P118F49 CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY MUSIC LIBRARY Cornell Unlveriilty Library ML 410.P118F49 Paderewsk) and his art / 3 1924 022 258 259 u^ Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022258259 Ladies! * THIS WILL . , . '^ INTEREST YOU THE VERY NEWEST PRODUCTION IN HIGH-CLASS COTTON PILE FABRICS. lis "A.W.B." Boulevard Velvet. QUALITY 99. 24 INCHES WIDE, IN JET BLACK, BLUE BLACK, AND , . ALL COLORS . . ENTIRELY NEW. IT HAS NO EQUAL. FOR WRAPS, CAPES, SLEEVES, TRIMMINGS, ETC. ^^ See that Each Yard is Stamped '^fl.W. B.BDUlBYarilVBlYBt. Wear GuaraiitBEiI." i^ Leading Dry Goods Stores Sell It= Gas The Ideal Fuel, Used in a . ' Vulcan } > Gas Hot Air Furnace. Scrupulous Cleanliness. Exact Regulation. Pure Warm Air. No Dust. No Deleterious Gases. 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THE QUESTION, I "Where can I get good hosiery?" . is easily solved by asking your J dealer for the G. V. make of 5 i French Hosiery; it is durable, J shapely and elastic, anil does not ^ strdch into all sorts of shapes. ^ Comes in lisle, cotton, silk, and cashmere. For descriptive cata- logue send to VERDIER & HARDY, | 486 Broadway, New York, r make my while skirts y PADEREWSKI AND HIS ART BY HENRY T. FINCK ILLUSTRATED BY THOMAS J. FOGARTY NEW YORK WHITTINGHAM & ATHERTON No. 8 BROAD STREET 1895 Copyright 189^ By WHITTINGHAM & ATHERTON [AU rights reservtd.'\ A-^f'i^ci CONTENTS BiOGEAPHic Sketch Conquest of Paris and London PiEST Two American Tours At the Chicago Fair Personal Traits and Anecdotes How Paderewski Plats Bach as a Modern Romanticist The Ideal Beethoven Plater . Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann The Real Chopin Liszt and His Rhapsodies Paderewski as a Composer The Polish Fantasia Conquest of Gteemant PAGE 5 10 12 15 19 22 27 28 30 33 35 37 41 43 -» — » — »— ^s^ • -#. -n/. k s 3: P ^ ^ ^^ i^f^h^^et-e^/ c BIOGRAPHIC SKETCH. question of nationality plays a curious role in the history of the pianoforte. For about a century and a half almost all the great piano- forte players and composers — ^Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Weber, Schubert, Mendelssohn, Schumann — were Ger- mans. But with Schumann and his wife the list of Grermans, supreme in this department, practically came to an end, unless we except Hans von Biilow, who was a great teatfher rather than an inspired interpreter ; and Brahms, whose pianoforte works are not idio- matic. Thus the field was left open for Slavic and Hungarian competitors. Hungary gave us Liszt, Heller, and Joseflfy ; Russia produced Rubinstein, Bssipofif, and Pachmann ; Scotland, D' Albert. But the land preeminent for pianists is Poland. Chopin was a Pole, and so was the brilliant Carl Tausig, who, had he not died at the age of thirty, would, in the opinion of his pupil, JosefEy, and many others, have surpassed even his master, Liszt. While there is good reason to believe that Josef Hofmann, who so delighted two continents as a prodigy, will ultimate- ly take his place in the first rank. The two Schar- wenkas, Moszkowski, Leschetitzki, and Slivinski are among the minor Polish masters. And now, to cap the climax, we have Paderewski, whom Poland will some some day honor as now it honors Chopin ; so that, musi- cally speaking at any rate, it is safe to say, "Noch ist Polen nicht verloren" — Poland is not yet lost. Modern Poland has less than eight million inhabi- tants, and is about one-third the size of California. Why this insignificant corner of Europe should have produced four of the world's greatest pianists— we might even say five, since Rubinstein's father was a Polish Jew— is as inexplicable as the problem of genius in general. Is it accidental, or a consequence of the romance, pathos, and tragedy of Polish history? Is it due to the infiuence of the Polish women, world- ,_^famed for their beauty and their gift of inspiring A^rt*"'* poetic fancies in their admirers ? "We know not ; we only know that Poland has taken the place of Germany as the home of great pianists. Oddly enough, many American journalists seem to imagine that Poles are Germans, since they are constantly speaking of "Herr Paderewski." They might as well speak of "Herr Grover Cleveland" or " Signor Bismarck." Ignace Jan Paderewski — who, since the death of An- ton Rubinstein, must be regarded as the greatest of liv- ing pianists — was born on November 6, 1860, in Podolia, a province of Russian Poland, which might be called the granary and garden of Russia. In our minds the word "Russian" is inseparably associated with pic- tures of snow and ice, but Podolia has a climate similar to that of South Germany. Its wheat is the heaviest known, and used to be exported to Italy and Greece as early as the fifteenth century, while the luxuriant growth of the grape-vines, mulberries, and melons at- tests the mildness of its climate. To be a gentleman farmer in such a country is not the worst fate that might befall a man ; nor could a musical genius pass the days of his childhood under more favorable circum- stances than those which surrounded Ignace on his father's farm. Paderewski' s father was an ardent patriot who aroused the suspicions of the Russian officials, and in 1863 1863 he was banished to Siberia. After a few years' exile he was allowed to return, bnt, although he lived till 1894, his spirits were broken, and the only solace of his last years was the growing fame of his son, who, he must have felt, would, like Chopin, do more to make known and endear Poland to the world than any of her kings and politicians had ever done. Politicians are not usually musicians, and Paderewski's father was no exception to the rule; it was from his mother that Ignace, like Kubinstein and many other musicians, in- herited his talent — in accordance with Schopenhauer's doctrine that men of genius derive their intellectual gifts from the maternal side. Ignace' s mother, how- ever, died when he was still a child, thus throwing him on his own resources. It is related of Chopin that he was so sensitive in his infancy that he could not hear music without crying, and of- Mozart that he fainted on hearing the sound of a trumpet. Ignace appears to have been similarly sensitive to sounds. As a boy he used to crawl on the piano stool, strike the keys, listen to the vibrations that make up a tone, and modify his touch till he got the exact quality his delicate sense of tonal beauty craved. He also had the sense of absolute pitch — that is, he could name every note he heard and tell the com- ponent parts of every chord without seeing the key- board. Eager as he was to listen and learn, there was hardly any food for his musical appetite except the folk-songs of the peasants, which in Poland are beauti- ful and characteristic. Once a tiddler tried to give him a few lessons on the piano, of which he knew but little himself. Subsequently an old piano teacher was en- gaged to visit the isolated farm once a month. He taught the boy and his sister how to play simple ar- rangements of operatic tunes for one or two performers; but of systematic instruction there could be no ques- tion under such circumstances. He was twelve years old when he went to Warsaw, where at last he was able to hear good music and to take lessons, 8 *r*d?> lessons, Janotha being his teacher on the piano, and Eoguski in harmony. In the library of the Conserva- tory he also found opportunities, which he did not neglect, for studying the works of the classical and romantic composers. But for a long time his lack of early training remained a disadvantage. Even at six- teen, when he attempted his first concert tour, in Rus- sia, he was technically far from satisfactory. Miss Fanny Morris Smith relates that "during this Journey he played his own compositions and those of other people; but, as he naively confessed, they were all his own, no matter what he played, for he did not know the music, and as he had little technic and could not manage the difficult places, he improvised to fill up the gaps." There is reason to think that the Russian amateurs who heard Paderewski on this tour were not particu- larly spoiled or critical. St. Petersburg and Moscow enjoy good concerts and operatic performances, but in provincial towns musical culture has not reached the highest possible level. I am indebted to Miss Szumow- ska, Paderewski' s charming and talented pupil, for an anecdote relating to this first tour, which he is fond of telling. He had announced a concert at a certain small town, but, on arriving, found that no piano was to be had for love or money. Finally, he ascertained that a general living some miles away had a piano. The gen- eral was perfectly willing, on being applied to, to lend his instrument ; but when the pianist tried it, he found, to his dismay, that it was so badly out of repair that some of the hammers would stick to the strings instead of falling back. However, it was too late to back out. The audience was assembling, and in this emergency a bright thought occurred to the pianist. He sent for a switch, and engaged an attendant to whip down the refractory hammers whenever necessary. So bang went the chords, and swish went the whip, and the audience liked this improvised duo more, perhaps, than it would have enjoyed the promised piano solo. After 9 After this maiden tour, Paderewski resumed his stud- ies at the Warsaw Conservatory, and two years later he was considered sufficiently advanced to be appointed to a professorship. In the following year, aged only nine- teen, he married a Polish girl. Early marriages are rarely advisable, especially in the case of penniless artists who wish to carve their way to fame. Pade- rewski's married life lasted only a year — a year of pri- vation and poverty — a year in which he probably did not earn one-tenth of what he can now earn in two hours. His wife died, leaving him an invalid boy, bright in mind but paralyzed in body, who now is taken care of by Mr. Gorski in Paris, and to whom his father is devoted. Grief has ever been a fertilizer of genius. After his great loss, Paderewski gave up his whole soul to his art, in which he now made more rapid progress than before. He went to Berlin, where his opportunities for hearing good music were, of course, very much better than they had been at Warsaw. Here he took lessons in composition of Kiel, whose best service to his pupil was that he fanned his enthusiasm for his own two idols, Bach and Beethoven. Professor Urban, of Kul- lak's Academy, was also his teacher for a time, and at the age of twenty-three he accepted a position as pro- fessor at the Conservatory of Strasburg. Up to this time, apparently, no one had suspected Paderewski' s latent powers. It takes genius to dis- cover genius. It so happened that during his Strasburg days he became intimately acquainted, at a summer resort, with the famous Polish actress, Mme. Modjeska, who was perhaps the first to recognize his rare gifts. She describes him as at this time "a polished and genial companion ; a man of wide culture ; of witty, sometimes biting tongue ; brilliant in table-talk ; a man wide-awake to all matters of popular interest, who knew and understood the world, but whose intimacy she and her husband especially prized for the ' eleva- tion of his character and the refinement of his mind.' " His 10 His familiarity with musical literature was already exhaustive. To amuse these same friends he once ex- temporized exquisitely upon a theme in the character- istic style of every great composer from Palestrina to Chopin. When he had finished, they begged him to play it once more according to himself, and that time it was the most beautiful of all. The suspicion naturally arises that it may have been due largely to the sympathetic encouragement of the famous Polish actress that Paderewski gave up the drudgery of teaching, and went to Vienna to prepare himself for the career of a concert pianist under the guidance of his famous countryman Leschetitzki, who may be safely asserted to have shown himself, next to Liszt, the most successful trainer of pianists. CONQUEST OF PAKI8 AND LONDON. 'Y^^f HILE the Germans and Austrians are un- doubtedly the most musical of all nations, they are not very quick in discovering a new genius, unless they happen to have a Schumann among their critics. Pade- rewski' s debut in Vienna was a pleasant enough affair, but did not do much to establish his fame, and it remained for Paris to discover his merits and proclaim them to the world. The Parisian public and press received him so cordially that the curiosity of London was aroused, but when he crossed the Channel and gave his first concert there, on May 9, 1890, the result was a disappointment. The Academy said: "If this artist did himself full justice on this occasion, we cannot understand the fuss that has been made of him. He is a virtuoso player, but apparently not of the highest order." The Afhencewm, while conceding that he certainly succeeded in astonishing the small audience, accused 11 accused him of sensationalism and exaggeration, sum- ming up its verdict in these words: "He is certainly not a model pianist, and his playing gives as much pain as pleasure to listeners of refined tastes." But when he gave his second concert, a week later, the critics took back everything they had said. The Academy found his readings "poetical in a high de- gree," and the J.^AewflS'MW was "enabled to agree with the eulogy bestowed upon the Polish artist by Parisian critics. It is only fair to add," it continues, "that at the previous recital M. Paderewski may have been unfavorably influenced by the sparse attendance and the inferior pianoforte on which he played." Sparse, indeed, had been the attendance at that first London recital; the receipts did not exceed ten pounds. But with every succeeding recital the audiences grew in number, and to-day, when Paderewski gives a con- cert in that city, the receipts rarely fall below $5,000, which is as much as Mme. Patti received in the most brilliant period of her operatic career. Nor are the music-lovers of other English cities less multitudinous and eager tcJ hear him than the Londoners. In 1894, when his manager arranged an English provincial tour embracing twenty-two cities, the seats were in many of these places all sold as much as two months ahead of the date of the concert! In Edinburgh the excite- ment was so great, and the hall so crowded, that at least a dozen ladies had to be carried out in a fainting condition. On another oc- casion, in London, it was noted that a number of ama- teurs had provided them- selves with breakfast and lunch, and waited patiently all day long for the doors of St. James's Hall to open. Reports 13 FIEST TWO AMEBICAIJ" TOURS. ^-='!N/' r'EPOK.TS of Paderewski's extraordinary suc- qj\< cess in England had, of course, preceded U him to America, and when he made his first appearance in New York, on Novem- ber 17, 1891, he was greeted at Carnegie Hall by a large and brilliant audience. It does not at all follow that because an artist succeeds in London, Paris, or Vienna he will have the same ^f happy fate in New York. Many musicians— J especially singers — have a tale of woe to tell on that score, and it is an undeniable fact that the New York musical public is the most critical and fastidious in the world. Paderewski, how- ever, triumphed at once ; he is an artist of too high a type to be dependent on the lottery of luck. As he walked across the stage and seated himself at his Steinway Grand, his appearance and demeanor at once indicated the keynote of his whole performance — an honest devotion to his art which scorns any sort of trifling with the audience, or posing as a genius, in the old style, by persong,l untidiness. While the public at once recognized Paderewski's greatness, the critics, with a few exceptions, lagged behind. A writer in a musical paper thus summed up the situation satirically: "Paderewski, the pianist, came and did not conquer at once. . . . The press all the week was a study. Praise was given, but grudgingly, and the fatal comparison of names was in- stituted. If Paderewski had only had Joseffy's hair, Rosenthal's appetite. Hummel' s laugh, Rubinstein's powers of perspiration, Pachmann's grin, why, then Paderewski would have been a great pianist," etc. But the public paid no heed to these insinuations, and when, after two concerts with orchestra (at which he played concertos by himself, Saint-Saens, and Beetho- ven), 14 thunders of applause and played a Liszt rhapsody as he alone can play it. It was an historic event, which those who were lucky enough to be present will never forget. After such a brilliant success, it was not surprising that Paderewski's managers succeeded in persuading him to return for a second tour, beginning in the au- tumn of 1892. In New York he again took possession of Carnegie Hall, and gave there eleven concerts, including two with orchestra, and every one of them was crowded to the doors. Stranger things happened in the West, as the following newspaper item shows : "Paderewski played on Monday evening in Cleveland, and the Lake Shore and Michigan Southern Railroad Company ran special trains, one from Sandusky and the other from Norwalk, for the benefit of the resi- dents of those two cities who wished to hear him." Of course the receipts varied with the size of the halls. One Chicago concert yielded over seven thou- sand dollars ; but if New York did not reach such a high figure, that was simply because it has no concert hall as big as the Chicago Auditorium. Here are a few official figures covering fourteen consecutive concerts : Binghamton, $1,500; New York, $5,069; Boston, $2,364; New Haven, $1,926; New York, $5,060; Roch- ester, $1,352 ; Albany, $1,350 ; Hartford, $1,915 ; Boston, $2,995 ; New York, $5,524 ; Buffalo, $2,050 ; PhUadel- phia, $5,324 ; Brooklyn, $3,162 ; Boston, $3,999 ; total, $43,590, or an average of $3,113. The total number of concerts given during this sec- ond tour in twenty-six American cities was sixty-seven, and the receipts amounted to $180,000 — a sum never before reached by any instrumental performer, and rarely equalled by a prima donna in the palmiest days of the hel canto. These financial results show that those managers who offered Rubinstein $2,500 an even- ing for an American tour a few years ago were not so rash as some fancied they were. Paderewski reached that average, and it is possible that Rubinstein, with the 15 the prestige of his life-long reputation as pianist and composer, might have exceeded it. It is interesting to compare Eubinstein's net earnings in 1873— $50,000 for 215 concerts — with Paderewski's gross receipts of about $180,000 for sixty-seven concerts, of which, per- haps, $150,000 are net. For the number of concerts given he earned about nine times as much as Rubin- stein. This does not prove that he is nine times as great a pianist as Rubinstein, but it does indicate that musical culture in America had made enormous strides in twenty years. AT THE CHICAGO FAIE. HE second American season unfortunately ended with a clashing discord, thanks to Pade- rewski's gratitude and generosity. The reader knows that he closed his first season by giving a concert which yielded $4,275 for the Washington Arch Fund. During his second season he gave no less than four charity concerts in New York, being in this respect, as in so many others, a worthy follower of Liszt and Rubinstein. By way of capping the climax, he intended to give two free con- _i.^ certs for the benefit of Uncle Sam, and to show f^-j^j/' ^^^ appreciation of the cordial reception ex- 'u^,'. tended to him in the United States. Partly as ^ ' a compliment to Mr. Theodore Thomas — for whom Mr. Paderewski has a great admiration, which is cordially reciprocated — and partly to add to the brilliancy of the opening of the "World's Fair at Chi- cago, he offered to participate in the two opening con- certs of the Exposition series, on May 2 and 3, 1893, by playing the Schumann concerto and his own, besides a number of shorter pieces. In order to do this, he had to postpone his departure to Europe a week, travel nearly two thousand miles more at the end of a most fatiguing season, and practically give away $10,000, which he might have easily earned by playing four hours 16 hours more in New York. Does tlie history of music record a more splendid and generous action ? And now let us see how he was rewarded for his magnanimity. It is well known that Paderewski always used a Steinway piano. An artist born with such a keen sense of tonal beauty as his could not help preferring these pianos to all others, for the same reason that Joachim or Ysaye prefers a Stradivarius to all other violins. It was Joachim himself, the greatest violinist of the century, who said that "Steinway is to the pianist what Stradivarius is to the violinist." Rubinstein pro- nounced the Steinway piano "unrivalled" ; Liszt wrote of it as "a glorious masterpiece in power, sonority, singing quality, and perfect haxmonic effects" ; Berlioz, the great orchestral colorist, dwelt on its "splendid sonority" and purity of tone; Wagner, greater colorist still, had a Steinway Grand for his daily use at Bay- reuth, and when once it had to be sent to Hamburg to receive the newly patented tone pulsator, he wrote, quite pathetically: "I miss my Steinway Grand as one misses a dearly beloved wife. ... I no longer indulge in music since that Grand is gone." Thus the superexcellence of the Steinway piano is proved in a way which puts it beyond all "questions of taste" and per- sonal preference. It is necessary to bear such facts as these in mind in order to appreciate fully the tale now to be unfolded. It so happened that several prominent Eastern firms, including Steinway & Sons, did not exhibit their pi- anos at the Chicago Fair, for the reason that they did not approve of the plan of awards. The defection of the leading firm, which had received the highest awards at all previous expositions, naturally offended the Di- rectors, and when Paderewski appeared on the scene they concluded that they had a chance to "get even" with the Steinways. The great pianist was informed that if he wished to play on the Fair Grounds he would have to use an instrument of one of the exhibiting firms ! Had the Board of Directors been made up of men 17 men of taste and culture, they would have seen at once that this was an artistic, not a commercial question, and that they had no more right to dictate to Pade- rewski as to what piano he should use than they would have had, in similar circumstances, to tell Ysaye that he must use an American violin instead of an imported Stradivarius ; all the more as it is not customary among civilized people to look a gift horse in the mouth. Such considerations, of course, never entered into the heads of the gentlemen from Utah and other parts of the wild and woolly West who happened to be on the committee. It was reported that one of these gentle- men actually introduced a resolution calling for the removal of the Steinway pianos "at the point of the bayonet, if necessary!" Civil war was luckily avoid- ed. Order, decency and common-sense finally pre- vailed, and the concerts were given; but to the last minute the public did not feel sure that Paderewski would be permitted to play, wherefore these concerts, which otherwise would have marked the climax of his career, were not as brilliant as had been expected. Coming after a long and exhausting tour, the ex- citement and annoyance over this unseemly squabble proved too much for his nervous system. Paderewski did not feel equal to the task of giving the final con- cert at which he was to appear. This was to be an entertainment for the Actors' Benefit Fund, and so great was the eagerness of the New York public to hear its favorite pianist once more, that every seat in Palmer's Theatre was sold within three hours after the box-office opened. This happened while Pade- rewski was still in Chicago; but suddenly a telegram arrived in which he said: "Very sorry to make the announcement, but I am physically unable to play, and I say this with the greatest of regret. Ask Mr. Palmer to accept $1,000 as a contribution." On the eve of his departure he said to an acquaint- ance, while playing a game of billiards at the Windsor Hotel : " It is absurd of the newspapers to try and make 18 make out that my health has been, undermined by smoking and what they call my dissipated habits. I did not play yesterday afternoon simply because I have played and practised too much during the last three weeks. The trip to Chicago also upset me. You can see, however, that I am quite able to go around and to enjoy myself as best I can. I am only mortally tired of the piano, and the prospect of having to play more distresses me. Any one who has practised much on the piano, or who has overdone in any particular direc- tion, will understand this." One more interesting point regarding the Chicago affair remains to be considered. The New York papers, mostly sided with Paderewski, as a matter of course, but one of them printed an editorial, "Under which Piano?" in which the assertion was made that it was "not very generous on Mr. Paderewski' s part to sell himself to a piano firm." This induced Paderewski to address the following frank and manly letter to the paper in question : "Referring to your editorial remarks in to-day's issue of your paper, permit me to state that at the request of Mr. Theodore Thomas, when last in Chicago, I promised my assistance at the inaugural concerts of the World's Columbian Exposition, without compensa- tion (delaying my departure for Europe for one week), simply for artistic reasons and as my contribution towards a great national enterprise, and also, in a measure, in appreciation of the patronage and kindness extended to me by the American people. Further- more, I must emphatically deny that I am bound by contract or agreement, either in writing or verbally, to the use of any particular make of piano. In this respect I am at perfect liberty to follow my convictions and inclinations, and this privilege I must be free to exercise in the prosecution of my artistic career. " Throughout the wide world any artist is permitted to use the instrument of his choice, and I do not under- stand why I should be forced to play an instrument of a. 19 a manufacture strange to me and untried by me, whicli might jeopardize my artistic success. I simply prefer to play the instrument which, is my own and on which I have already played in sixty concerts. " Respectfully yours, "I. J. Padbeewski." New Yoek, April 38. The amusing outcome of the whole fracas was that the directors and rival manufacturers who had intended to "get even" with the Stein ways did that firm an inesti- mable service by giving them a free advertisement such as they had never had before ; for every newspaper in the country printed telegrams and editorials informing the public that the greatest living pianist refused to play on any other but a Steinway piano, though he was under no contract to do so ! Never, surely, has fate more cunningly turned a poisoned arrow into a boom- erang ! PEESONAIi TEAITS AJID ANECDOTES. ■^ MEEICA, thanks to our fuU purses, our ready (^^ enthusiasm for what is best of its kind, and our "magnificent distances," is at once the Eldorado and the terror of European artists. We came very near ruining the career of little Josef Hofmann by overwork, and even the leonine Rubin- stein, at the age of forty-one, found the American tour so exhausting that he wrote in his autobiography: " May Heaven preserve us from such slavery ! . . . The receipts and the success were invariably grati- fying, but it was all so tedious that I began to despise myseK and my art." Nothing — not even the oflEer of $2,500 an evening — could induce Ru- binstein to repeat the experiment. Paderewski, al- though he nearly sufEered nervous collapse after his first 20 first tour, luckily was willing to come again, and as Ms second tour was more reasonably arranged, lie miglit have come out of it fresh, and smiling but for the Chicago trouble. One of his noblest traits is his genuine modesty — a trait which has not been altered by the fact that he now receives homage as the greatest living pianist and one of the most gifted composers. Sir George Grove praises Schubert as "one of the very few musicians who did not behave as if he considered himself the greatest man in the world." In this respect Paderewski resem- bles Schubert. "Paderewski," said the pianist De Pachmann, in one of those quaint little speeches he loves to address to his audiences, "Paderewski is the most modest artist that I have ever seen. I myself am the most unmodest artist,^ except Hans von Billow. He is more unmodest than I am." To his colleagues and rivals Paderewski is pleasant and generous. He invites them to dinners and inter- ests himself in their affairs. He and Mr. Joseffy are excellent friends, who thoroughly appreciate each other's good points. Paderewski belongs to the modern school of musi- cians in being a man of general culture and refinement.. He is not one of those numerous musicians who care for nothing but their own art. He is interested in the other arts, too, as well as in literature and life. He is as brilliant in table-talk as at the piano, and is a most sympathetic and intellectual companion. He has very decided opinions of other composers, and his taste is remarkably catholic. He likes Grieg' s songs better than his pianoforte works, while Brahms' piano pieces, as he once said to me, hardly exist for him : "they seem all treble and bass." But he admires the chamber-music of Brahms. His worship of the romantic Chopin, Liszt, and Schumann does not interfere with his en- joyment of the classical Mozart and Beethoven. He adores Bach and Schubert, and at the same time he is a thorough Wagnerite. To hear "Parsifal" or "Tris- tan," 21 tan," lie says, you ought to go to Bayreuth, for the "Meistersinger" to Vienna, for " Tannhauser " to Dresden; while of the "Flying Dutchman," the best performance he ever heard was at a small German city of thirty thousand inhabitants. Like most Poles, he has a great talent for acquiring a knowledge of languages. He speaks Polish, Russian, French, German, and English fluently, and he is an excellent letter-writer, as the few who have been favored by him are aware. In recent years,- however, he has acquired almost a horror of letter-writing, and seems to have fallen into the bad habit of Chopin, who would rather get into a cab and deliver a message per- sonally at the other end of Paris than write a note of twenty lines. Genius involves hard work, in a pianist as in a poet. Ease and finish are the rewards of years of toil. When we know how persistently Paderewski works to perfect his playing, we hardly wonder that he shirks the duty of writing letters. His triumphs were not too easily won ; he had to practise and study many years to earn them. To this day he will practise ten or twelve hours or more a day when preparing for a concert tour, to keep his fingers supple and his memory reliable. But the secret of his success lies in this, that he practises not merely with the fingers, but with the brain too. He once told me that he often lies awake for hours at night, going over his next programme mentally, note for note, trying to get at the very essence of every bar. This mental practice at night explains the perfection of his art, but it is not good for his health. Indeed, if he ever sins, it is against himself and the laws of health. He smokes too many cigarettes, drinks too much lem- onade, loses too much sleep, or sleeps too often in the daytime. For this last habit he is, however, not en- tirely to blame ; for, whenever he gives a concert, all his faculties are so completely engaged that he is quite exhausted at the end, and unable to go to sleep for hours. His favorite antidote to this artistic insomnia is 23 is a game of billiards. Of tMs game he is passionately fond, and lie regards it as a sort of tonic ; for, lie says, " If I walk or ride, or merely rest, I go on thinking all the time, and my nerves get no real rest. But when I play billiards, I can forget everything, and the result is mental rest and physical rest combined.' Like Liszt and Rubinstein, Paderewski has an intense personal magnetism which especially attracts women. I have seen an audience compel the poor pianist to add five pieces to the sixteen on the programme, the chief applauders being women. Often have I seen half the ladies in the parquet leave their seats while these extras were being called for and crowd as near the stage as possible so as to get a closer view of the magnetic per- former and his bewitched fingers. After the concert, those who were lucky enough would crowd into his room, while others would wait below to see him drive off. To conclude these remarks on Paderewski' s personal- ity, let me quote a line of Mr. J. Gr. Huneker : "His life has been full of sorrow, of adversity, of vicious- ness never. His heart is pure, his life clean, his ideals lofty." HOW PADEREWSKI PLAYS. is often said that a trace of charlatanism is essential to the success of even a genius. Pade- rewski is a living refutation of this assertion. He never resorts to clap-trap, trickiness, or sen- sationalism in order to win applause. He makes no concessions to the popular craving for cheap tunes, but gives his hearers only the choicest products of the highest musical genius, from Bach to the present day. He never stoops to conquer, never allows anything trashy or trivial to mar the artistic harmony of his theme. He does not need to resort to any such tricks to succeed. His popularity has been won by his personal genius and his sincere devotion to the 23 the very best music. What prepossesses an audience at once in Ms favor is the genuine simplicity of his bearing, the absence of all desire to pose. He never indulges in any antics or capers, but comes on the stage with modest bearing, takes his seat at the piano, prel- udizes a moment — what superb chords ! — till all is quiet, and then plays as only he can play. Perhaps the first thing that strikes the average spec- tator on seeing Paderewski at the piano is the entire absence of effort in his performance. He seems to shake the notes from his sleeves like a prestidigitateur; technical difficulties do not exist for him ; indeed, from his playing one might fancy that there was no such thing as a difficult piece, and that anybody might do what seems so absurdly easy. Charlatans draw attention to their skill by an obtru- sive brilliancy of execution and a parading of difficul- ties. It cannot be denied that this is a good way to "astonish the natives," and that it often brings a cer- tain kind of success. But astonishment is a state of mind which is soon dulled, and for permanent success with the public it is necessary to appeal to the deeper and more aesthetic emotions. The secret of Paderewski' s permanent success lies in this, tljat he makes us forget that there is such a thing as technique by his supreme mastery of it and by making the musical ideas he inter- prets so absorbingly interesting to all classes of hear- ers. Paradoxical as it may seem, it may be said that the genius of a musician is most unmistakably revealed in his power over the unmusical. Genius makes ex- tremes meet ; that is to say, it fascinates not only those who have the most highly cultivated taste for music, but also those to whom the art is usually a sealed book and the playing of ordinary academic pianists "all Greek." Genius translates this Greek into English, or any other language you please. It is an emotional Volapuk which makes all music intelligible to every- body. This is not mere "sentiment," or "fine writing." I really 24 really know of iinmusical individuals wlio slinn piano re- citals as intolerable bores, but who never miss a Paderew- ski recital, because, when lie plays. Bach, and Beethoven are no longer riddles to them but sources of pleasure. Yanity is the principal cause of the failure of many brilliant pianists. They try to show the public not how beautiful the music of Chopin or Schumann is, but what clever performers they themselves are. The pub- lic soon notes their insincerity, and neglects their con- certs. Paderewski, on the other hand, never plays at an audience. He hardly seems to play for it, but for himself. I once asked him if he ever felt nervous in playing, and he said he often did, but only because he feared he might not satisfy himself. He is his own severest critic. Paderewski almost always begins a concert with Bach, Handel, Scarlatti or some other very old master, follow- ing this up with Mozart or Beethoven, then the Grerman romantic school (Weber, Schubert, Schumann), and finally the Slavic and Hungarian schools — Rubinstein, Chopin, Paderewski, Liszt. This historic arrangement has the obvious advantage that it leads the individual hearer through the same stages of development that the musical race went through. Each of the recitals thus becomes an object-lesson in musical history, adding instruction to pleasure. It should be borne in mind that the excessive fatigue of constant travel has had the natural result of making some of his recitals less interesting than others. If there are any who have heard him but once and who were disappointed, they will herein find the explanation. Even when he is in the concert mood, it often happens that he has to play two or three pieces before he is at his best — a common experience with artists. But it is not always so, especially when Bach heads the list. On such an occasion an expert who had never before heard him play would be apt to say to himself, " This man is evidently a Bach specialist ; he has played his best card, first." Later on he would feel inclined to pronounce him 25 him a Beethoven specialist ; but not till after the Schu- mann, Chopin, and Liszt numbers, would he discover the whole truth, namely, that Paderewski is a specialist in all good music. Like Liszt, he has the mocking-bird gift of imitating the style of all the great pianists and composers, often surpassing them in their own song. That he is preeminent above all pianists in the matter of beauty and variety of tone-color is a fact beyond all dispute. Dr. William Mason, a pupil of Liszt, considers him in this respect superior even to his master. Having heard Liszt only once, I feel hardly entitled to an opin- ion in this matter, but I do not for a moment doubt Dr. Mason's judgment. The gift of a beautiful tone (touch) comes by nature, like a beautiful face, but it can be im- proved by cultivation and exercise. We have seen that as a boy Paderewski used to listen to the vibrations that make up a tone, and modify his touch till he got these vibrations just as his delicate sense of tonal beauty wanted them. Something similar to this he does to this day at his recitals. He has no looks, no grimaces, for the audience. No public smile ever sits on his lips, yet if you look closely you will observe subtle changes of expression on his features : he is listening intently to his own playing, and if the tone is as beautiful as he wishes it, an expression of pleasure flits across his fea- tures. He seems to be far away in dreamland, playing for himself alone ; and his reward is not the applause of the audience, but the delight in his own playing. Tone, in a modern piano, is as much a matter of ped- alling as of finger-touch. By pressing the right pedal, we lift the dampers from all the strings and allow the sympathetic overtones to add their voices to the tones we strike, thus enriching and deepening the colors. No other pianist, except perhaps Chopin, has understood the art of pedalling as Paderewski understands it. In this respect he is epoch-making; his pedalling is a source of unending delight and study to connoisseurs. No expert could mistake his chords and arpeggios for those of any other pianist. No other has quite such a limpid 26 limpid yet deep tone, a tone of sucli marvellons carrying power that its pianissimo is heard in the remotest parts of the house ; no other can, like him, make you hear soft, voluptuous horns, lugubrious bassoons, superbly sustained organ-pedals, and amorous violoncello tones. So perfect is his pedalling that he never by any accident blurs his harmonies and passages, while at the saine time he produces tone-colors never before dreamt of in a pianoforte. By rapid successive pressures of the ped- al he succeeds in giving the piano a new power, that of changing the quality of a tone after it has been struck, as every one must have noticed, for instance, in his performance of Ms popular Minuet. Hans von Biilow, in his edition of Beethoven's piano- forte works, marks certain passages quasi violoncello — or some other instrument which the composer evidently had in mind. Biilow himself was not very successful in suggesting these orchestral tints, whereas Paderew- ski constantly does so in the most fascinating manner, especially in Liszt, whose style is often orchestral in its suggestiveness, without ceasing to be idiomatically pi- anistic. If occasion calls for it, Paderewski can convert the piano into a small stormy orchestra ; but he has a way of his own for producing orchestral effects which depends on the skilful use of the pedals instead of on muscular gradations of forte and piano. For instance, as the surging sounds of some mighty arpeggios grad- ually die away over the pedal, you will hear above them a weird sustained tone, like that of a muted horn from another world ; another moment you will hear the wail of an oboe, or the majestic steains of trombones, or the sonorous boom of a bell ; and in the Chopin Berceuse he converts the piano into an seolian harp whose har- monies seem to rise and fall with the gentle breezes. By the clever use of pedal and arpeggios he produces that "continuous stream of tone" which was char- acteristic of Chopin's playing, and which, in its un- broken succession of multi-colored harmonies, reminds one of the magic tone-colors and mystic sounds that come 27 come up from the invisible Wagnerian orchestra at Bayrentli. BACH AS A MODERN KOMANTICIST. 0--«^g-^HEN Mozart once came across a composition ^4 by the neglected Bach he exclaimed, " Thank heaven, here at last is a piece from which I can learn something." Beethoven said of this same composer that his name should not be " Bach " (brook), but " Ocean." It is well known with what enthusiasm Mendelssohn revived Bach, and how the Philistines ridiculed him for it ; well known how Schumann and Wagner worshipped Bach, and declared him the master of masters. At first hearing, nothing could seem less similar than Chopin and Bach, yet the influence of Bach becomes more and more obvious in the latest and most mature works of Chopin ; and through his life, whenever Chopin prepared for a concert, he, to use his own words, " shut himself up for a fortnight to play Bach." Yet the public persists in considering Bach a mere bundle of dry counterpoint. Why? Because he is seldom interpreted as he ought to be in the modern romantic spirit. It remained for Liszt to show to the world what there is in Bach. Read what Wagner wrote when Liszt played for him the fourth prelude and fugue from the " Well-Tempered Clavichord" : " I knew indeed very well what I was to expect of Liszt at the piano ; but what I now learned to know I had not expected of Bach himself, well as I had studied him. It sTiowed me Jiow little study amounts to compared with revelation.''^ Let the young ladies who are studying music bear that last sentence in mind. They wiU learn more by hearing Paderewski play once than by taking a hun- dred ordinary lessons. For Paderewski is the Liszt of to-day. He plays Bach as Liszt played him. He makes 28 makes a chromatic fantasia and fugue sound like a modern improvisation. He scorns the "angular fash- ion" of playing Bach which was in vogue among the older pianists, but treats him as a modern romanticist. He convinces you of the fact that Bach, though he was born in 1685, is really one of the most modern com- posers ; a composer, in truth, of whose works most are still "music of the future." They would not re- main so long were there more Liszts and Paderewskis to reveal their wealth of tone, their organ-like sonor- ity, and above all their marvellous polyphonic web of melodies. Paderewski plays these interwoven simul- taneous melodies with such clearness that the ear can follow each as easily as if it were played on a separate instrument of the orchestra. When you hear him play Bach, you realize that they who say there is no mel- ody or emotion in him, simply do not see the forest on account of the trees. THE IDEAL BEETHOVElir PLATER, r^ji N amusing episode in Paderewski' s American ex- periences was brought about by the question whether he could play Beethoven. We all know that D' Albert is (as Bulow was) less satis- factory in Chopin and Liszt than in Beethoven and Brahms, and as a rule it is also true that pian- ists of the Chopin-Liszt school are not equally in- teresting in Beethoven and the so-called German "classical" school in general. As Paderewski be- longs to the Chopin-Liszt school, it was natural to suppose that he was not a great Beethoven player ; and the first year the critics, with very few exceptions, said so. It cannot be denied that he did not always make so deep an impression with Beethoven as with composers of the romantic school ; but this, I insisted, was quite as much the fault of Beethoven as of Paderewski, since Beethoven, with aU his wealth of ideas, is not an idio- matic writer for the pianoforte, and his works for that instrument are, therefore, in the matter of style and fascination, 29 fascination, inferior to those of Bach., Chopin and Schu- mann, and do not stir a modern audience so deeply as compositions of the romantic, idiomatic school. On this point most professionals and amateurs are agreed; yet, thanks to a strange kind of conservative terrorism, very few have the courage to express their convictions. Beethoven is expected to arouse as much applause as Chopin, and if he fails to do so, the pianist is blamed ! On this subject the eminent pianist and teacher, Dr. William Mason, contributed some articles, at the crit- ical moment, to the Century and Emning Post, which threw much light on the matter and brought out the comic side of the discussion. Dr. Mason frankly con- fessed that, in his opinion, Beethoven's pianoforte works are not idiomatic; adding: "Forty years ago my teachers, Moscheles, afterwards Dreyschock, and finally Liszt, used to say that Beethoven's piano com- positions were not EXamermassig . . . not written in conformity with the nature of the instrument." He also pointed out that "whenever a pianist makes his first appearance in public as a Beethoven player, he is at once subjected to strictures on all sides by numerous critics who seem to have been lying in wait for this^ particular occasion, and there immediately arise two parties, each holding positive opinions, of which the one in the negative is usually the more numerous. This is by no means a new fad, but quite an old fashion, dating back, at least as far as the writer's experience goes, something over forty years and probably much further." No pianist was spared in this process, not even Liszt, of whom many of the critics said that he could not play Beethoven, whereas, according to Wagner, he was the first who revealed the inner spirit of Beethoven's music. Following out Dr. Mason's suggestions, I made some researches and found that, according to the great com- poser's contemporaries, Beethoven himself could not play Beethoven! C. Pleyel, for instance, wrote that he had no "school," that his playing was "not pure," that 30 that he "pounded too much," and created difficulties which he could not overcome. After this reductio ad dbsurduTn little more was heard about Paderewski's inability to play Beethoven. Dr. Mason summed up his verdict on Paderewski by saying that, on the whole, " he stands more nearly on a plane with Liszt than any other virtuoso since Tausig. His conception of Bee- thoven combines the emotional with the intellectual in admirable poise and proportion ; thus he plays with a big, warm heart, as well as with a clear, calm, and discriminative head, hence a thoroughly satisfactory result. Those who prefer a cold, arbitrary, and rigidly rhythmical and ex-cathedra style will not be pleased." The case could not be more happily stated than in these words, and I thoroughly agree with Dr. Mason. Paderewski interprets Beethoven like a poet, not like a formal dancing-master. It is a great mistake to sup- pose that Beethoven himself preferred the metronomic style a la pendulum. Schindler, a reliable witness, wrote, "What I heard Beethoven himself play was, with few exceptions, free from all restraint in tempo ; it was a tempo rubato in the most proper sense of the word, as conditioned by context and situation." Liszt and Paderewski, in a word, have simply revived the correct way of playing Beethoven's sonatas, as Wagner and his pupils, Hans von Bulow, Hans Richter, and Anton Seidl revived the correct way of playing his symphonies. SCHUBEET, MENDELSSOHN, SCHTTMANN. ,. f\^ ADEREWSKI plays Mozart with the simplicity .,l|l'|j'IE«jr of a happy boy, and Schubert with all the poetry II ,iii1l u ^-- pertinent to that master of melody and exquisite modulation. "Our pianists," wrote Liszt in one of his letters, "have scarcely an inkling of the glorious treasures hidden among Schubert's pianoforte compositions." While Schubert is, in his sonatas, distinctly inferior to Beethoven, in his short pieces he is more original and idiomatic than Beethoven, 31 Beethoven, and luckily these pieces are coming more and more into vogue at recitals. No other pianist plays Schubert more frequently than Paderewski ; certainly no one plays him more lovingly, or with such ravishing tone-color and depth of emotion. What could be more bewitching than the dainty way in which, in the "Soirees de Yienne," he sets off Schubert's exqui- site melody amid Liszt's inimitable jeweller's work? One of the pieces which he is usually compelled to repeat is the song "Hark, Hark, the Lark." He plays this with a rubato which is simply enchanting, a rubato concerning which more will be said presently. Pade- rewski proves that a free, elastic tempo is as great a charm in Schubert as in Chopin or Liszt. And how his fingers do sing the melody on the keyboard ! Young pianists are usually advised to go and hear great vocal- ists, so as to get a "singing" style on their instrument. But in this case matters must be reversed. There are few operatic vocalists of the day who could not learn from Paderewski how to sing. "I am sorry to find Mendelssohn's pianoforte works neglected in this country," Paderewski once said to a London critic. "Play them yourself, master, and bring them into vogue once more," was the answer. He did so, and he turned them, like everything he touches, into gold. He makes people feel ashamed of their prejudices against this or that composer, or certain forms of music. Many an amateur considers Mendelssohn mawkish and antiquated, but let him hear this Polish pianist play the "Variations Seri- euses," and he will crj peccam! and confess that Men- delssohn was a great genius after all. Even the " Songs Without Words " seem to lose their ultra- sentimentality under his hands. At one of his New York concerts Paderewski made a genuine sensation by his performance of Liszt's fantasia on Mendelssohn's "Midsummer Night's Dream," one of the best of Liszt's arrangements. It is one of his attempts to convert the piano into an orchestra, and with 32 witli Paderewski at the piano the success is surprising. Those rapid, rippling violin passages were not only as good as in the orchestra, they were better ; no group of violinists I have ever heard has succeeded in pro ducing such an airy, graceful effect with them. Dr. Riemann has truly said that Mendelssohn would have made five or ten pieces out of one of Schumann's. This pithy conciseness is what makes Schumann so very difficult to interpret. Unless every note is brought out in its proper perspective, the poetic effect is lost. Two other characteristic traits of Schumann's music are rhythmic energy and harmonic subtlety, one calling for masculine vigor, the other for feminine refinement of feeling. Paderewski is preeminent as a Schumann interpreter because he unites these traits in his style. Under his hands, too, Schumann's compli- cated rhythms become as clear as a simple waltz move- ment, and when he plays a "Nachtstuck," how he does make every part of the harmony sing in turn or in combination ! He has, too, the very rare gift of revealing the Jean-Paulesque humor in Schumann's works, and nothing could be more amusing than the droll yet stately manner in which, when he plays the "Papillons," he reels off that quaint old dance, the Orossvatertanz. Schumann's Concerto is now generally regarded as the best work of its class in existence. How does Paderewski play it ? Lest I surfeit the reader with my own opinions, let me quote, in answer to this question, what a German critic, F. R. Pfau, wrote on the occa- sion of what he calls Paderewski' s "colossal success" in Dresden on February 15, 1895: "No one who has heard him play the Schumann Concerto will ever for- get the impression. Strange that he, a Pole living in France, should have been able to penetrate to the inner spirit of this thoroughly German music, and interpret it in a manner that is above all praise. The tender melodies as he plays them float in a fragrant atmos- phere that brings before the mind's eye all the fairy world MR. PADEREWSKI, FROM PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN SEVERAL YEARS AGO. > 33 world of German romanticism, while on the other hand the grand climaxes in the first movement are played by him with an overwhelming effect that suggests the passion of a Southern artist." THE EEAL CHOPIN. ^TTt NYONE who will examine a few of Mr. Pade- >^/V rewski's programmes will see at a glance that Chopin is his favorite ; nor is it strange that he should prefer his countryman, whose national Polish melancholy, Slavic rubato and ravishing tone- colors he brings out as only a Slavic pianist can. Before he came into the concert world Chopin's music had been played by so many great pianists that it seemed as if it would be as impossible to throw new light on it as on the character of Hamlet; yet he revealed beauties previously unsuspected. Before his arrival Pachmann had made a reputation as a Chopin specialist, and it must be admitted that as an interpreter of the delicate, dainty, brilliant side of Chopin he sometimes equalled Paderewski. But he failed to do justice to the masculine, dramatic, energetic side of Chopin's genius, thus helping to perpetuate the absurd notion that Chopin was always a "feminine" composer. This misconception has been corrected for all time by Paderewski' s performance of the polonaises, sonatas, and scherzos. He brings out the muscu- lar, dramatic side, not by pounding — ^his sense of tonal beauty is too keen to per- mit him ever to pound, even in moments of the greatest excitement — ^but by ner- vous powers of expression ; his mrility is mental rather than muscular, and the brain is mightier than the arm. He re- veals to us all the masculine force, all . the stirring scenes, that are embodied in ^ the 84 tlie dwarf pieces of the giant Chopin. When he plays the B minor sonata it is like a music-drama, every moment of absorbing interest. Paderewski does not play a Chopin ballad ; he recites it just as an actor would recite the story which it tells, with dramatic rubato, dwelling on emphatic words and hurrying over others, according to the movement of the story. This is what is meant by tempo rubato. Some of Chopin's pupils have said that he advised them to confine the slight changes in pace to the melody, mean- while preserving strict time with the accompaniment. He may have said that to his pupils, but I decline to believe that he played that way himself. I am con- vinced that his rubato was more like Wagner's dra- matic "modification of tempo," which affects the pace of all the parts. Certainly that is the rubato as Liszt understood it, and as Paderewski uses it in playing Liszt, Chopin, Schubert, and to a less extent, the mas- ters of the classical school. He lingers over bars which have pathos in their melody or harmony, and slightly accelerates his pace in rapid, agitated moments ; but he does all this so naturally, so unobtrusively, that one does not consciously notice any change in the pace — it seems the natural movement of the piece. One of the lessons taught by the great Polish pianist is that there is no such thing as a cast-iron tempo for any piece, or a single, invariable correct way of play- ing it. During his second American season, for in- stance, he played Chopin's G major nocturne three times, giving those who heard it each time a chance to marvel at the spontaneity and recreativeness of his playing. It was quite a different piece each time, vary- ing with his moods. The first time it was somewhat prim and "classical" in spirit, the second time romantic and dreamy, the third time languid and melancholy. This is what distinguishes music from mechanism. What 36 LISZT AND HIS EHAPS0DIE8. QTYHAT Liszt said in regard to the "glorious treas- on ures" hidden among Schubert's neglected piano- f>^ forte compositions may be justly applied ■■■ to his own works. The Liszt missionary has a large field ; few, even among profes- sionals, know how very large it is. The number of Liszt's compositions exceeds twelve hundred. Among them are one hun- dred and fifty -five original pieces for piano (two hands), and three hundred and fifty- onb transcriptions for the piano of pieces by other composers. Only a small proportion of these are known to the public ; but they are gaining ground every year, in spite of the amazingly persistent opposi- tion of the critics, one of whom wrote not long ago that "to play Liszt well requires little more than the neces- sary amount of physical force ! '' When I read one of these criticisms I am always reminded of what Saint- Saens wrote in regard to Wagner's "Walkure" : "A thousand critics writing each a thousand lines a day for ten years would injure this work about as much as a child's breath would do towards overthrowing the pyra- mids of Egypt." The vast majority of music-lovers are enthusiastic over Liszt' s works, and they know that they are in very good company : pianists like Joseffy, D' Al- bert, Pachmann, Tausig, Biilow ; conductors like Hans Eichter, Anton Seidl, Theodore Thomas, Arthur Nikisch, ■ Felix Mottl ; composers like Saint-Saens, Tchaikovsky, Dvorak, Wagner, who once declared Liszt "the great- est musician that ever lived." Paderewski, too, is a most devoted admirer and cham- pion of Liszt, and I shall never forget the amiably sar- castic smile on his lips when a certain critic begged him not to play any more of the rhapsodies. He played two at his next recital ! If questioned on the subject, his answer leaves nothing to be desired in point of decision and 36 and enthusiasm ; but it is in his performances that he most eloquently reveals his love of Liszt. Schumann once said of Thalberg that he had the gift of dressing up commonplace ideas in such a way as to make them interesting. Liszt had the higher gift of taking the ideas of the greatest composers and transcribing them for the piano in such a way as to make them even superior to the original. Thus he succeeded in doing with music what no poet has ever succeeded in doing with verse — translate it successfully into another idiom. These Liszt transcriptions include almost everything that is best in all branches of the art, and in making them accessible to all who possess a piano, he did an inestimable service to music. But to realize the full charm of these transcriptions one must hear Paderewski play them ; he can even take the taint of sensationalism out of the earlier ones, which Liszt himself in later years disliked. To speak of Liszt's rhapsodies as merely "brilliant" or "sensational" is to display a woful ignorance; for they contain the quintessence of the melodies, rhythms, and ornaments of two of the most musical of all nations, the Hungarians and the Gypsies. They are collections of musical odes, ballads, idyls, songs of war, of sorrow, love and conviviality, all welded into organic works of art by Liszt's rare genius and techni- cal mastery. In Liszt's rhapsodies these gypsy orchids are arranged in a spontaneous disorder, which is in- finitely more natural and artistic than the academic artificiality of a symphony in four geometrical move- ments. They will ever form the delight of those whose musical enjoyment does not consist in the pedantic analyzing of sonatas, but who take pleasure in the spontaneous melodies in which the naive populace, in its moments of poetic emotion, has embodied its joys and sorrows. It is in his modifications of tempo, his inimitable rubato, that lies the chief witchery of Paderewski' s Liszt playing. Liszt carries the rubato even farther than 37 than Chopin; there are movements where hardly a dozen successive bars have the same pace. Paderewski plays the rhapsodies like improvisations — inspirations of the moment. It is the negation of the mechanical in music, the assassination of the metronome. When ordinary pianists play a Liszt rhapsody, there is nothing in their performance that a musical stenographer could not note down just as it is played. But what Paderewski plays could not be put down on paper by any system of notation ever invented. For such subtle nuances of tempo and expression there are no signs in our musical alphabet. But it is precisely these unwritten and un- writable things that constitute the soul of music and the instinctive command of which distinguishes a genius from a mere musician. PADEREWSKI AS A COMPOSER. "Wl FTER all, the greatest pleasure a great pianist <^\ can give is when he plays his own compositions. Even when they are not of the highest order they gain a charm from their authoritative and sympathetic interpretation, and when they are of the highest order the combination is irresistible. Creative genius betrays itself infallibly in interpretation as well as in compo- sition, and when the pianist plays his own piece he can give it the charm of an improvisation. All the greatest pi- anists — Chopin, Liszt, Rubinstein, etc. ^?^^^v — were composers as well as virtuosi, - ^^ ^^ and all were at their best in playing their own pieces. Of Paderewski it must be said, as of Chopin, Liszt, and Rubinstein, that great as is his skill as pianist, his creative power is even more remarkable. Although he is a Pole and Chopin his idol, yet his music is not an echo of Chopin's. To a London journalist he once remarked on the subject of Polish music : 38 mTisic : " It is almost impossible to write any nowadays. The moment you try to be national, every one cries out that you are imitating Chopin, whereas the truth is that Chopin adopted all the most marked characteristics of our national music so completely that it is impossible not to resemble him in externals, though your methods and ideas may be absolutely your own." His music has Chopin's thoroughly idiomatic piano style, but in invention and development it is his own, and it has an individuality as striking as that of G-rieg or Dvorak. Through the courtesy of Mr. Paderewski I am enabled to offer the reader on another page a f ac-simile in his own handwriting of one of his favorite compositions. He wrote a set of Polish dances at the early age of seven, but did not publish anything before he was twenty -two. A glance at his three dozen or more piano pieces shows that in form as in spirit they belong to the Polish branch of the modern romantic school. Among them are Krakowiaks, Mazurkas, Polonaises, and other Polish dances, also a Caprice, Intermezzo, Legend, Bar- carolle, Sarabande, Elegy, Melodies, etc., all of them short pieces such as are characteristic of the romantic school. To the "classical" form he has paid deference only in his concerto and his sonata for violin and piano, although even here he avoids the artificiality and inter- minableness of the "classical" school. It is to be hoped that he will have the courage to pay no further tribute to the obsolete sonata form, but follow in the footsteps of Chopin and Liszt in composition as he does in playing. In that direction lies the concert music of the future. It is not my intention to make an analysis of Pade- rewski' s compositions. I will merely call attention to a few of the most popular and important ones. To the public at large the best known is his Minuet. Whenever he plays this piece (usually as an encore), the audience bursts out into applause after the first three bars, to show its delight at his choice. It is not too much to say that this Minuet is quite on a par with Mozart's famous "Don Juan" Minuet, but with modern refinements of harmony 39 harmony and tone-color of which Mozart never dreamed. A writer in the German periodical Ueber Land und Meer tells an amusing anecdote about this Minuet: "When Paderewski was a professor at the Warsaw Conserva- tory, he was a frequent visitor at my house, and one evening I remarked that no living composer could be compared with Mozart. Paderewski' s only reply was a shrug of the shoulders, but the next day he came back, and, sitting down at the piano, said, 'I should like to play you a little piece of Mozart's which you perhaps do not know.' He then played the Minuet. I was enchanted with it and cried, ' Now you will your- self acknowledge that nobody of our time could furnish us with a composition like that!' 'Well,' answered Paderewski, 'this Minuet is mine.' " One of the most charming of the shorter pieces is the "Chant du Voyageur" (opus 8, No. 3) — a piece that has brought tears to the eyes of many hardened profession- als. Its first three notes suggest by their beat that celestial melody in Chopin's great Scherzo (opus 20) as if to show its affiliation with the Chopin school ; the rest of it is an expression of a new individuality in music — one destined to mark a new epoch. I have never heard an opus 8 so mature, so original, so deeply emo- tional. But you must hear him play it to realize all its charms. A masterpiece among his short works is the Theme Vari6, opus 11. The theme itself has the simplicity of a Gluck melody, but on it is built an original harmonic structure that Chopin might have been proud of. It is a superbly romantic and emotional work. Of his Va- riations et Fugue, No. 1, it may be said that the theme has a balladlike character, and the variations are not mere musical rhetoric — the art of saying the same thing in different ways— but they tell a tale with bright and tragic episodes. One of the variations, with an obsti- nately repeated bass, suggests the tolling of funeral bells. His Legend begins with a mysterious plaintive narrative, leading up gradually to a terrific tragedy, after 40 after whicli the tone poem is finished in quieter stanzas. His Cracovienne is as exotic, as weirdly half -Asiatic, as the most Polish of Chopin's mazurkas or the most Mag- yar of Liszt's rhapsodies. The four songs included in opus 7 resemble Chopin's Polish songs, but are not equal to the piano pieces. During his second American tour he occasionally hummed and played for his friends a set of six new songs which he had not yet committed to paper. They subsequently appeared in print in a translation by Miss Alma Tadema and an American version by Mrs. H. D. Tretbar. Of these, perhaps, "My Tears are Flowing," "The Piper's Song," and "Over the Waters" are the best ; but they are all good. They were first sung in England by Mr. Lloyd to the composer' s accompaniment, and created quite a sensation. There is a suggestion in them of Grieg, but this is merely evidence of the curious affinity between Norwegian and Polish music. The sonata for violin and piano to which reference has been made was played in New York by Professor Brod- sky and the composer. It is original in its themes and admirably suited to the character of the two instruments. I One of its modern features is its brevity — it lasts only twenty minutes. A more important work is the piano concerto opus 17. What vigor in the opening allegro, what poetry in the romance, what life and spirit in the finale ! Hans Richter once said that the supreme test of a born composer lay in his slow movements ; he pointed to Beethoven, Schubert, and Dvorak, among others, in proof of his assertion. Had he known the dreamy Romanza of this concerto he would certainly have added Paderewski. I know of nothing more superb in the whole range of piano literature, and it is only his opus 17. It reveals Paderewski, too, as the first Polish composer who is as great a master of the orchestra as of the piano. The 41 THE POLISH FANTASIA. 'HE greatest of Paderewski's works are his Polish. 'Fantasia and his opera. The opera he has just com- pleted, and it will have its first performances in Buda Pesth, London, and Dresden. It is on a Polish subject, its scene being laid in the Car- pathian Mountains. Mr. Alexan- der McArthur, formerly Eubin- stein's secretary, had the priyi- lege in Paris of hearing him play parts of this opera. He says that "like all Poles, Paderewski is superstitious, and believes that any undertaking spoken of before its completion more or less pre- sages ill luck ; consequently I had to give him my word of honor I would keep silent on the matter of this new opera. However, there is one thing I can say without overstepping the mark, which is, that this opera of Paderewski's is going to do more for his fame than even his piano- playing has done, and that it will mark an era not only in the great pianist-composer's career, but an era in art itself. It is an absolutely superb work, great in inten- sity and full of truly human pathos." In the summer of 1893 Paderewski wrote his Polish Fantasia, which has brought him more fame, both as composer and pianist, than anything else he has ever done. It had its first performance on October 4, of the same year, at the Norwich Festival in England, of which it was pronounced the most attractive and sensational feature. As I have not yet had the pleasure of hearing this work, I must quote the opinions of other critics in whose judgment I have confidence. The London Sun- day Times wrote of it : " The new Fantasia proved to be a symphonic poem for piano and orchestra in four movements movements (not three, as stated in tlie analysis), and a thoroughly well- thought-out musi- cianly work to boot. Its chief character- istics are its intense national feeling, its constructive skill, and its enormous difficulty. The themes are all origi- nal, and it takes a quick ear to perceive on first hearing with what skill the whole of them are derived or de- veloped from two or three main subjects. The bold in- troductory passages merge imperceptibly into the well- worked allegro moderate ; the impetuous scherzo, with its mazurka-like rhythm, brings a great change, but in the andante (a gem of dreamy, plaintive melody), the composer is in reality metamorphosing material from his allegro ; while the finale, after starting with a dashing Cracovienne, obtains its most grandiose effect A TRIUnPH OF CHOCOLATE MAKING I VANILLA CHOCOLATE, MADE BY Walter Baker & Co., limited, DORCHESTER, MASS. (ESTABLISHED nao.) UNEQUALLED FOR SMOOTHNESS, DELICACY, and FLAVOR. GOOD TO EAT AND GOOD TO DRINK. ALWAYS ASK FOR Walter Baker & Co.'s Vanilla Chocolate MADE AT DORCHESTER. MASS. SAMPLE SENT ON RECEIPT OF A 2-CENT STAMP TO COVER POSTAGE. Beware of Imitations. 43 effect from the theme of the scherzo, given here in augmentation." In London the Polish Fantasia aroused the same en- thusiasm as at Norwich ; and in Paris, last spring, Lamoureux had to repeat it three times in the vast Cirque d'Ete. Mr. Alexander McArthur, who was pres- ent at these concerts, wrote : " What struck me most forcibly about the Fantasia was, that while the themes are distinctly Polish, they are nevertheless just as dis- tinctly non-Chopinesque, something truly wonderful in a Polish Fantasia written for the piano. . . . Paderew- ski has not stooped to steal his themes from national melodies. They are all his own. . . . The orchestration is superb, and it is owing to this fact especially that the non-traces of Chopin can be proven. In fact, fine as the piano partition undoubtedly is, that for the orchestra is still finer. The ease with which Paderewski handles combinations of the most difficult harmonic effects is wonderful, and his skill in contrapuntal groupings mar- vellous. . . . The piano partition is of the most startling difficulty, yet there is not a bar written for mere effect." CONQUEST OF GEEMANY. /?^NE more important event in Paderewski' s career T^ remains to be related— his conquest of Germany. For two or three years he had limited his activity almost entirely to England and America. Being able to draw a four or five thousand dollar house whenever he pleased, he probably saw no particular reason for touring in the impoverished continent, where half that sum would seem a big receipt. However, in May, 1894, he consented to play his new Fantasia at the biggest of the German music festivals, the Netherrhenish, at Aix-La-Chapelle. The result was thus described by Mr. Otto Floersheim : "I was dumfounded by both the composition and the performance, and after it was all over got as crazy as the rest of the audience and joined in a hurrah such as the venerable city of Charlemagne has rarely witnessed. Aix-La-Chapelle stood on its head for once, and the walls of 44 of the Kurhaus shook." Eegarding Ms performance Mr. Floersheim makes this significant confession: "I had not heard him for two years, and in the meantime I had heard four times Rubinstein, any number of times D' Albert, Rummel, Rosenthal, and some of the other great pianists of Europe, and I had gradually lulled myself into the thought that perhaps after all I had overrated Paderewski. I had been told it so often in Berlin that finally I began to distrust my own judg- ment, and said to myself, ' Well, perhaps they are right and you are wrong.' With the first movement of the Schumann concerto, my doubts were again dispelled, and as the work proceeded I once more and most firmly became convinced that for charm, poetry, and beauty Paderewski' s playing of the piano outrivals that of all other pianists I ever heard in my life, and henceforth nobody shall ever dare again to shake me in this artistic belief." After the ice had thus been broken in Germany, Paderewski consented the more readily to attack the citadels of Dresden and Leipsic. His triumphs there, in February, 1895, were perhaps even greater than in London, Paris, and New York. " The success was colossal," wrote the Leipziger Zeitung. "Not since Liszt has a pianist been received as Paderewski was last evening." " Never since the Albert Hall was built has such applause been heard there as last evening," wrote the Ameiger ; and the Tagehlatt of Feb. 20 had the fol- lowing : "Paderewski has for some years been enjoying the greatest triumphs in Austria, France, England, and America, but, for unknown reasons, avoided Grermany almost entirely. . . . Concerning his colossal success in our sister city of Dresden our readers have already been informed. . . . Such positively fabulous enthusiasm no other artist has aroused in Leipsic as far back as our memory goes. The public did not applaud, it raved. If Paderewski has hitherto avoided Germany in the belief that he might be coolly received, he must have been radically cured of that idea last evening." It may seem strange at first thought to compare a Columbia bicycle with the fine arts. Yet what other standard is obtain- able ? As it requires the skilled hand of the master of colors or tones to blend them in perfect harmonies, so only the masters of mathematics and mechanics could have evolved a mechanism so harmonious in ac- tion, so stanch and graceful as the Columbia bicycle. The manufacturing of the modern bicycle presents one of the most complex and del- icate problems known in engineering. When the bicy- cle of years ago weighed from fifty to sixty pounds, it was an easy matter to make it so strong as to allow a substantial factor of safety, but when, as to-day, the weight is reduced to twenty pounds or so, the factor of safety is necessarily decreased to a very small mar- gin and the greatest care must be exercised to make the bicycle strong enough to carry its rider over all kinds of roads with certainty and safety. There can be no pleasure when one has continually to fuss with repairs or adjustment. If you could but spend a day in the great factories of the Pope Manufacturing Co., at Hartford, Conn., it would be an easy matter for you to realize wherein lies the secret of the high quality of the bicycles they make. It may all be summed up in the one word. Care. Throughout the twenty-three enormous buildings in which twenty-four hundred men are employed in mak- ing Columbia bicycles, a system of inspection of every detail is maintained that makes it almost impossible for an imperfect part of a bicycle to go forth. Every oper- ation. 46 ation is under the watchful supervision of skilled engineers and experts, and the entire bicycle comes to completion with a faultless finish to every part and an absolute uniformity obtainable in no other way. Of course this adds largely to the expense of production, but the result is an unequalled quality and service that have made Columbias famous. Much of the satisfaction Columbia bicycles give their riders is also due to the scientific testing depart- ment, which is a unique and valuable feature of the Columbia plant. Unlike all other parts of this great factory, where the aim is to put together and build up, the effort here is quite the reverse — to pull apart and destroy. The most expensive and intricate machines have been devised for the sole purpose of determining exactly how great a force is necessary to wear out a com- pleted bicycle, or to bend and break any one of its various parts. In order to make the strongest bicycle it is necessary to know what makes a bicycle weak and exactly how much power of resistance should be pos- sessed by each individual part, and to find that out means putting such an excessive strain upon the frame, spokes, axles, cranks, pedals, forks, etc., that the point at which they will break may be accurately determined. The expense of maintaining this department is so great that no other bicycle makers have felt justified in establishing a similar one. For instance, the hundred- thousand-pound compression and tension machine cost ten thousand dollars, and it is the only one in any bicycle factory in the world. It was not until after months of experiments with this machine that the Columbia people were enabled to discover, among the hundreds of specimens of steel-tubing which they tested, what grade of steel was capable of giving the most favorable results in the various parts of a bicycle. Columbias have lately been further advanced by using a harder quality of steel, known as nickel-steel (the same that has given such splendid results in the guns and armor-plate of the G-overnment), and aU Columbias now 47 now turned out contain this tubing in the parts which are subjected to the greatest strain. Still another example of the severe trials to which Columbias are subjected is the way in which finished bicycle-wheels are tested in the vibratory ma- chine. This consists partly of 'a large wooden wheel with a number of heavy cogs of various shapes and unequal lengths projecting from the circumfer- ence, the purpose being to pro- duce as rough a surface as can be found on the stoniest of roads. Against this unequal surface the new wheel is pressed. Weight- ed with a pressure equal to the weight of a rider of from one hundred and fifty to two hun- dred and fifty pounds, the big wheel is set in motion, and, making one hundred and sixty- two revolutions a minute, drives the wheel at the rate of thirteen and one-half miles per hour, thus putting a strain on it many times more severe than it could be sub- jected to over any conceivable road. Thirteen hours is the average for a wheel to be kept under this strain, but the Columbia wheels are so strong that they have stood the test without the slightest defect for fifty hours. This is but one of the many testing-machines. They know no partiality, nor do the workmen of the testing department. The one aim of the tests is to discover whether there is any bicycle made that can endure as great a strain as a Columbia, and, if so, why. In all bicycles except the Colum- bia, and in all Columbias except recent TESTING BICYCLE WHHE:^. 48 recent models, the cranks have been fastened to the crank-shaft by means of nuts, with projecting pins and keys to prevent them from turning, but, no mat- ter how well fitted, such devices will work loose and are a continuous source of annoyance and danger. No system was found to remedy this defect until the new Columbia crank-shaft was devised. This consists of an arrangement by which the crank-shaft is locked in the centre, the two cranks being screwed into a sleeve at either end, one with a right-hand thread, the other with a left-hand thread, and when in position (the adjustment being very simple) the cranks and crank-shaft form practically one continuous bar of steel, as solid and im- movable as if welded together. All that is necessary to remove the cranks is to insert a pin into the sleeve of the crank-shaft and unscrew them both together back- ward, and in this way the cranks may be removed without detaching the chain. This remarkable inven- tion, which is used on no other but Columbia bicycles, is the mechanical sensation of the year. It is perfected appliances, perfected material, such expert workmanship as is only acquired after long years of experience, and unlimited capital that gives the Co- lumbia those qualities of beauty, speed, and stability which make it the Standard for the World. ■;~VUL the Comfort? of flomc for 14 Pupils at N]IB?^ '-BE,N.NETT'S SC|-I*-1'C L-, Irvinolon. jN. Y. Great attention paid to 1-iealth and indi^"idual needs. Full cour-se-s fi-om primary to colleoe pr-epar-ator-^'. u > o u o ...A SURE CURE FOR... Toothache, Headache, Neuralgia, Nasal Catarrh, Influenza, AND ALL MUSCULAR PAINS. SENT BY MAIL FOR $1.00. 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It is a food to the roots of the hair and restores all colors, which are- counted by the hundreds. Sealed circulars sent on application. Face and Hair '^yi'E., CAROLINE, Specialist.^. 219-321 Sixth Avenue, New York, N. Y, THE LOOKER-ON flDusical. .:. Dramatic. .:. Xiterar^. OOOOOOOOCOCOOCCOCCCCCCCOOCOCCCCOCOOOOCCCCCCOOCCCOCCCCO ^^HE following announcement appeared in the first number of (^^ The Looker-On. As it expresses the policy which will be employed in our future issues we reprint it. We have no promises to make for the future issues of The Looker-On. They will speak for themselves. Our eflfort will be to maintain a Musical and Dramatic Journal of the highest literary and most unprejudiced critical qual- ity. The essays, reviews, and the musical and dramatic criticisms which appear in The Logker-On will be written by such men as William Foster Apthorp, H. E. Kreh- BiEL, Wm. H. Fleming, Louis C. Elson, Henry T. Finck, and others of an equal reputation. We recognize the fact that we will deserve and receive the support of the educated public just so long as we maintain the highest ideals of art and the most persevering fairness in estimating the performance of those criticised in our pages. 00000000000CXS0C?0CO000C00000000000CXXX30000000C?C?0000000O THE STANDARD UNION (Brooklyn) says: "The first number of The Looker-On, the new musical and dramatic journal, is almost all that could be desired in that line. It is of very high quality ; the articles being varied and interesting as well as excellent, the illustrations superb, and the paper and printing of the best. It opens with an essay on ' Paderewski and His Art,' by Henry T. Finck, with a fine portrait and many illustrations by Thomas J. Fogarty. William H. Fleming writes of 'The Boards Shakespeare Trod,' and Paul and Vaughan Kester contribute a new comedy in two acts, entitled ' La Fleur de Lis.' William Foster A pthorp has a historical and critical essay on the Italian opera, and Louis C. Elson writes of 'The Beginnings of Music' 'Singers, Then and Now,' by H. E. Krehbiel, is illustrated by six beautiful half-tone portraits of Calv^, Melba, Lola Beeth, Plancon, and Jean and Edouard de Reszkd, each of them worth the price of the magazine. With contributors of the reputation of those nam-ed.'the success of The Looker-On is assured ; but there are other excellent features, including musical and dramatic notes of real interest, book reviews, 'professional notes,' interviews, and sketches. We cordially welcome The Looker- On." oooooooooooooooocooooocoooooooooooooccoooooccccoccocdo PUBLISHBD BY WHITTINGHAM & ATHEETON, ^""^^^^^^'^^^l'."^ «*•' One Year, $2.00. Single Copies, 20 Cents. THE PUBLISHERS OF The Looker=on Wish to call the attention of their readers to the following offer : A^ty one sending us Ten Paid subscriptions for one year will receive from us a present of THE CYCLOPEDIA OF MUSIC AND MUSICIANS. Edited by John D. Champlin, Jr. Critical Editor, W. F. Apthorp. With over 1000 illustrations. Popular Edition. 3 vols., large 8vo, $15.00, net. Published by Chas. Scribner's Sons. *' This Cyclopedia is a perfect treasure-house of facts for the student of musical history, audno small part of its -value is due to the g^reat amount of information "which it contains in reg:ard to living composers and their works. The amount of biographical matter bearing on American com- posers is verylarg-e and "wholly new. The Cyclopedia is not only a mine of information but a gallery of art."— W. J. JH ENUER^ON, of the Times. For two paid szihcriptions ($4.00) sent to us direct we will mail WAGNER AND HIS WORKS. The Story of His Life, with Critical Comments. By Henky T. 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For two paid subscriptions ($4.00) sent to tis direct we will mail CHOPIN, AND OTHER MUSICAL ESSAYS- By Henry T. Finck. 12mo, $1.50. Published by Chas. Scribner's Sons. " The variety of subjects, the entertaining anecdotes, the interesting information, the logical ■conclusions arrived at, and the trenchant force with which they are presented, render it not only valuable, but, still better, agreeable." — Home Journal. " One of the most fascinating books on musical themes which we have seen for a long time." — Public Opinion. AND MUSICIANS AND MUSIC-LOVERS, And Other Essays. By William F. Apthorp. 12mo, $1.50. Published by Chas. Scribner's Sons. This author, whose eminence as a musical critic is well known, presents in this volume a collec- tion of essays on the following subjects : Musicians and Music-lovers, Bach, Additional Accompani- ments to Bach's and Handel's Scores, Meyerbeer, Offenbach, Two Modern Classicists in Music, J. S. 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On top of the ' Three Top Range ■ of the Masamitten chain of Mountains. Elevation, 2,100 feet above the sea. No Mosquitoes, Gnats, or Malaria. 10 AND 21 East 14TH Street, NE^V YORK CITY. TEACHERS' CERTIFICATES. Examiners in Pianoforte: WILLIAM MASON, Mus.Doc, A.C.M., and ALBERT ROSS PARSONS, Pres. A.C.M. The Voice Department, headed by H. W. Greene, supported by Dudley Buck in Interpretation, by John C. Griggs, Frank H. Potter and others, offtrs without question the best advantages for vocal study to be found in America. The Pianoforte Department, under the active direction of Albert Ross Parsons, offers the broadest training both in Technic and in Interpretation. A part of this work, comprised in the Synthetic Department of Normal Training, under Miss Kate S. Chittenden, makes possible to prospective teachers 1 he great advantages of the Synthetic Method of Piano Teaching, as originated by Mr. Parsons and established through Miss Chittenden's editorship of the Synthetic publications. Department of Theory and Composition. Harry Rowe Shelley, Principal. Department of Organ. R. Huntington Woodman, Principal. Instruc- tion in this department given by Mr. Buck and Mr. SheJley also. The Department of Violm, under Clifford Schmidt, the eminent con- cert master of the Seidl Orchestra, in conjunction with the Pianoforte Depart- ment, secures to the College the important advantage of the study of chamber music and general ensemble practice. iWA special feature is the Residence Department for Ladies, where a limited number of pupils from a distance are accommodated with board and every facility for practice and study. DUDLEY BUCK, President. A. R. PARSONS, Vice-President. H. R. SHELLEY, 2d Vice-President. H. W. GREENE, P,-incipal Voice Dep't. M. E. PALMER, Treasurer. Regular Course, $200.00 per year. Send for catalogue. JOHN CORNELIUS GRIGGS, Secretary. DrHJANCHES illiliOXYDONOR' THE NEW LIFE-GIVER. 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CONTENTS: Carl Tausig. — Robert Schumann and His School.— Frederic Chopin.— Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdi.— Robert Volkmann. — Tristan and Isolde, by Richard Wagner (a Essays). — The Stage Festival at Bay- reuth —A Scene from " Die Meistersinger."— Offenbach and the Second Empire.— Gervinus and Purely Instrumental Music. — Music Teaching and the Public. — Wagner. Makart, and Hammerling. A Parallel. — Gounod contra Wagner.— Johannes Brahms.— Wagner's Parsifal.— Liszt as an Author.— Concerning Polygraphy. — Music and Sociability. 400 pages, cloth, $1.50. Mailed upon receipt of price. Published by C. F, TRETBAR, log East 14th Street, New York. THIRD THOUSAND. ANTON RUBINSTEIN'S "A CONVERSATION ON MUSIC." Translated for the Author by Mrs. JOHN P. MORGAN. Cloth, $1.00. Mailed free upon receipt of price. Copyright, 1892, by CHARLES F. TRETBAR, Steinway Hall, New York. THE M. STEINERT COLLECTION OF KEYED AND STRINGED INSTRUMENTS. With various Treatises on the History of these Instruments, the Method of Playing them, and theii Influence on Musical Art. By MORRIS STEINERT, New Haven Conn. Illustrated. Price: Paper, $1.00; Cloth, $1.50. Published by CHARLES F. TRETBAR, Steinway Hall, -' w York. • PADEREWSKI, IGNACE J. Op. 18. Six Songs for Sop. or Alto. No. ». My tears were flowing! sects. Mir flossen Thranen ) Ho. a. Wand'ring along I go cts. Ich geh' entlang ( Mo. 3. My sweetest darling I 75 cts. Mein susser Liebling f No. 4. Over the waters I tc cts Ueber dem Wasser J '^ No. 5. Ah, what tortures I 50 cts Acb die Qualen. J No. 6. Were I the ribbon I 60 cts KQnnte ich das Stirnband J Published by CHARLES F. TRETBAR, Steinway Hall, New York, STEINWAY Xapngbt^ianos, Steinway & Sons' Pianos are preferred for private and public use by the greatest living artists, and endorsed, among hundreds of others, by such as: FRANZ ABT, D. F. E. AUBER, CARL BAERMANN, HECTOR BERLIOZ, E. M. BOWMAN, FELICIEN DAVID, ALEX. DREYSCHOCK, ARTHUR FRIEDHEIM, CHARLES GOUNOD, STEPHEN HELLER, ADOLPHE HENSELT. ALFRED JAELL, JOSEPH JOACHIM, RAFAEL JOSEFFY, THEODORE LESCHETIZKY Dr. FRANZ LISZT, A. MARMONTEL, Dr. WILLIAM MASON, LEOPOLD DE MEYER, S. B. MILLS, IGNATZ MOSCHELES, ADOLPH NEUENDORFF, ALBERT NIEMANN, IGNACE J. PADEREWSKI, MORIZ ROSENTHAL, ANTON RUBINSTEIN, NICOLA RUBINSTEIN, FRANZ RUMMEL, CAMILLE SAINT-SAENS, XAVER SCHARWENKA, ANTON SEIDL, WILHELM TAUBERT, AMBROISE THOMAS, THEODORE THOMAS, FERD. VON INTEN. RICHARD WAGNER, RUDOLPH WILLMERS, CARL WOLFSOHN, AND BY MESDAMES ADELE AUS DER OHE, FANNIE BLOOMFIELD- ZEISLER, ANNETTE ESSIPOFF, ETELKA GERSTER, MINNIE HAUK, EMMA JUCH, MARIE KREBS, LILLI LEHMANN, ANNA MEHLIG, PAREPA ROSA, ADELINA PATTI, SOFIA SCALCHI, TERESA TITIENS, ZELIE TREBELLI, etc. ILLUSTRATED CATALOGUES MAILED FREE ON APPLICATION. STEINWAY & SONS, TVAREROOBIS : Steinway Hall, 107=111 East 14th Street, New York. -EUROPEAN DEPOTS :- STEINWAY HALL, 15-17 Lo. Seymour St., Portman Sq., 1., LONDON, ENGLAND, STEINWAY'S PIANOFABRIK, St. Panll, Nene Rosen-Strasse, 20-24, HAMBURG, GERMANY. STEINWAY & SONS Have been awarded A GRAND GOLD flEDAL ■AT THE — International Inventions Exhibition, London, 1885. " For General Excellence of their Pianos, and for Sev- eral Meritorious and Useful Inventions ; " and also a SPECIAL GOLD MBDAL From the Society of Arts, London, 1885. TWO SPECIAL, DIPLOMAS OF MERIT, Sidney International Exhibition, i87q. TWO HIGHEST AWARDS, International Exhibition, Philadelphia, 1876. GRAND NATIONAL GOLD MEDAL, WITH CROWN AND RIBBON, From his Majesty, King Charles XV., of Sweden, 1868. FIRST GRAND GOLD MEDAL, Exposition Universelle, Paris, 1867. GRAND TESTIMONIAL MEDAL AND MEMBERSHIP, From Soci6t6 des Beaux Arts, Paris, 1867. FIRST PRIZE MEDAL, International Exhibition, London, 1862. Also more than thirty-five First Premiums at American Exhibitions, and Testimonials from the most eminent IVIusicians, Composers, and Artists in the World, who all unite in the Unanimous Verdict of the SUPERIORITY of the STEINWAY PIANOS overall OTHERS. Every Piano Fully Warranted for Five Years. 'Xllustrated Catalogrues mailed free upon appIlcatlon.-^S STBINWAY & SONS, WAREROOMS, STEINWAY HALL, Nos. 107, X09 and iix East 14th Street, New York. My dear Mr, Steinway, Bayreuth, 1879. . . . From your communication I readily per- ceive with what enthusiastic love you seek to attain the incorporation of the most " spirituelle " tone into the piano, which has heretofore served only as the exponent of actual musical sound. Our great tone masters, when writing the grandest of their creations for the pianoforte, seem to have had a presentiment of the ideal grand piano, as now attained by yourselves. A Beethoven Sonata, a Bach Chromatic Fantasie, can only be fully appreciated when rendered upon one of your pianofortes. Although I do not possess the slightest dexterity in pianoforte playing, I delight in being able to do justice to your assumption of my inborn and cultivated sense of tone. For sounds of such beauty as those coming from my Steinway grand flatter and coax the most agreeable tone-pictures from my harmonic melo- dic senses. In a word, I FIND YOUR GRAND PIANO OF WON- DROUS BEAUTY. It is a NOBLE WORK OF ART. RICHARD WAGNER. Magner Mr. Steinway. Weimar, 1883. My Esteemed Sir : Again I owe you many and special thanks. The new Steinway grand is a glori- ous masterpiece in power, sonority, singing quality and perfect harmonic effects, affording delight even to my old piano-weary fingers. Every continuing suc- cess remains a beautiful attribute of the world-re- nowned firm of Steinway & Sons. In your letter, highly esteemed sir, you mention some new features in the grand piano, viz.: the vibrat- ing body being bent into form out of one continuous piece, and that portion of the strings heretofore lying dormant being now a part of the foundation tones, and incorporated therein as partial tones. Their utility is emphatically guaranteed by the name of the inventor. Owing to my ignorance of the mechanism of piano construction, I can but praise the magnificent result in the volume and quality of sound. Very respectfully and gratefully, FRANZ LISZT.