Music-Study in Germany Part 15

CHAPTER XXV.

Chord-Playing. Deppe no "Mere Pedagogue." Sherwood. Mozart's Concertos. Practicing Slowly. The Opera Ball.

BERLIN, _January 2, 1874_.

When I had got the principle of the scale pretty well into my head, what should Deppe rummage out but Czerny's "_Schule der Gelaufigkeit_ (School of Velocity)," which I hadn't looked at since the days of my childhood and fondly flattered myself I had done with forever. (We none of us know what stands before us!) After having studied Cramer, Gradus and Chopin, you may imagine it was rather a come down to have to take to the School of Velocity again! And to study it _very_ slowly and with one hand only!! That was adding insult to injury. Deppe knows what he is about, though. He began picking out pa.s.sages here and there all through the book, and making me play them, stretching from the thumb and turning on the fingers as often as possible. After I have mastered the pa.s.sages I am to learn a whole study, first with each hand alone, and then with both together!

Deppe next proceeded to teach me how to strike chords. I had to learn to raise my hands high over the key-board, and let them fall without any resistance on the chord, and _then sink with the wrist_, and take up the hand exactly over the notes, keeping the hand extended. There is quite a little knack in letting the hand fall so, but when you have once got it, the chord sounds much richer and fuller.--And so on, _ad infinitum_.

Deppe had thought out the best way of doing _everything_ on the piano--the scale, the chord, the trill, octaves, broken octaves, broken thirds, broken sixths, arpeggios, chromatics, accent, rhythm--all! He says that the principle of the scale and of the chord are directly opposite. "In playing the scale you must gather your hand into a nut-sh.e.l.l, as it were, and play on the finger tips. In taking the chord, on the contrary, you must spread the hands as if you were going to ask a blessing." This is particularly the case with a wide interval. He told me if I ever heard Rubinstein play again to observe how he strikes his chords. "Nothing cramped about _him_! He spreads his hands as if he were going to take in the universe, and takes them up with the greatest freedom and _abandon_!" Deppe has the greatest admiration for Rubinstein's _tone_, which he says is unequaled, but he places Tausig above him as an artist. He said Tausig used to come to his room and play to him, and he took off Tausig's little half bow and way of seating himself at the piano and beginning at once, without prelude or wasting of words, very funnily! He would scarcely take time to say "_Guten Abend_ (Good Evening)." Deppe thinks Tausig played some things matchlessly, but that in others he was dry and soulless. Clara Schumann, he says, is the most "musical" of all the great artists--and you remember how immensely struck I was with Natalie Janotha, who is her pupil, and plays just like her.

From my telling you so much about technicalities, you must not think Deppe only a pedagogue. He is in reality the soul of music, and all these things are only "means to an end." As he says himself, "I always hear the music the people _don't_ play." No pianist ever entirely suited him, and this it was that set him to examining the instrument in order to see what was the matter with it. He made friends with the great virtuosi, and studied their ways of playing, and the result of all his observation is that "Piano playing is the only thing where there is something to be done." He declares that there is so much musical talent going to waste in the world that it is "lying all about the streets,"

and he has a most ingenious way of accounting for the fact that there are so many great pianists in spite of their not knowing _his_ method:--"Gifted people," he says, "play by the grace of G.o.d; but _everybody_ could master the technique on _my_ system!!"

To show you that it is not alone my judgment of Deppe--four of Kullak's best pupils, including Sherwood! left him for Deppe, after I did. They got so uneasy from what I told them, that they went to see Deppe, and as soon as they heard Fraulein Steiniger play, they had to admit that she had got hold of some secrets of which they knew nothing. Sherwood, you know, is a positive genius, yet he is beginning all over again, too. In short, we are all unanimous, while Deppe, on his side, is much gratified at having some American pupils.--He flatters himself that we will introduce all his cherished ideas into our "new and progressive country."

Ah, if I had only studied with Deppe before I went to Weimar! When I was there I didn't play half as often to Liszt as I might have done, kind and encouraging as he always was to me, for I always felt I wasn't _worthy_ to be _his_ pupil! But if I had known Deppe four years ago, what might I not have been now? After I took my first lesson of Deppe this thought made me perfectly wretched. I felt so dreadfully that I cried and cried. When I woke up in the morning I began to cry again. I was so afflicted that at last my landlady, who is very kind and sympathetic, asked me what ailed me. I told her I felt so dreadfully to think I had met the person I ought to have met four years ago, at the last minute, so.--"On the contrary, you ought to rejoice that you have met him _at all_," said she. "Many persons go through life without ever meeting the person they wish to, or they don't know him when they do."--Sensible woman, Frau von H.!--After that I stopped fretting, and tried to believe that there _is_ "a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we may."

BERLIN, _February 12, 1874_.

I am now taking three lessons a week from Fraulein Steiniger and one lesson of Deppe himself, and he says I am almost through the technical preparation, though I still practice only with one hand, and _very_ slowly all the time. Fraulein Steiniger says that she also practiced slowly all the time for six months, as I am now doing. In fact, she completely forgot how to play _fast_, and one day when Deppe finally said to her in the lesson, "Now play fast for once," she could not do it, and had to learn it all over again. Of course she very soon got her hand in again, and now she has the most beautiful execution, and can play _anything_ perfectly.

Deppe wants me to play a Mozart concerto for two pianos with Fraulein Steiniger, the first thing I play in public. Did you know that Mozart wrote _twenty_ concertos for the piano, and that nine of them are masterpieces? Yet n.o.body plays them. Why? Because they are too hard, Deppe says, and Lebert, the head of the Stuttgardt conservatory, told me the same thing at Weimar. I remember that the musical critic of the _Atlantic Monthly_ remarked that "we should regard Mozart's pa.s.sages and cadenzas as child's play now-a-days." _Child's play_, indeed! That critic, whoever it is, "had better go to school again," as C. always says!

Deppe is remarkable in Mozart, and has studied him more than anybody else, I fancy. Indeed, to turn over his concertos, and see how he has _fingered_ them alone, is enough to make you dizzy. He is always saying, "You must hear Fannie Warburg play a Mozart concerto. _She_ can do it!"

and, indeed, I am most anxious to hear her.

It is ludicrous to hear Deppe talk about the artists that everybody else thinks so great. Having been a director of an orchestra for years, he has constantly directed their concerts, and he weighs them in a relentless balance! The other day he gave me Mendelssohn's Concerto in G minor, and just at the end of the first movement is a fearful break-neck pa.s.sage for both hands. "There!" cried Deppe, "that's a good healthy place. _Nehmen Sie_ DAS _fur Ihr tagliches Gebet_ (Take _that_ for your daily prayer). When you can play it eight times in succession without missing a note, I'll be satisfied. That is one of the places that when the pianists come to, they get their foot hard on to the pedal and hold on to it--_Herr Gott!_ how they hold on to it--and so _lie_ themselves through." He said he never heard anyone do it right except those to whom he had taught it. Steiniger played it for me the other day and it so astonished my ears that I felt like saying, "_Herr Gott!_"

too. It was as if some one had s.n.a.t.c.hed up a handful of hail and dashed it all over me. Br-r-r-zip! how it did go!--Like a bundle of rockets touched off one after the other. And yet this concerto is one of those things that everybody thrums, and is one of the regular pieces you must have in your repertoire. Deppe was quite shocked to find I had never learned it.

My lesson usually lasts three hours! Nothing Deppe hates like being hurried over a lesson. He likes to have plenty of time to express all his ideas and tell you a good many anecdotes in between! I usually take my lessons from seven till ten in the evening. Then he puts on his coat and saunters along with me on his way to his "Kneipe," or beer-garden, for he is far too sociable to go to bed without having taken a friendly gla.s.s of beer with some one. Every block or so he will stand stock still and impress some musical point upon my mind, and will often harangue me for five or ten minutes before moving on. It seems to be impossible to him to walk and _talk_ at the same time! In this way you may imagine it takes me a good while to get home.

On Tuesday there is to be a grand ball at the opera house which the Emperor and the whole court grace with their presence, and lead off the first Polonaise. There are two of these grand public b.a.l.l.s every winter.

The tickets are sold, and it is the sole occasion where the public can have the felicity of gazing upon royalty in close proximity. I have never been, though all my German friends have been dinning it into my ears for the last four years that I ought to go and see it, for the decorations are magnificent. This year there is to be but one, as the Emperor is not very well, and I expect it will be as much as one's life is worth to get in and get out again, such is the rus.h.!.+

The German officers waltz perfectly, and with great spirit and elegance.

Dancing is a part of their military training and they are obliged to learn it. But they are not very comfortable partners, for one rubs one's face against their epaulets unless they are just the right height, and you've no rest for your left hand. They take only two turns round the room and then stop a moment or two to fan you and rest--then they take two more. The consequence is, one never gets fairly going before one has to stop. At first I used to think the effect of so many people whirling round in the same direction dizzying and monotonous. But when I became accustomed to it, the continual reversing of the Americans who come to Berlin struck me as angular, in contrast to the graceful German circling. It is not "the thing" here for the girls to look flushed and disordered--skirts torn, and hair out of crimp--as our belles do at the end of an evening. They retire from the ball-room with their dresses in faultless condition, so that going to parties in Germany must cost the _pater familias_ considerably less than with us! The floor is never so crowded with dancers at one time, and as they are going in the same direction, they don't run into each other as our couples do. On the other hand, they don't have such a "good time" out of it as do our girls, with their long five and ten minute turns to those delicious waltzes! Strange, that though Germany is the native home of the waltz, and the Vienna waltzes surpa.s.s all others, the Schottisch or Rhinelaender should be their favourite dance. They dance it very gracefully and rythmically.

BERLIN, _March 1, 1874_.

I went the other evening to the Opera ball I wrote you of in my last.

The whole opera house, stage and all, was floored over, and magnificently decorated with evergreens, mirrors, fountains, and flowers. The tickets are sold for some charitable purpose. Only nice people can get in, because the whole thing is systematically arranged, and n.o.body can give their tickets to anybody else. I got mine through Mr. Bancroft, and I went with two other ladies and a gentleman.

We went very early, so as to get a box to sit in, and _never_ shall I forget the first effect of the ball-room! That immense polished floor stretching out like one vast mirror or sheet of ice, the fountains flas.h.i.+ng at the sides, the walls wreathed with green, a big orchestra sitting in the balcony at each end, and about a hundred pairs of magnificently dressed ladies and gentlemen descending the stairs into the rooms and promenading about. Light, diamonds, colour, everywhere.

Oh, it was perfectly fairy-like! The floor was built over the tops of the chairs in the parquette, and the entrance was through the royal box, which is just in the centre of the opera house, facing the stage. This box is like a large recess, of course, and not like the ordinary boxes.

There was an entrance on each side, coming in from the corridor, and a flight of broad steps, carpeted, had been improvised, which led from it down to the floor. It looked perfectly dazzling to see the pairs come in from both sides at once and descend the steps, and the ladies' dresses were displayed to perfection. Such toilets I never saw. The women were covered with lace, feathers, and diamonds. The simpler dresses were of tarletane (mine included!) but as they were quite fresh they gave a very dressy air. We had a splendid box, first rank, and the second from the proscenium boxes on the left, in which sat the royal family. In the box between us and the latter sat the wife of the French amba.s.sador with the Countess von Seidlewitz and her sister, and behind them was a formidable array of magnificent-looking officers in full uniform, their b.r.e.a.s.t.s flas.h.i.+ng with stars and orders and silver chains.

The Countess von Seidlewitz is a famous court beauty and is lady of honour to the Princess Carl (sister of the Empress). She sat just next to me, as only the part.i.tion of the box was between us, and she was the most beautiful woman I saw--perfectly imperial, in fact--white and magnificent as a lily. Her features were perfectly regular, and she had a proudly-cut mouth, and such dazzling little teeth! Then, her arms, neck, and shape were exquisite. She wore the severest kind of dress, and one that only such beauty could have borne. It was a white silk, with an immense train, of course, and without overskirt--simply caught up in a great puff behind. The waist was made with a small basque, but very low, and with very short sleeves. Round the neck was a white bugle fringe, and there were two or three rows of this fringe in front, graduating to the waist, smaller and smaller, and going round the basque. All the front breadth of the skirt was laid in folds of satin, in groups of three, and on the edge of every third row was the fringe again, graduating wider and wider toward the bottom. In her hair she wore a wreath of white verbenas or (snow-b.a.l.l.s) and green leaves. Her sole ornament was a magnificent diamond locket and ear-rings of some curious design, the locket depending from a very fine gold chain, which challenged all observers to notice the faultlessness of her neck. One sly bit of coquetry was visible in two natural flowers, lilies-of-the-valley, with their leaves, which she had stuck in her corsage so that they should rest against her neck and show that they were not whiter than her skin.--You see there were no folds anywhere, as there was no overskirt, but the whole dress hung in long lines and showed the contour of the figure. Nothing but these fringes (which gleamed and waved with every motion) relieved it--not even a bit of black velvet anywhere, for the lace round the neck was drawn through with a white silk thread. There was another lady in the same box whose dress was very beautiful, too, though she herself was not. It was a green silk with green tulle overdress puffed, and with ears of silver wheat scattered over it. The tunic was of silver c.r.a.pe, the bottom cut in scallops and trimmed with silver wheat. A wisp of wheat was knotted round her neck for a necklace, and a perfect sheaf of it in her hair. It was an exquisite dress.

At ten o'clock everybody had arrived--about two thousand people. The orchestra struck up the Polonaise, and the court descended from the box to make the tour of the floor (_i. e._, only the members of the royal family with their ladies of honour). The Emperor was not very well, so he remained in his box, but the Empress led off with the Duke of Edinburgh, who happened to be here. She was dressed in lavender satin, covered with the most superb white lace. Her hair was done in braids on the top of her head, very high, and upon it was fastened a double coronet of diamonds, stuck on in stars, etc., which flashed like so many small suns. Round her neck depended from a black velvet band, strings of diamonds of great size and magnificence. It really almost made you start when your eye caught them unexpectedly! The Empress is a very elegant-looking woman, and is every inch a queen. She moved with stately step, bowing and bowing graciously from side to side to the crowd which parted and bent before her, and was followed by the Crown Prince and Princess, the Princess Carl, the Princess Friedrich Carl (a beauty) and her daughters, and I don't know who all, with their ladies of honour.

When the Countess von Seidlewitz came along, with her fringes waving and gleaming in front of her, she shone out from all the rest, and, in fact, from the whole two thousand guests, like the planet Venus among the other stars.--Stunning!

The orchestra banged away its loudest, and it was quite exciting. The three balconies were crowded with people, and all the boxes. The box of the diplomatic corps was just opposite us, and our gay little Mrs. F.

sat in it dressed in white satin. Some of my friends came and stood under my box and tried to get me to come down, but I would not, for I knew I should lose my place if I did, and, indeed, I would not want to dance there unless my dress were something superlative. You see, all the swells sat in their boxes and gazed right down on the dancers, who had a circular place roped off for them. De Rilvas, the Spanish minister, looked so fine, however, with his broad blue ribbon across his breast and his gold cross depending from his neck, that I should have liked very well to have made the tour of the room with him.

CHAPTER XXVI.

A Set of Beethoven Variations. Fannie Warburg. Deppe's Inventions.

His Room. His Afternoon Coffee. Pyrmont.

BERLIN, _April 30, 1874_.

I wish you were here now so that I could play you a set of little variations by Beethoven called, "I've only got a little hut." They are _bewitching_, and I think I can now play them so as to express (as Deppe says) "that he had indeed nothing but his little hut, but was quite happy in it." In the last variation he dances a waltz in his little hut!

I have learned a great deal from these tiny variations, taught in Deppe's inimitable fas.h.i.+on. When I first took them to him I began playing the second of the variations--which is rather plaintive and seems to indicate that the proprietor of the little hut had a misgiving that there _might_ be a better abode somewhere on the earth--with a great deal of "expression," as I thought. I soon found out I was overdoing it, however, and that it is not always so easy to define where good expression stops and bad style begins. "Why do you make those notes stick out so?" asked Deppe, as I was giving vent to my "soul-longings,"

(as P. says). "Learn to paint in _grossen Flaechen_ (great surfaces)."

He made me play it again perfectly legato, and with no one note "sticking out" more than another. I saw at once that he was right about it, and that the effect was much better, while it took nothing from the real sentiment of the piece. It was one of those cases where a simple statement was all that was necessary. Anything more detracted from rather than added to it.

I have at last heard Fannie Warburg in a Mozart concerto, for she has got back from England. How she did play it! To say that the pa.s.sages "pearled," would be saying nothing at all. Why, the piano just _warbled_ them out like a nightingale! The last movement had the infectious gayety that Mozart's things often have, with a magnificent cadenza by himself.

She rendered it so perfectly, and with such nave light-heartedness, that none of us could resist it, and we all finally burst into a laugh!

There was a little orchestra accompanying, which Deppe had got together and was directing. When she got to the cadenza, he laid down his baton, and retired to lean against the door and enjoy it. She did it in the most masterly manner, and O, it was _so_ difficult! I thought of the Boston critic, who considered Mozart's compositions "child's play." They _are_ child's play--that is, they are _nothing at all_ if they are not faultlessly played, and every fault _shows_, which is the reason so few attempt them. Your hand must be "in order," as Deppe says, to do it.

Fannie Warburg is a sweet little eighteen-year-old maiden. A shy little bud of a girl without any vanity or self-consciousness. She has a lovely hand for the piano, and the way she uses it is perfectly exquisite. It is small and plump, but strong, with firm little fingers. Every muscle is developed, and indeed it could not be otherwise, after such a six years' training. One of Deppe's rules is that when you raise the finger the knuckle must not stick out. The finger must "sit firm (_fest-sitzen_) in the joint." Fannie Warburg's fingers "_sitzen_" so "_fest_" that when she plays she positively has a little row of dimples where her knuckles ought to be. It looks too pretty for anything--just like a baby's hand. She does not seem to have the slightest ambition, however, and I doubt whether she will ever do anything with her music after she leaves Deppe. Her mother was from Hamburg, and had taken lessons of Deppe there when they were both quite young. She thought him such a remarkable teacher that she declared her daughter should have no other master. So when Fannie was twelve years old she brought her to him, and he has been giving her lessons ever since--something like Samuel's mother bringing him to the Temple, wasn't it?--and indeed when I go into Deppe's shabby little room I always feel as if I were in a little Temple of Music! I like to see the furniture all bestrewn with it, and Deppe himself seated at his table surrounded with piles of ma.n.u.script, pen in hand, going over and arranging them, bringing order out of chaos. Other orchestra leaders are always writing and begging him to lend them his copies of Oratorios, etc.

Deppe has all sorts of practical little ideas peculiar to himself. For instance, he has invented a candlestick to stand on a grand piano. In shape it is curved, like those things for candles attached to upright pianos, but with a weighted foot to hold it firm. It is a capital invention, for you put one each side of the music-rack, and then you can turn it so as to throw the light on your music, just as you can turn those on the upright pianos. It is on the same principle, only with the addition of the foot. It is much more convenient than a lamp, because it doesn't rattle, and you can throw the light on the page so much better.--Then he always insists on our having our pieces bound separately, in a cover of stout blue paper, such as copy books are bound in. He entirely disapproves of binding music in books. "Who will lug a great heavy book along?" he will ask, "and besides, they don't lie open well."

The other day Deppe told me he wanted me to come and hear Fraulein Steiniger take her lesson, as she had some interesting pieces to play. I found her already there when I arrived. Deppe was in an uncommonly good humour, and kept making little jokes. She played a string of things, and finally ended off with Liszt's arrangement of the Spinning Song from Wagner's Flying Dutchman. Deppe is dreadfully fussy about this piece, and made some such subtle and telling points regarding the _conception_ of the composition, that they were worthy of Liszt himself. I mean to learn it, and when I come home I will play it to you as Deppe taught it to Steiniger, and you will see how fascinating it is. I know you'll be carried away with it.

Toward the end of the lesson it was growing rather late, and time also for Deppe's coffee, which beverage you know the Germans always drink late in the afternoon, accompanied with cakes. He had just laid down his violin, as he and Fraulein Steiniger had played a sonata together, and had seated himself at the piano to show her about some pa.s.sage or other.

Deeply absorbed, he was haranguing her as hard as he could, when the maid of all work suddenly entered with the coffee on a tray, and was apparently about to set it down on the piano in close proximity to the violin. "_Herr Gott, nicht auf die Violin!_ (Good gracious, not on the violin!)" exclaimed Deppe, springing frantically up and rescuing the beloved instrument. "Where then?" said the girl. "Oh, anywhere, only not on the violin." She set it down on a chair and vanished. There were only three chairs in the room, and the sofa was covered with music. Fraulein Steiniger occupied one chair, I the second, and the coffee the third.

Deppe glanced around in momentary bewilderment, and then sat himself plump down on the floor, took his coffee, stretched out his legs, and began stirring it imperturbably. "But Herr Deppe!" remonstrated Steiniger. "Well," said he, with his light-hearted laugh, "what else can I do when I have no chair?" There was no carpet on the floor, which was an ordinary painted one, and he looked funny enough, sitting there, but he enjoyed his coffee just as well!--After he had finished drinking it, the shades of night were falling, and it occurred to him it would be well to illuminate his apartment. He is the happy possessor of five minute lamps and candlesticks, no two of which are the same height. The lamps are two in number, and are about as big as the smallest sized fluid lamp that we used in old times to go to bed by. The three candlesticks are of china, and adorned with designs in decalcomania--probably the handiwork of grateful pupils, for in Germany there is no present like a "_Hand-Arbeit_ (something done by the hand of the giver)." It is the correct thing to give a gentleman. When Fraulein Steiniger and I only are present, Deppe usually considers the two lamps sufficient. But if others are there and he is going to have some music in the evening, he will produce the three minute candlesticks, with an end of candle in each, light them, and dispose them in various parts of the room. When, however, as on great occasions, the five lamps and candlesticks are supplemented by two _more_ candles on the piano in the curved candlesticks of Deppe's own invention, the blaze of light is something tremendous to our unaccustomed eyes! Nothing short of the Tuileries or the "Weisser Saal" at the palace here could equal it!

BERLIN, _May 31, 1874_.

This season with Deppe has been of such immense importance to me, that I don't know _what_ sum of money I would take in exchange for it. By practicing in his method the tone has an entirely different sound, being round, soft and yet penetrating, while the execution of pa.s.sages is infinitely facilitated and perfected. In fact, it seems to me that in time one could attain anything by it, but time it _will_ have. One has to study for months very slowly and with very simple things, to get into the way of playing so, and to be able to think about each finger as you use it--to "_feel_ the note and make it conscious." Deppe won't let me finish anything at present, so I can't tell how far along I am myself.

His principle is, never to learn a piece completely the first time you attack it, but to master it three-quarters, and then let it lie as you would fruit that you have put on a shelf to ripen;--afterward, take it up again and finish it. The principle _may_ be a good one, but it prevents my ever having anything to play for people, and consequently I have ceased playing in company entirely. In fact, I find it impossible, and I don't see how Sherwood manages it. _He_ has a whole repertoire, and sits down and plays piece after piece deliciously. But then he is a perfect genius, and will make a sensation when he comes out. He has that natural repose and imperturbability that are everything to an artist, but which, unfortunately, so few of us possess. His compositions, too, are exquisite, and so poetical! Mrs. Wrisley,[I] of Boston, and Fraulein Estleben, of Sweden, who left Kullak when I did, are also gifted creatures, whereas I think I am only a steady old poke-along, who _won't_ give up! Sherwood, however, is head and shoulders above all of us.

[The following extract, taken from the report in the _Musical Review_ of Mr. Sherwood's address before the Music Teachers' National a.s.sociation in Buffalo, in June, 1880, would seem to show that whether this distinguished young virtuoso, now by far the leading American concert-pianist, gained his ideas on the study of touch and tone from Herr Deppe or not, he certainly endorses them in both his playing and his teaching:--"It makes a great deal of difference whether a piano be struck with a stick, with mechanical fingers, or with fingers that are full of life and magnetism. I have examined Rubinstein's hand and arm, and found that they are not only full of life and magnetism, but that they are extremely elastic, and the fingers are so soft that the bones are scarcely felt. Can practice produce these qualities? I believe so, and I make it a point both with my pupils and myself to practice slow motions. It is much easier to strike quickly than slowly, but practice in the slow movement will develop both muscular and nervous power. And the tone obtained by this motion is much better than that obtained by striking. The mechanical practice in vogue at Leipsic and other European conservatories often fails because the subject of aesthetics and tone beauties are neglected." See pp. 288, 302-3, 334.]--ED.