this section almost to a close and then lead on into the recapitulation is almost magical. We approach the romantic. The strange power of silence in music is nowhere better employed, a power which the old convention of constant movement had kept concealed, at least in instrumental music. Mention has been made of the pauses in Emanuel Bach’s music and in Clementi’s; but here in Haydn’s sonata is a passage of more than twenty measures in which silence seems to reign. Something calls on high and there is silence. Then from some deep down range there is a faint answer. And so the high calls across silence to the deep, again and again, as if one without the other might not prevail against some spirit of silence.
Such a passage as this, and many another in Haydn’s music, suggest Beethoven. One is quick to exclaim, ‘Ah! this foreshadows the great man to come!’ Almost as if the music had no merit but by comparison. Yet Haydn’s music should be taken at its own value. Only in that way may the charm of it, and the genuine beauty as well, be fully appreciated. Surely it has a life and a spirit all its own, without which music would be poorer.
Only one clavier work of special significance, apart from the sonatas, remains to be mentioned. This is a very beautiful series of variations on a theme in F minor. They present, of course, the familiar features of Haydn’s style, clear and ‘economic’ part-writing, perfect balance and lucidity in form, abrupt, unprepared chords, furnishing what Hadow has aptly called ‘points of color’; and still, smooth, chromatic progressions which are somehow naïve. The theme itself is in two sections, with a ‘trio’ section in F major, full of ascending and descending arpeggio figures which seem in Haydn’s music like the warble of a bird’s song, odd little darts and flurries of sound. There is over the whole a changing light of plaintive and gay which is rather different from the perpetual sunshine of the sonatas.
It is needless to say that the theme undergoes no such metamorphosis in the course of the variations as Bach’s theme in his Goldberg Variations. The accompaniment may be said to remain practically the same throughout the set. The first variation leads the melody through half-steps, in syncopation, and numerous trills are brought in to beautify the almost too ingenuous major section. In the second variation the melody is dissolved, so to speak, into a clear stream of rapid counterpoint which curves and frets above and below the familiar accompaniment. The final restatement of the theme leads by abrupt soft modulations into a long coda in which traces of the theme still linger. The whole set makes up a masterpiece in pianoforte literature, and may be ranked as one of the most beautiful pieces of music in the variation form.
Mozart’s keyboard music is astonishingly different from Haydn’s. Because both men have fallen into the obscurity of the same shadow, one is likely to speak of them as if both were but a part of one whole. The differences between them are not merely matters of detail. In fact they may resemble each other more in detail than in general qualities. The spirit of Mozart’s music is wholly different from the spirit of Haydn’s. If with Haydn we may associate a frank good nature and something of the peasant’s sturdiness, in Mozart’s music we have to do with something far more subtle, far more graceful, and almost wholly elusive. It has been said of Mozart’s music that its inherent vitality is all-sufficient to a listener. In other words, there is neither any need nor any desire to interpret it, either in terms of another art or as an expression or a symbol of human emotion. It is perhaps unique in being sheer sound and nothing else. It is the thinnest gossamer spun between our ears and stillness. It is of all music the most ethereal, the most spiritual, one might almost say the least audible.
His life was utterly different from Haydn’s. To begin with, he was twenty-four years younger. He was most carefully and rigorously trained in his art, from infancy, by his father and by the greatest musicians in the world, whom he met on his triumphant tours over Europe. As a child he was all but adored in Vienna, in all the great cities of Italy, in London, in Paris, and in Brussels. As a youth fortune began to forsake him. He was not so much neglected as unappreciated. He was underpaid, harassed by debt. He was without an established position, chiefly apparently because in the nature of things he could not be but young. He died at last in Vienna, in more or less miserable circumstances, at the age of thirty-five. Thus a life could end that in early years had been the marvellous delight of nearly a whole world.
He was always a virtuoso as well as a composer. He played the violin excellently; he played the piano as no man in his time could play it and as perhaps no man has played it since. His playing was not so much distinguished by brilliance as by beauty. The quality of his tone was of that kind which once heard can never be forgotten. It haunted the minds of men long after he was dead. Even the memory of it brought tears.
His compositions give only a slight idea of what the range of his playing was. He seems to have moved people most at times when he improvised. This he would often do in public, according to the custom of the day; but in private, too, he would often go to his piano and pour his soul out hour after hour through the night in improvised music of strange and unusual power. Something of the quality of these outpourings seems to have been preserved in the fantasia in C minor. The sonatas and rondos have little of it. Neither have the concertos. Franz Niemetschek, one of his most devoted friends and author of the first of his biographies, said, as an old man, that if he dared ask the Almighty for one more earthly joy, it would be that he might once again before he died hear Mozart improvise. The improvisations of Beethoven, marvellous as they were, never took just the place of Mozart’s in the minds of those who had been privileged to hear the younger man as well.
Mozart did not compose his piano music at the piano, as Schumann and Chopin did. The improvisations were not remembered later and put down in form upon paper. They seem to have been something apart from his composing. He wrote music away from the piano, at his desk, as most people write letters—in the words of his wife. Most of the sonatas, too, were written for the benefit of pupils. Few of them make actually trying demands upon technical brilliance. Their great difficulty is more than technical, or than what is commonly regarded as technical—strength, velocity, and endurance. Yet no music more instantly lays bare any lack of evenness or any stiffness in the fingers. Mozart cared little for a brilliant style. His opinion of Clementi has already been mentioned. He preferred rather a moderate than an extremely rapid tempo, condemned severely any inaccuracy or carelessness, likewise any lack of clearness in rhythm. But, above all, he laid emphasis on a beautiful and singing quality of tone.
His avoidance rather than cultivation of brilliancy alone makes his music often suggest the harpsichord. There is an absence of the technical devices then new, which have since become thoroughly associated with the pianoforte style. Yet from 1777 Mozart devoted himself to the pianoforte. An instrument made especially for him, which he invariably used in his many concerts in Vienna, has been preserved. The keyboard has a range of five octaves, from the F below the bass staff to the F above the treble staff. The action is very light, the tone rather sharp and strong. It can be damped, or softened, by means of a stop which pulls a strip of felt into position between the strings and the hammers.
Concerning the pianoforte sonatas it may be said again that few depart from a normal, prevailing mood. Some are exceptional. Knowing his great gift of improvising and how rich and varied his improvisations were, it is perhaps a temptation to read into them more definite emotions than are really implied. Yet it is easy to pick from the later sonatas at least three which not only differ considerably from the earlier sonatas, but differ likewise from each other. Nevertheless, two or three traits are common to them all. They mark Mozart’s sonatas distinctly from Haydn’s and, indeed, from all other sonatas.
First, there is rare melodiousness about them all. The quality of the melodies is hard to analyze. There is little savor of the folk-song, as there is in many of Haydn’s melodies. They are not so clearly cut, not, in a way, of such solid stuff. Neither, on the other hand, have they a peculiar germinating vigor which we associate with Beethoven. They seem to spin themselves as the music moves along. The movements seem to flow rather than grow. Mozart was none the less a great contrapuntist, one of the greatest among composers. But his music seems strangely to pass through counterpoint, not to be built up of it. It has therefore a quality of litheness or supple flexibility which distinguishes it from that of other composers and gives it a preëminent grace. In this regard it is akin only to the music of Couperin and Chopin.
In the second place, the harmonic coloring is subtle and suggestive. His music seems to play about harmonies rather than with them. The simplest chords and modulations have a sort of shimmer. An instance in orchestral music comes to mind—the second themes in both the first and last movements of the inspired symphony in G minor, particularly the treatment of the second theme in the restatement section of the last movement. The effect is due largely to the chromatic half-steps through which his melodies glide, noticeably into cadences, and to the same chromatic hovering about tonic, dominant and subdominant chords. Oftener than not the fine thread of his melody only grazes the notes proper to its harmony, touching just above or below them in swift, light dissonances. Frequently the harmonic foundation is of the simplest kind. Modulations to remote keys or vague drifting of the whole harmonic fabric, such as one finds, for instance, in the first pages of the Fantasia in C minor, are rare. Usually the harmonic foundation is astonishingly simple. It is the wholly charming unwillingness of the melodies to be flatly chained to it that gives the whole such an elusive color.
There is a wealth of passing notes, of anticipations and suspensions, of every device which may aid melody to belie its unavoidable relations to harmony. These take from most of his pianoforte music all trace of commonplaceness. Most of it has a graceful distinction which we may call style. Take even the opening theme of the great sonata in A minor. The nature of the theme is bold and declamatory; yet the very first note avoids an unequivocal allegiance to the harmony by a D-sharp. Or observe in the last movement of the sonata in C minor (K. 457) how the short phrases of the melody not only anticipate the harmony in beginning, but delay acknowledging it again and again.
In the third place, the scoring of Mozart’s sonatas is usually lighter than that of Haydn’s. We have to do with a finer set of fingers, for one thing, which are unexcelled in lightness and sweetness of touch, fingers which prefer to suggest oftener than to declaim. The treatment of inner voices is more airy. One thinks again of Couperin and even more of Chopin. There is a better understanding of pianoforte effects, not effects of brilliance but of delicate sonority combined with grace. The last movement of the sonata in A minor just mentioned, is a masterpiece of style, and yet for the most part is hardly more than a whisper of sound. The passage work in the last movement of a beautiful sonata in F major (K. 332), the chord figures of the Piu allegro section of the Fantasia, even the F-sharp minor section of the familiar Alla Turca are the work of a man with an unusually fine sense of what fitted the pianoforte. Mozart also expected more of the left hand than Haydn expected. In all his pianoforte music there is more delicacy than there is in Haydn’s, more sophistication, too, if you will. It is more difficult to play.
Of the many sonatas, rondos and fantasias only a few may be discussed in detail. Three sonatas written before Mozart settled in Vienna, in 1781, are very fine. These are in A minor (K. 310), in A major (K. 331) and in F major (K. 332). That in A minor was written in 1778. The first movement is more stentorian than Mozart’s music usually is. It is dominated by a strong rhythmical motive throughout, used with fiery effect in the development section over a series of rumbling pedal points. There is something assertive and martial about it, like the ring of trumpets over a great confusion. The second theme seems to be but an expression of energy in more civilian strain. It is perilously near virtuoso stuff; but the movement as a whole is splendid by reason of its force. It is Mozart in a very unusual mood, however.
The second movement is a picture in music, according to Mozart himself, of a charming little girl, who has ‘a staid manner and a great deal of sense for her age.’ Yet something of the boldness of the first movement still lingers. The mood is beautifully lyrical and poetic, the style, however, very free and broad. It lacks the intimate tenderness of most of Mozart’s slow movements. The last movement is magical. The fine, delicate scoring, the short phrases, as it were breathless, the beautiful shifting of harmonies, the constantly restless unvaried movement, weave a texture of music that must make us ever wonder at the nature of the mysterious, elusive spirit that whispers all but unheard behind so much of Mozart’s music.
The sonata in F major and that in A major were written the following year, and are of strikingly different character, both speaking of the Mozart whose playing was long remembered for its quality of heart-melting tenderness. Unlike the first movement of the A minor sonata, the first movement of the F major is full of a variety of themes and motives. It is rather lyrical in character. The first theme has a song-like nature; and a beautiful measure or two of folk-song melody makes itself heard in the transition to the second theme, which is again lyrical. The development section opens with still another melody. There is an oft-repeated shifting from high register to low. The whole is wrapped in a veil of poetry. The slow middle movement is unexcelled among all slow movements for purity of style, for perfection of form, for refinement, but also tenderness of sentiment; and the last movement flows like a brook through Rondo Field. One cannot choose one movement from the others as being more beautiful either in spirit or workmanship; and the three together compose one of the flawless sonatas of pianoforte literature.
The more familiar sonata in A major is more irregular. It has, by the way, no movement in the triplex form. The first is an air and variations. It has long been a favorite with amateur and connoisseur alike. The naïve beauty of the air is irresistible. The variations throw many traits of Mozart’s style into prominence, particularly in the first and fifth, his love of entwining his harmonies, so to speak, with shadows and passing notes. The scoring of the fourth is wonderfully beautiful. The sixth is perhaps unworthy to follow the fifth. After the almost inevitable monotony of the variation form, it is perhaps to be regretted that the second movement, a minuet, continues the key of the first. The movement itself is of great charm. The trio is happily in D major. One would be glad to have it in any key, so exquisite and perfect is its beauty. The last movement, a rondo alla Turca, takes up the key of A again. That it is in minor, not major, hardly suffices to break the monotony of tonality which may threaten the interest of the sonata as a whole. The rondo is engagingly jocund, but more ordinary than Mozart is elsewhere likely to allow himself to be.
Two later sonatas have a more serious allure than these earlier ones. That in C minor (K. 457), composed in 1784, is commonly considered his greatest sonata. Why such a distinction should be insisted upon, it is difficult to see. The C minor sonata is more weighty than the others, but is it for that reason greater? Must music to be great, hint of the tragic struggles of the soul? Such is the merit often ascribed to this sonata, as if there were no true greatness in a smile. Without setting up a standard of the great and the trivial in music, we may grant that the work has a compelling force. Let us not liken it to Beethoven. It still has the charm of which only Mozart was the master, that charm which remains one of the intangible, inexplicable things in music.
A sonata in F major (K. 533) was composed in 1788. The whole work is characterized by a possibly too prominent contrapuntal ingenuity. There is besides a boldness in harmonies, especially in the slow movement, which makes one wonder into what strange lands Mozart strayed when he sat improvising at the keyboard.
The sonatas as a whole rest, as we have said, upon a harmonic foundation which is relatively simple. The great Fantasia in C minor differs from them in this regard more than in any other. If, as Otto Jahn suggested in his ‘Life of Mozart,’ this fantasia may offer us some suggestion of what Mozart’s improvisations were like, we may be sure that such outpourings wandered into harmonies rich and strange.
The fantasia was composed in 1785, the year after the C minor sonata, to which it was at one time thought to have been intended as an introductory movement. An earlier fantasia in D minor is fragmentary. It ends abruptly and leaves an impression of incompleteness on the mind of the listener. The C minor fantasia is without definite form, but the return of the opening motive at the end gives it a logical balance. It divides itself into five or six sections. The tempo is not very fast in any one of them, but there is an uneasy current of unrest running under the whole.
It would be foolish to attempt an analysis of what may be its emotional content. It calls for no such analysis, but stands as another instance of the strange power Mozart’s music has to satisfy of itself alone. It must remain, like his other work, mysterious and of secret origin. Only one section is given a key-signature. The others are without harmonic limitation. Perhaps the opening section, and the brief part of it repeated at the end, are the most impressive. The motive out of which they are built is of unfathomable significance; their harmonies rise and fall as slowly and mysteriously as the tide. Of the quality of other more melodious sections, of the occasional charm and grace that here and there rise, as it were, on the wings of light; of the passionate harmonies that die away into silence before the slow opening motive returns inexorably, nothing can be said. There comes over it in memory the light that never was on land or sea. It is a poet’s dream.
We have now to consider the pianoforte concertos which as a whole may be taken to be the finest of his works for the instrument. They were written primarily for his own use, seventeen of them in Vienna between 1783 and 1786, some earlier, however, and a few later. They are concertos in the modern sense, not like the concertos of Sebastian Bach. In the latter we find the clavier treated in much the same style as the orchestra or the tutti, as it was, and still is, generally called. In the Mozart concertos, on the other hand, the solo instrument is given a rôle which will show off to the best its peculiar qualities. The Vivaldi form of concerto, such as Bach used, was a modified rondo; that is to say, there was one chief subject, usually announced at the beginning by the tutti. This subject properly belonged to the tutti, and the solo instrument was given various episodes of contrasting material, between which the orchestra usually was introduced with ritornelles based upon the chief subject. The whole was a sort of dialogue between soloist and orchestra.
The form of the concerto which Mozart used was clearly as follows: an expanded triplex form for the first movement, a slow movement in song form, and a rondo of the French type for the finale. Moreover, he used the solo instrument not only alone, but with the orchestra; in such cases writing a brilliant sort of fioritura for it, which added a special and distinct color to the ensemble. Such a form of concerto was apparently first employed by Christian Bach in London. From him Mozart learned the use of it. He was not, therefore, as has often been stated, the true ‘father’ of the modern concerto. Nevertheless it was he who first used the form with enduring success, and it may be considered as his special contribution to the standard musical forms.
A brief outline of the first movement of one of his concertos will illustrate the manner in which the triplex form was used in all of them, and in which, with few modifications, it has continued to be used by most composers. Let us take the wonderfully delightful concerto in A major (K. 488). The movement opens with a long section for the orchestra. The first theme is announced at once. Later comes the lovely second theme, in the tonic key, be it noted. There is then a short coda, and the orchestra comes to a full tonic cadence and allows the piano to take up the music. The function of this orchestral introduction is to introduce the two themes out of which the movement now proceeds to build itself, conforming pretty closely to the triplex model.
The piano has the first theme practically alone, the orchestra merely suggesting an inner voice in the harmony from time to time. In the transitional passage to the dominant key which follows, the piano serves chiefly to spin a few figures over the chords carried by the orchestra. Then the piano has the second theme, now in the dominant, alone; after which it is repeated by the orchestra, the piano adding a touch of ornamental color here and there. Pianoforte and orchestra now play together, the piano taking the rôle of soloist in a series of scales and figures. A full cadence in E major ends the first section.
The development section is not long. It will be noticed that the pianist is really soloist through it all, the delicate figure work which he has to perform being always evident above the harmonies or themes of the orchestra.
The long opening section for orchestra at the beginning of the concerto is cut down to a few measures in the restatement. The transitional passage between first and second themes is very much shortened likewise. Finally, after the music has progressed duly according to the conventions governing the restatement section in the triplex form, the orchestra makes a pause. Here the pianist is supposed to play what is known as a cadenza—a long passage usually testing both him and his instrument to the limit of their abilities. These cadenzas were commonly improvised, and in them Mozart must have displayed the greatness of his power both as a musician and as a player. The cadenza came to an end with a long trill, after which the orchestra, usually without the piano, added the completing coda.
The second and third movements were usually in some simpler form. The second was most frequently an aria, the third a rondo. The whole was primarily a piece for the virtuoso, while the orchestra, save when announcing themes or playing ritornelles, served mainly as an accompaniment to the brilliant soloist. It might well, be it understood, carry on the thematic development of the music, thus leaving the pianist free to weave every sort of arabesque; but from now on the concerto was a form of music which was deliberately planned to show off the special qualities of a solo instrument.
It was almost inevitable that in most concertos the genuinely musical element should be regarded as of less and less importance. The public expected, and indeed still expects, to hear or even to see a virtuoso display the uttermost limits of his skill in such pieces. The improvised cadenzas were in the hands of most players a nuisance which marred the work as a whole beyond repair. But the Mozart concertos, written as they were for occasions of his public appearance, have a true musical value. We know enough of his improvising to be sure that his cadenzas added and did not subtract from this.
Their chief beauty is here, as in his other music, the melodious freshness of his themes, the delightful subtlety of his harmony. The constant stream of arabesque which the piano adds to this intrinsically beautiful foundation is in the main simple. It is surprising how little Mozart added to the virtuoso style of pianoforte literature, even how little he made use of what, through Clementi and Dussek, was already common property. There are practically no octave passages, and no passages in double notes. He uses only scales, arpeggios and trills.
But his art of combining these with the orchestra has never been excelled. In this regard his concertos stand far above those of the virtuosi like Hummel, Dussek, and John Field. Their tone-color is not only that which the essentially colorless pianoforte can afford; it is a beautiful interweaving of many colors. His treatment of the orchestra is always distinguished, never haphazard or indifferent. Delicate as the coloring may be to ears now accustomed to heavier and more sensuous blendings, it is not watery and faded. It is still exquisitely clear and suggestive. As the first of composers to make such effective use of the cold yet brilliant tone of the pianoforte in combination with the various warmer tones of the orchestra, he may be said to have set a standard of excellence which subsequent concertos have oftener fallen short of than attained. Hundreds have been written. The fingers of one hand might perhaps count the number of those which as works of art are comparable to Mozart’s.
It must be admitted that Mozart was not equally inspired in all his concertos. That in D major (K. 537), composed in 1788 and known as the ‘Coronation Concerto,’ savors unpleasantly of the pièce d’occasion. The themes of the first movement are almost ludicrously commonplace. Those of the Larghetto are hardly more distinguished, and the last movement can be recommended for little more than brilliance. The concertos in D minor (K. 466) and in C minor (K. 491) are, on the contrary, inspired throughout. That in A major (K. 488) one might well be tempted to call the most charming of Mozart’s pianoforte compositions, but that such distinctions are gratuitous and unpleasant. The second theme of the first movement is surely one of the loveliest in all music. The last movement is irresistibly charming, with the sparkle of sunshine on laughing water. The andante between the first and last is of that sort of music which words cannot describe. Indeed there is in all of Mozart’s music, as we have said, a self-sufficient vitality which makes it a perfect satisfaction for the ear. One does not feel stirred to seek a meaning beneath it. It is almost natural music. There is nothing labored, nothing symbolic; and it is almost uniquely beautiful. Surely, as far as pianoforte music is concerned we shall wait nearly half a century before that abstract grace again appears, this time in the works of Frédéric Chopin.
The pianoforte sonatas of Beethoven hold an undisputed place in the literature for that instrument. Whatever the future of music may be, they can hardly be dethroned. They must always, it would seem, represent the broadest, deepest and highest dimensions to which the sonata can develop. Music which has since been written under the name of sonata has been and will be compared with the sonatas of Beethoven, has been and will be found wanting either in form, in content or in the union of the two, by comparison with those of the great master of Bonn. In the matter of musical value they may be equalled, in many matters concerning the treatment of the pianoforte they have been excelled; but as sonatas they will probably hold their high place for ever, scarcely approached.
Improvements in the structure of the instrument itself have something to do with their massiveness. The growth of the pianoforte to serviceable maturity was a slow process, and not until Beethoven was well advanced in years was he able to secure one which could carry the burden that his powerful imagination would put upon it.
In the year 1711 Bartolomeo Cristofori, a Florentine, made the first piano, that is to say, an instrument the strings of which were struck by hammers operated by means of a keyboard. That the volume of sound so produced would be soft or loud in accordance with the pressure brought to bear on the keys by the player gave the instrument its name—Piano(soft)-forte(loud). The harpsichord, it will be remembered, did not offer the player such a chance for expression and for the gradation of sound. The clavichord was inferior to the new instrument in volume and resonance. However, sixty years of experiment and invention were required to bring the pianoforte to the point at which it began wholly to displace its predecessors in the favor of composers and virtuosi.
Of the many difficulties which manufacturers had to overcome, only a few need be mentioned. The most serious was the problem of making a frame strong enough to resist the tension of the heavier wire strings. This was met by tension bars, by metal braces, and finally by the invention of a cast-iron frame, not, however, until after Beethoven had ceased writing for the pianoforte. The problem of the action was complicated by the necessity for the hammers to fall back instantly from the strings as soon as they had struck them. This falling back is known as the escapement, and it was chiefly by devices of escapement that two great pianoforte actions came to be differentiated from each other by the end of the eighteenth century. These actions are known as the Viennese and the English.
With the former are associated the names of Stein and Streicher. It was a light action and the tone of the Viennese pianos was correspondingly light and fine. It had little volume and in melodies was sweet and clear but not full. It was for such pianos that Haydn and Mozart wrote their sonatas. Both men first acquired their keyboard technique on the harpsichord, and later both naturally adopted a piano the light action of which demanded approximately the same sort of touch as that which they had already mastered. A style of music developed from the nature of the instrument which was little different from harpsichord music. Effects of fleetness and delicacy marked it.
In 1777 Mozart had visited the Stein factories, then in Augsburg, and had been much pleased by a device with which Stein’s pianos were equipped: a lever, worked by the knee, which lifted the dampers from all the strings at once, allowing them a fuller and richer vibration in loud passages than was necessary in softer ones. This genouillière soon gave way to the pedal which had been invented for the same purpose by the English manufacturers. Pedal effects distinguish pianoforte music from harpsichord music perhaps more than any other feature. These are chiefly effects of sonority, of combining in one relatively sustained mass of sound notes which lie far apart on the keyboard, outside the span of the hand. These notes, of course, cannot be struck together, but, when struck one after the other, can be blended and sustained by means of the pedal. There must be supposed in the pianoforte a tone which unaided will vibrate longer after its string has been struck than the dry, short tone of the harpsichord. Such a sustained, rich tone the Viennese pianos did not have. They suggested but few possibilities in pedal effects to Haydn and Mozart. For them the close spacing of harpsichord music was natural. They ventured little in wide combinations, in sonorous masses of sound.