Chapter I: Front Matter

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HOW TO APPRECIATE MUSIC

by
GUSTAV KOBBE

Author of "Wagner's Music-Dramas Analyzed," etc.

New York
Moffat, Yard & Company
1912

Copyright, 1906, by
Moffat, Yard & Company
New York

Published, October, 1906
Reprinted, February, 1908
Reprinted, September, 1908
Reprinted, May, 1912

The Premier Press
New York

* * * * *

To the Memory of My Brother

PHILIP FERDINAND KOBBE

* * * * *

CONTENTS

_HOW TO APPRECIATE A PIANOFORTE RECITAL_

CHAPTER PAGE
I The Pianoforte 29
II Bach's Service to Music 48
III From Fugue to Sonata 78
IV Dawn of the Romantic Period 100
V Chopin, the Poet of the Pianoforte 116
VI Schumann, the "Intimate" 134
VII Liszt, the Giant among Virtuosos 142
VIII With Paderewski--A Modern Pianist on Tour 155

_HOW TO APPRECIATE AN ORCHESTRAL CONCERT_

IX Development of the Orchestra 167
X Instruments of the Orchestra 179
XI Concerning Symphonies 197
XII Richard Strauss and His Music 207
XIII A Note on Chamber Music 224

_HOW TO APPRECIATE VOCAL MUSIC_

XIV Songs and Song Composers 231
XV Oratorio 248
XVI Opera and Music-Drama 260

TABLE OF CONTENTS

_HOW TO APPRECIATE A PIANOFORTE RECITAL_

CHAPTER PAGE

I.--THE PIANOFORTE

Why the king of musical instruments--Music under one's
fingers--Can render anything in music--Liszt played the whole
orchestra on the pianoforte--Fingers of a great virtuoso the
ambassadors of his soul--Melody and accompaniment on one
instrument--No intermediaries to mar effect--Paderewski's
playing of "Hark, Hark, the Lark"--Music's debt to the
pianoforte--Developed sonata form and gave it to
orchestra--Richard Strauss on Beethoven's pianistic
orchestration--A boon to many famous composers, even to
Wagner--Its lowly origin--Nine centuries to develop pianoforte
from monochord--The monochord described--Joined to a
keyboard--Poet's amusing advice to his musical
daughter--Clavichord developed from monochord--Its lack of
power--Bebung, or balancement--The harpsichord--Originated in
the cembalo of the Hungarian gypsy orchestra--Spinet and
virginal--Pianoforte invented by Cristofori, 1711--Exploited by
Silbermann--Strings of twenty tons' tension--Dampers and
pedals--Paderewski's use of both pedals--Mechanical
pianofortes--Senseless decoration 29

II.--BACH'S SERVICE TO MUSIC

Pianoforte so universal in character can give, through it, a
general survey of the art of music--Bach illustrates an
epoch--A Bach fugue more elaborate than a music-drama or tone
poem--Bach more modern than Haydn or Mozart--His influence on
modern music--Wagner unites the harmony of Beethoven with the
polyphony of Bach--Melody, harmony and counterpoint defined and
differentiated--Illustrated from the "Moonlight Sonata"--What
a fugue is--The fugue and the virtuoso--Not "grateful" music
for public performance--Daniel Gregory Mason's tribute and
reservation--What counterpoint lacks--Fails to give the player
as much scope as modern music--Barrier to individuality of
expression--The virtuoso's mission--Creative as well as
interpretive--Mr. Hanchett's dictum--Music both a science and
an art--Science versus feeling--Person may be very musical
without being musical at all--The great composer bends science
to art--That "ear for music"--Bach and the Weather
Bureau--The Bacon, not the Shakespeare, of music--What Wagner
learned from Bach--Illustration from "Die Walkuere"--W. J.
Henderson's anecdote--Wagner's counterpoint emotional--Bach's
the language of an epoch; Wagner's the language of liberated
music--Bach in the recital hall--Rubinstein and Bach's "Triple
Concerto"--"The Well-Tempered Clavichord"--Meaning of
"well-tempered"--A king's tribute to Bach--Two hundred and
forty-one years of Bachs 48

III.--FROM FUGUE TO SONATA

Break in Bach's influence--Mr. Parry on this hiatus in the
evolution of music--Three periods of musical development--Rise
of the harmonic, or "melodic," school--Began with Domenico
Scarlatti--The founder of modern pianoforte
technique--Beginnings of the sonata form--Philipp Emanuel Bach
and the sonata--Rise of the amateur--"The Contented Ear and
Quickened Soul," and other quaint titles--Changes in musical
taste--Pianoforte has outgrown the music of Haydn and
Mozart--Bach, Beethoven and Wagner the three great epoch-making
figures in music--Beethoven and the epoch of the sonata--His
slow development--Union of mind and heart in his work--His
sonatas, however, no longer all-dominant in pianoforte
music--Von Buelow and D'Albert as Beethoven players--Incident
at a Von Buelow Beethoven recital--Changes of taste in thirty
years--The Beethoven sonatas too orchestric--The passing of the
sonata 78

IV.--DAWN OF THE ROMANTIC PERIOD

What a sonata is--How Beethoven enlarged the form--Illustrated
in his Opus 2, No. 3, and in the "Moonlight Sonata"--The
three Beethoven periods--In his last sonatas seems chafing
under restraint of form--The sonata form reached its climax
with Beethoven--Hampers modern composers--Lawrence Gilman on
MacDowell's "Keltic Sonata"--The first romantic
composers--Weber--Schubert's inexhaustible genius--Mendelssohn
smooth, polished and harmless 100

V.--CHOPIN, THE POET OF THE PIANOFORTE

An incomparable composer--Liszt's definition of tempo
rubato--The Wagner of the pianoforte--Clear melody and weird,
entrancing harmonies--Racial traits--Friends in Paris--Liszt
the first to recognize him--The Etudes--Vigor, passion,
impetus--Von Buelow on the great C minor Etude--The
Preludes--Schumann's opinion of them--Rubinstein's playing of
the Seventh Prelude--The Nocturnes--Chopin and Poe--The
Waltzes--Liszt on the Mazurkas--The Polonaises--Chopin's battle
hymns--Other works--"A noble from head to foot"--Huneker on
Chopin 115

VI.--SCHUMANN, THE "INTIMATE"

A composer with an academic education--Pupil in pianoforte of
Frederick Wieck--Strains a finger and abandons career as a
virtuoso--Marries Clara Wieck--Afflicted with
insanity--Attempts suicide--Dies in asylum--His music
introspective and brooding--Poet, bourgeois and
philosopher--Contributions to program music--"Carnaval" and
"Kreisleriana"--Latter title explained--Really
Schumanniana--Thoughts of his Clara--"Fantasie Pieces"--His
compositions at first neglected 134

VII.--LISZT, THE GIANT AMONG VIRTUOSOS

A youthful phenomenon--Refused at the Paris Conservatory--"Le
petit Litz"--Inspired by Paganini--Episode with Countess
D'Agoult--Court conductor at Weimar--Makes Weimar the musical
Mecca of Germany--Produces "Lohengrin"--His "six
Lives"--His pianoforte compositions--The "Don Juan
Fantasie"--"Hexameron"--"Annees de
Pelerinage"--Progressive edition of the Etudes--Giant strides
in virtuosity--History of the famous "Rhapsodies
Hongroises"--Characterisation of his pianoforte music--A great
composer, not a charlatan--Liszt as a virtuoso--His tribute to
the pianoforte--A long and influential career--Played for
Beethoven and died at "Parsifal" 142

VIII.--WITH PADEREWSKI--A MODERN PIANIST ON TOUR

The most successful virtuoso ever heard here--$171,981.89 for
one season--His opinion of the pianoforte--Perfect save for
greater sustaining power of tone--Has four pianofortes on his
tours--Duties of the "piano doctor"--How the instruments are
cared for--Thawing out a pianoforte--Paderewski's humor 155

_HOW TO APPRECIATE AN ORCHESTRAL CONCERT_

IX.--DEVELOPMENT OF THE ORCHESTRA

Modern music at first vocal, and without instrumental
accompaniment--Awkward instrumentation of the
contrapuntists--Primitive orchestration in Italy--The orchestra
of Monteverde--Haydn the father of modern orchestral music--The
Mozart symphonies--Beethoven establishes the modern
orchestra--But few instruments added since--Greater richness
due to subtler technique--Beethoven's development of the
orchestra traced in his symphonies--Greater technical demands
on the players--Beethoven and Wagner--"Meistersinger" score
has only three more instruments than the Fifth
Symphony--Berlioz an orchestral juggler--Architectural
music--Wagner, greatest of orchestral composers--Employs large
orchestra not for noise, but for variety of expression--Richard
Strauss's tribute to Wagner--Wonderfully reserved in the use of
his forces--Wagner's scores the only advance worth mentioning
since Berlioz 167

X.--INSTRUMENTS OF THE ORCHESTRA

The orchestra an aggregation of instruments that should play as
one--Wagner's employment of orchestral groups illustrated by
the Love motive in "Die Walkuere" and the Walhalla
motive--Division of the orchestra--The violin--Its varied
capacity--The musical stage whisper of a hundred violins--The
violins in the "Lohengrin" prelude--Modern orchestral
virtuosity--The sordine and its use--A pizzicato movement by
Tschaikowski--The viola, violoncello and double bass--Dividing
the string band--Examples from the scores of Wagner--Anecdote
regarding the harp in "Rheingold"--The woodwind--The
flute--The oboe in Schubert's C major symphony--The English
horn in "Tristan"--Beethoven's use of the bassoon in the
Fifth and Ninth symphonies--The clarinets in "Tannhaeuser,"
"Lohengrin," and "Goetterdaemmerung"--Brass instruments and
various illustrations of their employment--The trumpet in
"Fidelio" and "Carmen"--The trombone group in "The Ring of
the Nibelung"--The trombones in "The Magic Flute," in
Schubert's C major symphony, and in the introduction to the
third act of "Lohengrin"--The tubas in the Funeral March in
"Goetterdaemmerung"--Richard Strauss's apotheosis of the horn,
and its importance in the Wagner scores--Tympani and
cymbals--Mozart's G minor symphony on twenty-two
clarinets--Richard Strauss, on the future development of the
orchestra 179

XI.--CONCERNING SYMPHONIES

The classical period of music dominated by the symphony--Its
esthetic purpose defined--A symphonic witticism--Some comment
on form in music--Divisions of the symphony established by
Haydn--Artless grace and beauty of Mozart's
symphonies--Beethoven to the fore--Climaxes and rests--The
Ninth Symphony--Schubert's genius--Mendelssohn and
Schumann--Liszt's symphonies and symphonic poems--Other
symphonists--Wagner not supposed to have been a purely
orchestral composer, yet the greatest of all 197

XII.--RICHARD STRAUSS AND HIS MUSIC

One of the most original and individual of composers--A
student, not a copyist, of Wagner--Independent intellectual
basis for his art--Originator of the tone poem--Unhampered by
even the word "symphonic"--Means much to the musically
elect--Not a juggler with the orchestra--A modern of
moderns--Technical difficulties, but not impossibilities in his
works--"Thus Spake Zarathustra" and other scores--Life and
truth, not mere beauty, the burden of modern music--Huneker's
"Piper of Dreams"--"Zarathustra" and "A Hero's Life"
described--An intellectual force in music--"A Hero's Life"
Strauss's "Meistersinger"--Tribute to Wagner in
"Feuersnot"--Performances of Richard Strauss's scores in
America--His symphony in F minor (1883) had its first
performance anywhere, under Theodore
Thomas--Straussiana--Boyhood anecdotes--Scribbled scores on
schoolbook covers--Still at school when first symphony was
played in public--Studied with Von Buelow--Married his
Freihild--Ideals of the highest 207

XIII.--A NOTE ON CHAMBER MUSIC 224

_HOW TO APPRECIATE VOCAL MUSIC_

XIV.--SONGS AND SONG COMPOSERS

Strophic and "composed through"--Schubert the first song
composer to require consideration; also the greatest--Early
struggles--Too poor to buy music paper--Becomes a
school-teacher--Impatient under drudgery--Publishers hold
aloof--Fortune for a song, but not for him--History of "The
Erlking"--How it was composed--Written down as fast as pen
could travel--Tried over the same evening--The famous
dissonances--As sung by Lilli Lehmann--Schubert only eighteen
years old when he composed "The Erlking"--His marvelous
fecundity--Died at thirty-one, yet wrote six hundred songs and
many other works--Schumann's individuality--Distinguished from
Schubert--Not the same proportion of great songs--The best
composed during his wooing of Clara--Phases of Franz's
genius--Traces of his knowledge and admiration of Bach--Choice
of keys--Objected to transpositions--Pitiable physical
disabilities--Brahms a profound thinker in music--Jensen,
Rubinstein, Grieg, Chopin, Wagner--Liszt one of the greatest of
song composers--Richard Strauss, Hugo Wolf and others 231

XV.--ORATORIO

An incongruous art form--Originated in Italy with San Filippo
Neri--Scenery, action and even ballet in the early
oratorio--The influence of German composers--Bach's "Passion"
music--Dramatic expression in Haendel--Rockstro's
characterisation of--First performance of "The
Messiah"--Haydn's "Creation" and "Seasons"--Mendelssohn's
"Elijah" next to "The Messiah" in popularity--Dramatic
episodes in the work--Gounod, Elgar and others 248

XVI.--OPERA AND MUSIC-DRAMA

Origin of opera--Peri and the Florentines--Monteverde--Cavalli
introduces vocal melody to relieve the monotony of
recitative--Aria developed by Alessandro
Scarlatti--Characteristics of Italian opera from Scarlatti to
Verdi--Gluck's reforms--German and French opera--"Les
Huguenots," "Faust," and "Carmen"--Comparative popularity
of certain operas here--Far-reaching effects of Wagner's
theories--Their influence on the later Verdi and contemporary
Italian composers--Wagner's music-dramas--A music-drama not an
opera--Form wholly original with Wagner--Gave impetus to
folk-lore movement--Krehbiel's "Studies in the Wagnerian
Drama"--Wagner and anti-Wagner--Finck's "Wagner and His
Works"--Wagner a melodist--Examples--Unity a distinguishing
trait of the music-drama--Wagner's method illustrated by
musical examples--The Curse Motive--The Siegfried, Nibelung,
and Tarnhelm motives--Leading motives not mere labels--Their
plasticity musically illustrated--The Siegfried horn call
developed into the motive of Siegfried, the hero, and into the
climax of the "Goetterdaemmerung" Funeral March--An
illustration from "Tristan"--Wagner as a composer of absolute
music--His scores the greatest achievement musical history, up
to the present time, has to show 260

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

PAGES
Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" 52, 53
"Two-Part Invention," by Bach 54
Love Motive from "Die Walkuere" 181
Opening of the "Lohengrin" Prelude 183
Walhalla Motive 192
Curse Motive 269
Siegfried Motive 270
Nibelung Smithy Motive 270
Tarnhelm Motive 271
Siegfried Horn Call 272
Develops into Motive of Siegfried, the Hero 272
And into Climax of the "Goetterdaemmerung" Funeral March 272
Examples from "Tristan und Isolde" 273, 274