After Anzio Clementi (1732-1832), the Italian pianist, went into pianoforte manufacturing and presented to the world a pianofo•te that could withstand muscular attacks, and give out a great volume of tone because of its hammers in stead of jacks, he paved the way for the Bee thoven pianoforte sonata. He did more. He wrote his aradas ad Parnassam, a collection of studies in style and invention that are in the curriculum of every pianist and student to-day. His in ventive skill gave to pianoforte technique many new figures, and his was the technical foundation for the Beethoven sonatas. He is truthfully the father of modern pianoforte music, and until the appearance of Liszt, his pu161s, B. Cramer, the lril:hman; John Fiehl—who originated the Noc turne fo•m—and others whose style he influeneed, Dussek, Pleyel, Steibelt, and Moscheles, dominated the entire field of pianoforte playing. In Bee thoven (1770-1827) classical music reached its apex, and romantic musie—so called—had its birth. The greatest of symphonists. his influence, like Bach's, has permeated every department of music. A short-time pupil of Haydn, admired by Mozart, this gigantic genius seems to have in eluded in his mighty symphonies and sonatas all that had been. In his early efforts we see Haydn, in his ninth symphony and last piano sonatas may be found the seeds that sprouted into the luxuriant forests of the Wagner music drama, and gave birth to the dream-haunted imaginings of Chopin. Schumann, and Berlioz. Beethoven has been called the Homer, the Michel angelo, the Shakespeare of music. lie has more affinities with the great Englishman than with the Greek or Italian. He is intensely human, and ins temperament, hugely passionate and poetic as it is, is never the rule• of his noble intellect. Nature dowered Beethoven with manifold gifts; gifts not only of originality. but of character. In (lie slow revolution of music. it may be win:irked that the most original urn are not always the elect; their very origi nality sometimes degenerates into the bizarre. and a splendid isolation is their fate. But Beethoven, with all his revolutionary instincts, began in a conservatise manner. building on the foundations of predecessors. keeping in the line of tradi tion. The bases of his tonal palaces are dug deep, but their towers pierce the very skies. His thirty-two sonatas, concertos, chamber music, and nine symphonies represent the summum honum of human musical effort and. as Parry truthfully says. "bear the marks of a higher degree of con centration and a wider range of design" than those of his forerunners except Bach. "and the sum of the result is the richest and most perfect form of abstract instrumental music which exists in the whole range of music." Beethoven liter ally re-created the sonata form, adding to it new IlloNvment, filling it with an incomparable emotional and intellectual content. The sym phony he enlarged and vivified. buried the old tones of formalism. and gave it the scherzo, gave it power, majesty, tenderness, and supreme beau ty. The orchestra became a new instrument in his treatment of it, and for the first, time each mem ber of the instrumental army was given lib erty. Color, grave. delicacy, and elasticity are revealed in Ito. Beethoven orchestration. (See INSTRUMENTATION.) Unity in variety, the highest law in all artistic creation, is the distinguished characteristic of this wonderful man's work. There is little need to dwell upon Hummel ( 177S 11,371. a pupil of Alozart and a refined pianist; or upon Pies rind other imitators of the Bee thoven style. Karl Maria von Weber ( I78(1- ISD; I proved himself to lie a versatile composer and one who greatly influenced Wa?mer. Der l'reisehiitz is still played. In his overtures to Der Freischiitz. Oberon, I:arra:n/1w, Weber revealed a fine color sense :Ind a genuine fantasy. His piano music- is brilliant. effective, and sonic of it chivalric. though in formal sense he broke away from the classic and reveled in the romantic. Franz Schubert I unique as a lied composer (see LIED)- wrote ninny two of which, at least. are famous. many piano sonata.. minor pieces. and chamber music. His charm lies in his rich melodies. the most fragrant and original since Mozart's. and a personality of rare al ra et iveness. II is very profusion eneha nts. With Louis Spoil]. (1781-B-1591 we have little in despite his valuable contribu tions to violin literature. His music in the larger choral and instrumental forms sounds antiquated. Felix Maidelssohn-Barthohly 4; I was one of the hest equipped musieians of the century, a writer of relined melodies, a master of orchestration nod a man of delicate imagination. He wrote his 1/ idsunimer Vight's Dream when a mere youth. and he never surpassed it, though there is more depth in the Hebrides overture ( 1 From an idol of the mid-Victorian reign. )1endelssolin has become a man today soobarativsl• neglected and certainly under estimated. Ile wrote • absolute music in a pure style and did ill ,t attempt to transcend its sphere, or rather his own I was an aceomplished organist and pianist. and wrote with skill and ingenuity for both instruments. The \lenlcls.ohn piano music— not the familiar Songs Without Words—is a mine of good things—the Variations serieuses, for example. (See VAnt.knox.) His oratorios Naint Paul. and the Reformation Sym phony, with its chorale, are built upon a close study of Bach and Handel. To Mendelssolin the musical world owes a debt of gratitude for his labors in unearthing many Bach manuscripts. Of the many symphonies INIendelssolin wrote, the most frequently beard are the Scotch and the His violin concerto is a model of its kind.
Hector Berlioz (1S03-69), a Frenchman of colossal ambition, elected to tread in the foot steps of Beethoven, composing music in the grand manlier and devoting himself to the development of orchestral resources. with the result that he died the greatest composer of France and may lie truly entitled the father of the programme school in music. What he did for it was chiefly in a
loosening of formal knots. in rhythmic devices and orchestral color. The affixing of romantic titles, such as King Lear. Les francs juges, Lelio, Harold, and the rest, is not an original device. while Franz Liszt, affected as lie was by Berlioz's original discoveries in instru mentation, is really the intellectual protagonist of the movement, for he invented the Pohne sym phonigue, a species of foreshortened symphony. (See SV3IPIIONV.) Berlioz had not so much new to say. but he was an incomparable stylist. His music is agitated. dramatic, fantastic, and also fascinating. In his Ti' Ileum he has almost com passed the sublime, and he forged a passport to posterity in his Damnation of Faust. Like Liszt. Schumann. and Wagner, Berlioz was a man of pronounced literary ability. Chopin 15(19-49) stands alone in an age crowded with musical greatness. The most poetic of all com posers, using poesy as subject matter rather than the ordinary phraseology of music, he contrived to write for the pianoforte, an instrument abused by vapid virtuosi, a mass of music as individual as Bach's or Beethoven's. Ile had no predilection for the sonata form. though he left three solo sonatas and one for piano and violoncello: but he idealized various dance forms sueh as the polo naise, valse, mazurka, krakowiak. composed most original ballads, scherzos, nocturnes. impromplus,and as a companion hook to the Well Tempered Clariehord wrote twenty-seven studies and twenty-five preludes which are invaluable contributions to piano literature. More than this, Chopin was a melodist of rare quality and an inventor of harmonies the most daring of the cen tury. Even Wagner shows a close study of Chopin in his harmonic system. An apparition in art, this Pole sang the sorrows of his native land in exquisite accents, played the pianoforte as no one before or after him. and literally formed a new technical school. llis early music shows traces of 'Hummel and John Field, but his native originality soon lifted him out of the track of routine. His influence a freeted Liszt and the younger school, the Neo-Bussians. and Wag ner. I1obert Schumann ( ISIO-561 is another original composer quite as subjeetive as Chopin, but without the Batter's formal sense, n Sells(' tivated by devotion to Bash's comic. SsllumaWn's imagination is tropieal and his indirect influence in modern musie ha been a powerful one. Not a great symphonist. he nevertheless composed bolr charming symphonies, and chamber music of a high character. notably the pianoforte quintet. (See QUARTET; The concerto for pianoforte in A minor is justly beloved by artists and public alike. It contains passages of rare romantic beauty. But it is in his songs and smaller pieces for the pianoforte that the pecu liarly introspective nature of this German mu sician is seen at its best. The Corna C major Fantasia, F sharp Minor So»ata, the Symphonic Studies, the Fantasiesriicke, Krcis,leriona, Toc cata—most spiritual of technical studies—Pupil lo»s,and the rest are Schumann's monuments. As a song-writer he ranks below Schubert and with Robert Franz and Brahms. Franz Liszt (1811 SG), after bewitching the world with his won drous pianoforte playing, composed an incredible quantity of music, and the twentieth century will doubtless give him the laurels of the composer he craved. His pianoforte music is in the high est degree stimulating: his orchestral composi tions, Symphonic Poems, and symphonies Faust, Dante, and the superb Grauer Mass proved too tempting for his son-in-law, Richard Wagner, who assimilated their melodic content and har monic audacities in Ids music-dramas. Liszt's is still music of the future. The exact antipodes of this gifted Hungarian was Johannes Brahms (1833-97), who, finding the classic forms suffi ciently strong for his new wine. poured it out with gravity and unhurrying serenity. His four symphonies (colored by Hungarian feeling), his piano and chamber music, are the revelations of a noble nature. Brahms is not dramatic in the theatric sense, but he has epic breadth of utter ance, and his music is always noble. A romantic in feeling, his Teutonic reserve checked extrava gance: and yet his later piano music, with its formal freedom and novel content, proclaim% Brahms to be far from the ascetic classicist his critics style him. He is the great symphonist sinee Beethoven, and in his chamber music is second only to the Bonn master. Ilis songs prove him to be a born romanticist and a poet of recondite moods. Raff, Rubinstein, Ilenselt, Heller, Brod). Hiller, Rheinberger. Gade, Rein eeke, Scharwenka, Moszkowski, Saint-Sai-;ns, Grieg, Svendscn. Goldmark. Bruckner, DvolAk, Franck, Bizet, d'Albert, Gounod. Cita: brier, Ilumperdinck, Massenet, Godard, Bun gert, Debussy, C. M. Loeffler, d'l tidy; the thissians, Cliuka. Dargomyihky. Rubinstein. Borodin, Balakireff, .Mussorgsky, Cui, Rimsky Korsakoff, Glaziunoff, Rachmaninoff, Seriabine, Tselmikowsky; the memorable army of virtuosi and singers, Paganini, Bottesini, Wicniawski, Popper. Joachim. Davidoff, Wilhelmj. Kalkbren ner, Thalherg, Billow, Clara Schumann, Karl Tausig, Joseffy, Rosenthal. Emisipoff. Paderewski, Pachmann. Sophie Menter: the singers, Sontag, Malibran, Alhani, Rubin', Lablache. Mario, .fenny Lind, Tamburini, the two Pattis, the de lieszkes, and others whose name is legion—all these arc derivative composers or interpreters. Grieg and Dvo'ffik deserve especial mention for their nation al characteristies—Norwegian and Bohemian. Grieg is a harmonist of rare skill, and Dvollik a master of orchestration. His sympathetic into4ic displays influences of Schubert and Smetana (1824-S4), the latter Bohemia's representative nmsieian. Tschaikowsky (1840-93), Russia's one supreme composer, is treated at length else where, as is Richard Strauss.