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Music-Study in Germany, a non-fiction book by Amy Fay |
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With Kullak - Chapter 8 |
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_ WITH KULLAK CHAPTER VIII Concerts. Joachim again. The Siege of Paris. Peace Declared. Wagner. A Woman's Symphony. Ovation to Wagner in Berlin.
I haven't been doing much of anything lately, except going to concerts, of which I have heard an immense number, and all of them admirable.--I wish you could hear Joachim! I went last night to his third soiree, and he certainly is the wonder of the age. Unless I were to rave I never could express him. One of his pieces was a quartette by Haydn, which was perfectly bewitching. The adagio he played so wonderfully, and drew such a pathetic tone from his violin, that it really went through one like a knife. The third movement was a jig, and just the gayest little piece! It flashed like a humming bird, and he played every note so distinctly and so fast that people were beside themselves, and it was almost impossible to keep still. It received a tremendous encore. Joachim is so bold! You never imagined such strokes as he gives the violin--such tones as he brings out of it. He plays these great tours de force, his fingers rushing all over the violin, just as Tausig dashes down on the piano. So free! And then his conception!! It is like revealing Beethoven in the flesh, to hear him. I heard a lady pianist the other day, who is becoming very celebrated and who plays superbly. Her name is Fräulein Menter, and she is from Munich. She has been a pupil of Liszt, Tausig and Bülow. Think what a galaxy of teachers! She is as pretty as she can be, and she looked lovely sitting at the piano there and playing piece after piece. I envied her dreadfully. She plays everything by heart, and has a beautiful conception. She gave her concert entirely alone, except that some one sang a few songs, and at the end Tausig played a duet for two pianos with her, in which he took the second piano. Imagine being able to play well enough for such a high artist as he to condescend to do such a thing! It was so pretty when they were encored. He made a sign to go forward. She looked up inquiringly, and then stepped down one step lower than he. He smiled and applauded her as much as anybody. I thought it was very gallant in him to stand there and clap his hands before the whole audience, and not take any of the encore to himself, for his part was as important as hers, and he is a much greater artist. I was charmed with her, though. She goes far beyond Mehlig and Topp, though Mehlig, too, is considered to have a remarkable technique. I regret so much that M. will have to go back to America without seeing Paris--the most beautiful city in the world! Nobody knows how long the war is going to last. The Prussians have so surrounded Paris that it is cut off from the country, and can't get any supplies. They have eaten up all their meat, and now the French are living upon rats, dogs and cats! Just think how horrid! They catch the rats in the Paris sewers, and cook them in champagne and eat them. (At least that is the story.) It seems perfectly inconceivable. The poor things have no milk, no salt, no butter and no meat. I wonder what they do with all the little babies whose mothers can't nurse them, and with young children. They will not give up, however, for they have bread and wine enough to last all winter, and they declare that Paris is too strong to be taken. Of course if the Prussians remain where they are, eventually Paris will be starved out, and will be obliged to surrender. It is a difficult position for the Prussians, for they must either bombard the city, or starve it out. If they bombard it, they must be in a situation to begin it from all sides, or else the French will break through their lines, and establish a communication with the rest of France. Now the circle round Paris is twelve miles long, so that it would take an enormous army to keep up such a bombardment, and although the Prussian army is enormous, I don't know whether it is equal to that, for the French have so much the advantage of position that they can fire down on the Prussians, and kill them by thousands. On the other hand, if they starve Paris out, the poor soldiers will have to lie out in the cold all winter, and many of them will die from the exposure. The men are getting very restless from so many weeks of inactivity. Nobody knows how it is to end. The King is opposed to bombardment, for aside from the terrible loss of life it would cause, it seems too inhuman to lay such a splendid city in the dust. Fresh troops are sent on all the time, and every day the trains pass my windows packed with soldiers. It seems as if every man in Germany were being called out, and that looks like bombardment. It is a terrible time, and everybody feels restless and disturbed. One sees few soldiers on the streets except wounded ones. I often meet a young man who is wheeled about in a chair, who has had both legs cut off. The poor fellow looks so sad--and I know of another who has lost both hands and both feet. It is curious to note the condescending attitude taken by people here toward the French in this war. They never for a moment speak of them as if they were antagonists on equal ground, but always as if they were a set of fools bent on their own destruction, who must be properly chastised and restored to their equilibrium by the Germans. "Ja!--die Franzosen!" the Germans will say with a shrug which implies the deepest conviction of their entire imbecility. They admit, however, that the French are an "amusing people," and that "Paris ist DOCH die Welt-Stadt. (Paris is the city of the world.)"
BERLIN, February 26, 1871. I am going to send you a song out of the Meistersänger, which I think is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard. It is called Walther's Traumlied (Walter's Dream Song). The idea of it is that he sees his love in a dream or vision as she will be when she is his wife. You must begin to sing in a dreamy way, as if you were in a trance, and then you must gradually become more and more excited until you end in a grand gush of passion. You will be quite in the music of the future if you sing out of the Meistersänger. It is one of Wagner's greatest operas, and is very beautiful, in my opinion. It caused a grand excitement when it came out last winter. The whole musical world is in a quarrel over Wagner. He is giving a new direction to music and is finding out new combinations of the chords. Half the musical world upholds him, and declares that in the future he will stand on a par with Beethoven and Mozart. The other half are bitterly opposed to him, and say that he writes nothing but dissonances, and that he is on an entirely false track. I am on the Wagner side myself. He seems to me to be a great genius.--Pity he is such a moral outlaw! Since I began this letter Paris has capitulated, and PEACE has been declared. The anxiety and suspense have lasted so long, however, that the news did not cause much excitement or enthusiasm. Nothing like that with which the capture of Napoleon was received. But that was decidedly the event of the war. The politic Bismarck would not allow the troops to march triumphantly through Paris, but only permitted them to pass through as small a corner of it as was consistent with the national honour. This has caused a good deal of murmuring and discontent among the Germans.--"Our poor soldiers! after all their fatigues and hardships, they ought have been allowed the satisfaction of marching through the city!"--is the general opinion I hear expressed. However, they will probably acquiesce in Bismarck's wisdom in not triumphing over a fallen foe when they come to think it over. We are now to have six weeks of mourning for those who have been killed in the war, and then in May the army will come back in triumph. The King is to meet them at the Brandenburger Gate, and lead them up the Linden. All Berlin will be wild with excitement, and I expect it will be a great sight. The windows on Unter den Linden are already selling at enormous prices for the occasion. The Germans, by the way, "take no stock" at all in the King's pious expressions throughout the campaign. They laugh at him greatly for calling himself victorious "by the grace of God." "Such a nonsense!" Herr J. says, contemptuously.
BERLIN, April 22, 1871. I haven't a mortal thing to say, for all the little I have done I communicated in a letter to N. S. Kullak has been praising my playing lately, but I cannot believe in it myself. I have been learning a Ballade of Liszt's. It is beautiful but very hard, and with some terrific octave passages in it. It has the double roll of octaves in it, and this is the first time I ever learned how it was done. I am now studying octaves systematically. Kullak has written three books of them, and it is an exhaustive work on the subject, and as famous in its way as the Gradus ad Parnassum. The first volume is only the preparation, and the exercises are for each hand separately. There are a lot of them for the thumb alone, for instance. Then there are others for the fourth and fifth fingers, turning over and under each other in every conceivable way. Then there are the wrist exercises, and, in short, it is the most minute and complete work. Kullak himself is celebrated for his octave playing. That I knew when I was in Tausig's conservatory, as Tausig used to tell his scholars that they must study Kullak's Octave School. Wagner has come to Berlin for a visit, and next week he will have a grand concert, when some of his compositions are to be brought out, and he will, himself, conduct. Weitzmann says that he is a great conductor. I heard his opera of Tannhaüser the other day, and I was perfectly carried away with the overture, which I had not heard for a long time. The orchestra played it magnificently, and I think it quite equal to Beethoven. Wagner's theory is that music is a cry of the mind, and his compositions certainly illustrate it. All other music pales before it in passion and intensity. Did you read my letter to N. S. in which I told her about Alicia Hund, who composed and conducted a symphony? That is quite a step for women in the musical line. She reminded me of M., as she had just such a high-strung face. All the men were highly disgusted because she was allowed to conduct the orchestra herself. I didn't think myself that it was a very becoming position, though I had no prejudice against it. Somehow, a woman doesn't look well with a bâton in her hand directing a body of men.
BERLIN, May 18, 1871. Wagner has just been in Berlin, and his arrival here has been the occasion of a grand musical excitement. He was received with the greatest enthusiasm, and there was no end of ovations in his honour. First, there was a great supper given to him, which was got up by Tausig and a few other distinguished musicians. Then on Sunday, two weeks ago, was given a concert in the Sing-Akademie, where the seats were free. As the hall only holds about fifteen hundred people, you may imagine it was pretty difficult to get tickets. I didn't even attempt it, but luckily Weitzmann, my harmony teacher, who is an old friend of Wagner's, sent me one. The orchestra was immense. It was carefully selected from all the orchestras in Berlin, and Stern, who directed it, had given himself infinite trouble in training it. Wagner is the most difficult person in the world to please, and is a wonderful conductor himself. He was highly discontented with the Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipsic, which thinks itself the best in existence, so the Berlinese felt rather shaky. The hall was filled to overflowing, and finally, in marched Wagner and his wife, preceded and followed by various distinguished musicians. As he appeared the audience rose, the orchestra struck up three clanging chords, and everybody shouted Hoch! It gave one a strange thrill. The concert was at twelve, and was preceded by a "greeting" which was recited by Frau Jachmann Wagner, a niece of Wagner's, and an actress. She was a pretty woman, "fair, fat and forty," and an excellent speaker. As she concluded she burst into tears, and stepping down from the stage she presented Wagner with a laurel crown, and kissed him. Then the orchestra played Wagner's Faust Overture most superbly, and afterwards his Fest March from the Tannhäuser. The applause was unbounded. Wagner ascended the stage and made a little speech, in which he expressed his pleasure to the musicians and to Stern, and then turned and addressed the audience. He spoke very rapidly and in that child-like way that all great musicians seem to have, and as a proof of his satisfaction with the orchestra he requested them to play the Faust Overture under his direction. We were all on tiptoe to know how he would direct, and indeed it was wonderful to see him. He controlled the orchestra as if it were a single instrument and he were playing on it. He didn't beat the time simply, as most conductors do, but he had all sorts of little ways to indicate what he wished. It was very difficult for them to follow him, and they had to "keep their little eye open," as B. used to say. He held them down during the first part, so as to give the uncertainty and speculativeness of Faust's character. Then as Mephistopheles came in, he gradually let them loose with a terrible crescendo, and made you feel as if hell suddenly gaped at your feet. Then where Gretchen appeared, all was delicious melody and sweetness. And so it went on, like a succession of pictures. The effect was tremendous. I had one of the best seats in the house, and could see Wagner and his wife the whole time. He has an enormous forehead, and is the most nervous-looking man you can imagine, but has that grim setting of the mouth that betokens an iron will. When he conducts he is almost beside himself with excitement. That is one reason why he is so great as a conductor, for the orchestra catches his frenzy, and each man plays under a sudden inspiration. He really seems to be improvising on his orchestra. Wagner's object in coming here was to try and get his Nibelungen opera performed. It is an opera which requires four evenings to get through with. Did you ever hear of such a thing? He lays out everything on such a colossal scale. It reminded me of that story they tell of him when he was a boy. He was a great Shakespeare enthusiast, and wanted to write plays, too. So he wrote one in which he killed off forty of the principal characters in the last act! He gave a grand concert in the opera house here, which he directed himself. It was entirely his own compositions, with the exception of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, which he declared nobody understood but himself. That rather took down Berlin, but all had to acknowledge after the concert that they had never heard it so magnificently played. He has his own peculiar conception of it. There was a great crowd, and every seat had been taken long before. All the artists were present except Kullak, who was ill. I saw Tausig sitting in the front rank with the Baroness von S. There must have been two hundred players in the orchestra, and they acquitted themselves splendidly. The applause grew more and more enthusiastic, until it finally found vent in a shower of wreaths and bouquets. Wagner bowed and bowed, and it seemed as if the people would never settle down again. At the end of the concert followed another shower of flowers, and his Kaiser March was encored. Such an effect! After the tempest of sound of the introduction the drums came in with a sharp tat-tat-tat-tat-tat! Then the brass began with the air and came to a crescendo, at last blaring out in such a way as shivered you to the very marrow of your bones. It was like an earthquake yawning before you. The noise was so tremendous that it was like the roaring of the surf. I never conceived of anything in music to approach it, and Wagner made me think of a giant Triton disporting himself amid the billows and tossing these great waves of sound from one hand to the other. You don't see his face, of course--nothing but his back, and yet you know every one of his emotions. Every sinew in his body speaks. He makes the instruments prolong the tones as no one else does, and the effect is indescribably beautiful, yet he complains that he never can get an orchestra to hold the tone as they ought. His whole appearance is of arrogance and despotism personified. By the end of the concert the bouquets were so heaped on the stage in front of the director's desk, that Wagner had no place left big enough to stand on without crushing them. Altogether, it was a brilliant affair, and a great triumph for his friends. He has a great many bitter enemies here, however. Joachim is one of them, though it seems unaccountable that a man of his musical gifts should be. Ehlert is also a strong anti-Wagnerite, and the Jews hate him intensely.--Perhaps his character has something to do with it, for he has set all laws of honour, gratitude and morality at defiance all his life long. It is a dreadful example for younger artists, and I think Wagner is depraving them. In this country everything is forgiven to audacity and genius, and I must say that if Germany can teach us Music, we can teach her morals! _ |
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