Home > Authors Index > Amy Fay > Music-Study in Germany > This page
Music-Study in Germany, a non-fiction book by Amy Fay |
||
With Liszt - Chapter 22 |
||
| < Previous |
Table of content |
Next > |
|
________________________________________________
_ WITH LISZT CHAPTER XXII Farewell to Liszt! German Conservatories and their Methods. Berlin Again. Liszt and Joachim.
We had our last lesson from Liszt a few days ago, and he leaves Weimar next week. He was so hurried with engagements the last two times that he was not able to give us much attention. I played my Rubinstein concerto. He accompanied me himself on a second piano. We were there about six o'clock P. M. Liszt was out, but he had left word that if we came we were to wait. About seven he came in, and the lamps were lit. He was in an awful humour, and I never saw him so out of spirits. "How is it with our concerto?" said he to me, for he had told me the time before to send for the second piano accompaniment, and he would play it with me. I told him that unfortunately there existed no second piano part. "Then, child, you've fallen on your head, if you don't know that at least you must have a second copy of the concerto!" I told him I knew it by heart. "Oh!" said he, in a mollified tone. So he took my copy and played the orchestra part which is indicated above the piano part, and I played without notes. I felt inspired, for the piano I was at was a magnificent grand that Steinway presented to Liszt only the other day. Liszt was seated at another grand facing me, and the room was dimly illuminated by one or two lamps. A few artists were sitting about in the shadow. It was at the twilight hour, "l'heure du mystère," as the poetic Gurickx used to say, and in short, the occasion was perfect, and couldn't happen so again. You see we always have our lessons in the afternoon, and it was a mere chance that it was so late this time. So I felt as if I were in an electric state. I had studied the piece so much that I felt perfectly sure of it, and then with Liszt's splendid accompaniment and his beautiful face to look over to--it was enough to bring out everything there was in one. If he had only been himself I should have had nothing more to desire, but he was in one of his bitter, sarcastic moods. However, I went rushing on to the end--like a torrent plunging down into darkness, I might say--for it was the end, too, of my lessons with Liszt! In answer to your musical questions, I don't know that there is much to be told about conservatories of which you are not aware. The one in Stuttgardt is considered the best; and there the pupils are put through a regular graded method, beginning with learning to hold the hand, and with the simplest five finger exercises. There are certain things, studies, etc., which all the scholars have to learn. That was also the case in Tausig's conservatory. First we had to go through Cramer, then through the Gradus ad Parnassum, then through Moscheles, then Chopin, Henselt, Liszt and Rubinstein. I haven't got farther than Chopin, myself, but when I went to Kullak I studied Czerny's School for Virtuosen a whole year, which is the book he "swears by." I'm going on with them this winter. It takes years to pass through them all, but when you have finished them, you are an artist. I think myself the "Schule des Virtuosen" is indispensable, much as I loathe it. First, there is nothing like it for giving you a technique. It consists of passages, generally about two lines in length, which Czerny has the face to request you to play from twenty to thirty times successively. You can imagine at that rate how long it takes you to play through one page! Tedious to the last degree! But it greatly equalizes and strengthens the fingers, and makes your execution smooth and elegant. It teaches you to take your time, or as the Germans call it, it gives you "Ruhe (repose)," the grand sine qua non! You learn to "play out" your passages ("aus-spielen," as Kullak is always saying); that is, you don't hurry or blur over the last notes, but play clearly and in strict time to the end of the passage. I saw Lebert, the head of the Stuttgardt conservatory, here this summer, and had several long conversations with him, and he told me he considered Bach the best study, and put the Well-Tempered Clavichord at the foundation of everything. The Stuttgardters study Bach every day, and I think it a capital plan myself. I have begun doing it, too. It was a great thing for me, that quarter of Bach that I took with Mr. Paine in Cambridge, and was one of your inspirations, when you "builded better than you knew."--I never saw a person with such an instinct to find out the right thing as you have! If it hadn't been for that, I should never have got so familiarized with Bach, or got into the way of studying him for myself, as I have done a great deal. It is as great for the fingers as it is "good for the soul." Lenz, in his sketch of Chopin, says that Chopin told him when he prepared for a concert he never studied his own compositions at all, but shut himself up and practiced Bach! However, I suppose it comes to the same thing in the end if one studies Bach, Czerny, or Gradus, only you must keep at one of them all the while. The grand thing is to have each of your five fingers go "dum, dum," an equal number of times, which is the principle of all three! Tausig was for Gradus, you know, and practiced it himself every day. He used to transpose the studies in different keys, and play just the same in the left hand as in the right, and enhance their difficulties in every way, but I always found them hard enough as they were written! Bach strengthens the fingers and makes them independent. Czerny equalizes them and gives an easy and elegant execution, and Gradus is not only good for finger technique--it trains the arm and wrist also, and gives a much more powerful execution. I think that in all conservatories they have at least six lessons a week, two solo, two in reading at sight, and two in composition. Then there are often lectures held on musical subjects by some of the Professors, or by some one who is engaged for that purpose. All large conservatories have an orchestra, composed generally out of the scholars themselves, with a few professionals hired to eke out deficiencies. With this the best piano scholars play their concertos once a month, or once in six weeks. The number of public representations varies in every conservatory. In the Hoch Schule in Berlin they have two yearly in the Sing-Akademie. Kullak professes to have one, but he has so little interest in his scholars that he omits it when it suits his convenience. In Stuttgardt I believe they have four. I don't know much about the interior arrangements of Kullak's conservatory, because I only went to his own class. I lived too far away to attempt the theory and composition class. Liszt says that Kullak's pupils are always the best schooled of any, which rather surprised me, because there is a certain intimacy between him and Stuttgardt, and he always recommends scholars to the Stuttgardt conservatory.
BERLIN, October 8, 1873. Voilà! as Liszt always says. Here I am back again in old Berlin, and if I ever felt "like a cat in a strange garret," I do now. I left dear little Weimar two days ago, and parted from our adored Liszt a week ago to-day. He has gone to Rome. Never did I feel leaving anybody or any place so much, and Berlin seems to me like a great roaring wilderness. The distances are so endless here. You either have to kill yourself walking, or else spend a fortune in droschkies. The houses all seem to me as if they had grown. There is an immense number of new ones going up on all sides, and the noise, and the crowd, and the confusion are enough to set one distracted, after the idyllic life I've been leading. Ah, well! Es war eben ZU schön! (It was too beautiful!) Yesterday and to-day I've been looking about for a new boarding-place. I've had two invitations to dinner since my return, but everybody and everything seems so dull and stupid, prosaic and tedious to me, that I declined them both, and haven't given any of my friends my address until I have had a little time to let myself down gradually from the delights of Weimar. Liszt was kindness itself when the time came to say good-bye, but I could scarcely get out a word, nor could I even thank him for all he had done for me. I did not wish to break down and make a scene, as I felt I should if I tried to say anything. So I fear he thought me rather ungrateful and matter-of-course, for he couldn't know that I was feeling an excess of emotion which kept me silent. I miss going to him inexpressibly, and although I heard my favourite Joachim last night, even he paled before Liszt. He is on the violin what Liszt is on the piano, and is the only artist worthy to be mentioned in the same breath with him. Like Liszt, he so vitalizes everything that I have to take him in all over again every time I hear him. I am always astonished, amazed and delighted afresh, and even as I listen I can hardly believe that the man can play so! But Liszt, in addition to his marvellous playing, has this unique and imposing personality, whereas at first Joachim is not specially striking. Liszt's face is all a play of feature, a glow of fancy, a blaze of imagination, whereas Joachim is absorbed in his violin, and his face has only an expression of fine discrimination and of intense solicitude to produce his artistic effects. Liszt never looks at his instrument; Joachim never looks at anything else. Liszt is a complete actor who intends to carry away the public, who never forgets that he is before it, and who behaves accordingly. Joachim is totally oblivious of it. Liszt subdues the people to him by the very way he walks on to the stage. He gives his proud head a toss, throws an electric look out of his eagle eye, and seats himself with an air as much as to say, "Now I am going to do just what I please with you, and you are nothing but puppets subject to my will." He said to us in the class one day, "When you come out on the stage, look as if you didn't care a rap for the audience, and as if you knew more than any of them. That's the way I used to do.--Didn't that provoke the critics though!" he added, with an ineffable look of malicious mischief. So you see his principle, and that was precisely the way he did at the rehearsal in the theatre at Weimar that I wrote to you about. Joachim, on the contrary, is the quiet gentleman-artist. He advances in the most unpretentious way, but as he adjusts his violin he looks his audience over with the calm air of a musical monarch, as much as to say, "I repose wholly on my art, and I've no need of any 'ways or manners.'" In reality I admire Joachim's principle the most, but there is something indescribably fascinating and subduing about Liszt's willfulness. You feel at once that he is a great genius, and that you are nothing but his puppet, and somehow you take a base delight in the humiliation! The two men are intensely interesting, each in his own way, but they are extremes. [Beside his playing and his compositions, what Liszt has done for music and for musicians, and why, therefore, he stands so pre-eminently the greatest and the best beloved master in the musical world, may appear to the general reader in the following extract taken from a translation in Dwight's Journal, Oct. 23, 1880, of "Franz Liszt, a Musical Character Portrait" by La Mara, in the Gartenlaube: "We must count it among the exceptional merits of Liszt, that he has paved the way to recognition for innumerable aspirants, as he always shows an open heart and open hands to all artistic strivings. He was the first and most active furtherer of the immense Bayreuth enterprise, and the chief founder of the Musical Societies or Unions that flourish throughout Germany. And for how many noble and philanthropic objects has he not exerted his artistic resources! If, during his earlier virtuoso career, he made his genius serve the advantage of others far more than his own--saving out of the millions that he earned only a modest sum for himself, while he alone contributed many thousands for the completion of Cologne Cathedral, for the Beethoven monument at Bonn, and for the victims of the Hamburg conflagration--so since the close of his career as a pianist his public artistic activity has been exclusively consecrated to the benefit of others, to artistic undertakings, or to charitable objects. Since the end of 1847, not a penny has come into his own pocket either through piano-playing and conducting, or through teaching. All this, which has yielded such rich capital and interest to others, has cost only sacrifice of time and money to himself."]--ED. _ |
||