Among the Great Masters of Music Part 5

WEBER.

The picture of Weber sitting among the airy visions evoked by music's spell, which is known as "Weber's Last Thoughts," and is supposed to represent him as composing the waltz so called, is based upon an error.

For this popular piece, published in 1824, is not the work of Weber at all, but was written by Reissiger. The probable cause of its being ascribed to Weber is that a ma.n.u.script copy of it, given him by Reissiger on the eve of the master's departure for London, was found among Weber's papers after his death.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The "Last Thoughts" of Von Weber. From painting by E.

J. C. Hamman.]

Weber's son, in his life of his father, tells us that when the composer was in London, Miss Stephens, of whose talent he was a great admirer, offered to appear at his concert. "The celebrated artist, however, was desirous of singing some new composition by the master; and Weber, exhausted as he was, could not gainsay her wish. Miss Stephens herself chose the words from Moore's 'Lalla Rookh;' and the composer set himself to work on 'From Chindara's Warbling Fount I Come.' But fearfully painful was the effort now. Twice Weber flung down his pen in utter despair. At last, on the morning of the 18th of May, the great artist's flitting genius came back to him, and for the last time gave him a farewell kiss upon that n.o.ble forehead, now bedewed with the cold sweat of death,--for the last time! The trembling hands were unable to write down more than the notes for the voice. Weber rehea.r.s.ed his last composition with the celebrated artist from this sketch, and accompanied the song from memory at his concert."

Here we have the true story of the master's last composition.

The concert spoken of, at which he made his last appearance in public, was, unfortunately, not a pecuniary success, because of the indifference of the English aristocracy. This was a severe blow to the composer, who knew that he had not long to live, and who had hoped to realise from this concert a substantial sum, which he could add to that received from his opera of "Oberon," and use all in providing for his wife and children. "The following day Weber was somewhat better. He was still supported by the hopes of his benefit; he still found sufficient strength to write to his wife in such wise as to place in its least painful light his cruel disappointment. As yet, in spite of his bodily weakness, his handwriting had remained distinct and clear.

In this letter, it displays the utter ruin of his strength. 'Writing is somewhat painful to me,' runs one phrase of it; 'my hands tremble so.' Furstenau saw only too clearly the sinking state of the poor man, and generously offered to give up his own concert, in order to hasten the departure of his friend. 'What a word of comfort you have spoken!'

gasped Weber, clutching the hand of the kind fellow. He wrote again to his wife, with a last gleam of his spirit: 'You will not have many more letters from me; and so receive now my high and mighty commands. Do not answer this to London, but to the _poste restante_, Frankfurt. You are astounded! Well! I am not coming home through Paris. What should I do there? I cannot walk--I cannot speak. I will have nothing more to do with business for years to come. So it is far better I should take the straight way home by Calais, through Brussels, Cologne, Coblentz, and thus by the Rhine to Frankfurt. What a charming journey!

I must travel very slowly, however, and probably rest for half a day, now and then. I shall gain a good fortnight thus; and by the end of June I hope to be in your arms.' At this time he was still resolved to keep his promise of conducting at Miss Paton's concert. But he came home in a state of such feverish agitation and complete exhaustion that his friends came around him, and wrung from him the promise that he would conduct no more, and even give up his own benefit. This resolution, strange to say, appeared to bestow fresh spirits on him; it enabled him to hasten his return. Now that all last earthly interests were laid aside, love and affection for the dear ones at home had alone possession of his mind. One thought alone occupied his whole soul,--to be at home again, amongst his own--to see them, if but once--but once!

With this feeling, in which gleamed one last ray of cheerfulness, he wrote: 'How will you receive me? In heaven's name, alone. Let no one disturb my joy of looking again upon my wife, my children, my dearest and my best. . . . Thank G.o.d! the end of all is fast approaching.' . . . The end of all _was_ fast approaching. On the 1st of June, every painful symptom of the poor sufferer had so increased that his friends held counsel with Doctor Kind, who considered his state highly precarious. Furstenau was desirous of watching by his bedside. 'No, no,' replied Weber, 'I am not so ill as you want to make me out.' He refused even the attendance of Sir George Smart's servant in his anteroom. Blisters were applied to his chest, and he noted in his diary, 'Thank G.o.d, my sleep was sweet!' He fixed his departure for the 6th, arranged all his pecuniary affairs with minuteness, and employed his friends in purchasing presents for his family and friends in Dresden. He was strongly urged by his friends to postpone his journey until he could have recovered some degree of strength. But this solicitation only irritated him. 'I must go back to my own--I must!' he sobbed, incessantly. 'Let me see them once more--and then G.o.d's will be done!' The attempt appeared impossible to all. With great unwillingness he yielded to his friends' request to have a consultation of physicians. 'Be it so!' he answered. 'But come of it what may, I go!' His only thought, his only word, was 'Home!' On the 2d of June he wrote his last letter to his beloved wife,--the last lines his hand ever traced. 'What a joy, my own dear darling, your letter gave me! What a happiness to me to know that you are well! . . . As this letter requires no answer, it will be but a short one. What a comfort it is not to have to answer! . . . G.o.d bless you all, and keep you well! Oh, were I but amongst you all again! I kiss you with all my heart and soul, my dearest one! Preserve all your love for me, and think with pleasure on him who loves thee above all, thy Karl.' What an outpouring of the truest affection there was in that last loving prayer!

"Weber's only thoughts were now concentrated on his journey, and he even reproached Furstenau with caballing with the others to prevent his undertaking it. 'You may do what you will, it is of no avail,' he said. On the evening of the 3d of June he asked his friend Goschen, with a smile, 'Have you anything to say to your father? At all events I shall tell him that his son has been a dear kind friend to me in London.' 'But you leave many friends and admirers here,' said Goschen.

'Hus.h.!.+ hus.h.!.+' replied Weber, still smiling softly; 'that's not the same thing, you know.' When, on the evening of the 4th, he sat panting in his easy chair, with Sir George Smart, Goschen, Furstenau, and Moscheles grouped around him, he could speak only of his journey. At ten o'clock they urged him to retire to bed. But he firmly declined to have any one watch by his bedside, and even to forego his custom of barring his chamber door. When he had given his white, transparent, trembling hand to all, murmuring gently, but in earnest tones, the words, 'G.o.d reward you all for your kind love to me!' he was led by Sir George Smart and Furstenau into his bedroom. Furstenau, from whom alone he would accept such services, helped him to undress; the effort was a painful one to himself. With his own hand, however, Weber wound up his watch, with his usual punctilious care; then, with all that charm of amiability for which he was conspicuous through life, he murmured his thanks to his friend, and said, 'Now let me sleep.' These were the last words that mortal ear heard the great artist utter. It is clear, however, that Weber must have left his bed later, for, the next morning, the door through which Furstenau had pa.s.sed, was barred.

For a long time the friends sat together in Sir George Smart's room, filled with sorrowful presentiments, and earnestly consulting what means might best be taken to prevent the journey. About midnight they parted. On their leaving the house, all was dark in Weber's window.

His light had been extinguished.

"The next morning, at the early hour when Weber generally required his aid, Sir George Smart's servant knocked at his chamber door; no answer came; he knocked again, and louder. It was strange, for Weber's sleep had always been light. The alarmed servant rushed to Sir George, who sprang out of bed and hurried to the room. Still, to his repeated knocking, no answer was returned. Furstenau was sent for. He came half dressed, already antic.i.p.ating the worst. It was now resolved to force the door. It was burst open. All was still within. The watch, which the last movement of the great hand which had written 'Der Freischutz,' 'Euryanthe,' and 'Oberon,' had wound up, alone ticked with painful distinctness. The bed-curtains were torn back. There lay the beloved friend and master dead. His head rested on his left hand, as if in tranquil sleep,--not the slightest trace of pain or suffering on his features. The soul, yearning for the dear objects of its love, had burst its earthly covering and fled. The immortal master was not dead,--he had gone home."

Weber died in London in 1826, but it was not until 1844, and then mainly through the efforts of Wagner, that his remains were taken to his native land. They now rest in Dresden, where a statue was raised in 1860 in honour of Carl Maria von Weber, who has been called "The operatic liberator of Germany."

BEETHOVEN.

"No one can conceive," Beethoven wrote to the Baroness Droszd.i.c.k, "the intense happiness I feel in getting into the country, among the woods, my dear trees, shrubs, hills, and dales. I am convinced that no one loves country life as I do. It is as if every tree and every bush could understand my mute inquiries and respond to them." It was this rage for fresh air and fields which made him such a bad stay-at-home bird, whether he was sheltered amid the palatial surroundings of some princely patron, or whether sojourning in the less luxurious and comfortless atmosphere of some one of his frequently changed lodgings.

He disliked any control, and truly meant it when, at intervals, growing impatient with the constant requests for his company, he complained outright that he was forced too much into society. His favourite places for ruralising were Modling, Dobling, Hentzendorf, and Baden; while there is still cherished in the royal garden of Schonbrunn a favourite spot, between two ash-trees, where the master is reputed to have composed some of the music of "Fidelio."

A French artist, Paul Leyendecker, has painted the master thus at work amid nature's peace. Beethoven is sitting on the outskirts of a wood near his native city of Bonn, absorbed in composition. A funeral procession is coming up the road, with the coffin borne upon the shoulders of the mourners, and preceded by the priest, who recognises the composer and bids the choristers cease chanting for a while in order not to disturb his labours. Turning from the master at work in the open air to him at home, we find that Carl Schloesser, a German painter long settled in London, exhibited at the Royal Academy, a few years ago, a striking picture showing Beethoven at the piano absorbed in composition, amid a litter of ma.n.u.scripts and music-sheets. It was thus he must have looked when Weber called upon him in 1823.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Beethoven at Bonn. From painting by Paul Leyendecker.]

"All lay in the wildest disorder--music, money, clothing, on the floor--linen from the wash upon the dirty bed--broken coffee-cups upon the table. The open pianoforte was covered thickly with dust.

Beethoven entered to greet his visitors. Benedict has thus described him: 'Just so must have looked Lear, or one of Ossian's bards. His thick gray hair was flung upwards, and disclosed the sanctuary of his lofty vaulted forehead. His nose was square, like that of a lion; his chin broad, with those remarkable folds which all his portraits show; his jaws formed as if purposely to crack the hardest nuts; his mouth n.o.ble and soft. Over the broad face, seamed with scars from the smallpox, was spread a dark redness. From under the thick, closely compressed eyebrows gleamed a pair of small flas.h.i.+ng eyes. The square, broad form of a Cyclops was wrapped in a shabby dressing-gown, much torn about the sleeves.' Beethoven recognised Weber without a word, embraced him energetically, shouting out, 'There you are, my boy; you are a devil of a fellow! G.o.d bless you!' handed him at once his famous tablets, then pushed a heap of music from the old sofa, threw himself upon it, and, during a flow of conversation, commenced dressing himself to go out. Beethoven began with a string of complaints about his own position; about the theatres, the public, the Italians, the talk of the day, and, more especially, about his own ungrateful nephew. Weber, who was nervous and agitated, counselled him to tear himself from Vienna, and to take a journey through Germany to convince himself of the world's judgment of him, and more especially to go to England, where his works were more reverenced than in any other country. 'Too late!

too late!' cried Beethoven, making the pantomime of playing on the piano, and shaking his head sadly. Then he seized on Weber's arm, and dragged him away to the Sauerhof, where he was wont to dine. 'Here,'

wrote Weber afterward, 'we dined together in the happiest mood. The rough repulsive man paid me as much attention as if I were a lady to whom he was making court, and served me at table with the most delicate care. How proud I felt to receive all this kindness and affectionate regard from the great master spirit! The day will remain for ever impressed on my mind, as well as on that of all who were present.'"

[Ill.u.s.tration: Beethoven in His Study. From painting by Carl Schloesser.]

Three years later the Swedish poet, Atterbom, being in Vienna, went to visit Beethoven. Atterbom was accompanied by his friend, Doctor Jeitteles, who has left this account of their odd experience. He says: "We went one hot afternoon to the Alservorstadt, and mounted to the second story of the so-called Schwarzspanier house. We rang, no one answered; we lifted the latch, the door was open, the anteroom empty.

We knocked at the door of Beethoven's room, and, receiving no reply, repeated our knock more loudly. But we got no answer, although we could hear there was some one inside. We entered, and what a scene presented itself! The wall facing us was hung with huge sheets of paper covered with charcoal marks; Beethoven was standing before it, with his back turned toward us, but in what a condition! Oppressed by the excessive heat, he had divested himself of everything but his s.h.i.+rt, and was busily employed writing notes on the wall with a lead-pencil, beating time, and striking a few chords on his stringless pianoforte. He did not once turn toward the door. We looked at each other in amused perplexity. It was no use trying to attract the deaf master's attention by making a noise; and he would have felt embarra.s.sed had we gone up to him. I said to Atterbom, 'Would you, as a poet, like to take away with you to the north the consciousness of having, perhaps, arrested the loftiest flight of genius? You can at least say, "I have seen Beethoven create." Let us leave, unseen and unheard!' We departed."

[Ill.u.s.tration: A Symphony by Beethoven. From painting by A. Graefle.]

Another German artist, Graefle, has produced an interesting work depicting Beethoven playing to his friends.

"At the pianoforte Beethoven seemed a G.o.d--at times in the humour to play, at others not. If he happened not to be in the humour, it required pressing and reiterated entreaties to get him to the instrument. Before he began in earnest, he used sportively to strike the keys with the palm of his hand, draw his fingers along the keyboard from one end to the other, and play all manner of gambols, at which he laughed heartily. Once at the pianoforte, and in a genial mood with his surroundings, he would extemporise for one and two hours at a stretch, amid the solemn silence of his listeners. He demanded absolute silence from conversation whenever he put his fingers upon the pianoforte keys to play. If this was not forthcoming, he rose up, publicly upbraided the offenders, and left the room. This mode of resenting a nuisance--one not yet extinct--was once ill.u.s.trated at Count Browne's, where Beethoven and Ries were engaged in playing a duet, yet during which one of the guests started an animated conversation with a lady. Exasperated at such an affront to his artistic honour, Beethoven rose up, glared at the pair, and shouted out, 'I play no more for such hogs,'--nor would he touch another note or allow Ries to do so, although earnestly entreated by the company.

'His improvisation,' Czerny tells us, 'was most brilliant and striking; in whatever company he might chance to be, he knew how to produce such an effect upon every hearer that frequently not an eye remained dry, while many would break out into loud sobs, for there was something wonderful in his expression in addition to the beauty and originality of his ideas and his spirited style of rendering them.' Ries says: 'No artist that I ever heard came at all near the height Beethoven attained in this branch of playing. The wealth of ideas which forced themselves on him, the caprices to which he surrendered himself, the variety of treatment, the difficulties, were inexhaustible. Even the Abbe Vogler's admirers were compelled to admit as much.'"

Tomaschek was greatly impressed by Beethoven. He writes: "It was in 1798, when I was studying law, that Beethoven, that giant among players, came to Prague. . . . His grand style of playing, and especially his bold improvisation, had an extraordinary effect upon me.

I felt so shaken that for several days I could not bring myself to touch the piano."

"His manner was to sit in a quiet way at the instrument, commanding his feelings; but occasionally, and especially when extemporising, it was hard to maintain the pose. At extreme moments he warmed into great pa.s.sions, so that it was impossible for him to hide from his listeners the sacred fires that were raging within him. Czerny declares that his playing of slow movements was full of the greatest expression,--an experience to be remembered. He used the pedal largely, and was most particular in the placing of the hands and the drift of the fingers upon the keys. As a pianist, he was surnamed 'Giant among players,'

and men like Vogler, Hummel, and Wolffl were of a truth great players; but as Sir George Grove aptly says, in speaking of Beethoven's _tours de force_ in performance, his transposing and playing at sight, etc., 'It was no quality of this kind that got him the name, but the loftiness and elevation of his style, and his great power of expression in slow movements, which, when exercised on his n.o.ble music, fixed his hearers, and made them insensible to any fault of polish or mere mechanism.'"

Beethoven has often served as a subject for painters, but, among the numerous pictures dedicated to him, we recall none more impressive than Aime de Lemud's "Beethoven's Dream." De Lemud, a Frenchman who died at the age of seventy years, in 1887, first won success as a painter, and then studied engraving. At the Salon of 1863 he received a medal for his engraving of this picture, which was then ent.i.tled, simply, "Beethoven."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Beethoven's Dream. From painting by Aime de Lemud.]

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, in her story of "The Silent Partner," tells how "a line engraving after De Lemud could make a 'forgetting' in the life of a factory girl.

"An engraving that lay against a rich easel in a corner of the room attracted the girl's attention presently. She went down on her knees to examine it. It chanced to be Lemud's dreaming Beethoven. Sip was very still about it.

"'What is that fellow doing?' she asked, after a while. 'Him with the stick in his hand.'

"She pointed to the leader of the shadowy orchestra, touching the baton through the gla.s.s, with her brown fingers.

"'I have always supposed,' said Perley, 'that he was only floating with the rest; you see the orchestra behind him.'

"'Floating after those women with their arms up? No, he isn't.'

"'What is he doing?'

"It's riding over him--the orchestra. He can't master it. Don't you see? It sweeps him along. He can't help himself. They come and come.

How fast they come! How he fights and falls! Oh, I know how they come! That's the way things come to me; things I could do, things I could say, things I could get rid of if I had the chance; they come in the mills mostly; they tumble over me just so; I never have the chance.

How he fights! I didn't know there was any such picture in the world.

I'd like to look at that picture day and night. See! Oh, I know how they come!'

"'Miss Kelso--' after another silence, and still upon her knees before the driving dream and the restless dreamer. 'You see, that's it.

That's like your pretty things. I'd keep your pretty things if I was you. It ain't that there shouldn't be music anywhere. It's only that the music shouldn't ride over the master. Seems to me it is like that.'"

SCHUBERT.

In the Wahring cemetery in Vienna three monuments of varying design stand side by side. The central one honours Mozart, the name of Beethoven is inscribed upon the second, and the last bears that of Franz Schubert. Schubert died aged but thirty-one, in 1828, the year after Beethoven had pa.s.sed beyond. He had the greatest reverence for the sublime master, and on the day before his own death spoke of him in a touching manner in his delirium. Schubert was one of the torch-bearers at the grave of Beethoven, and after the funeral went with some friends to a tavern, where he filled two gla.s.ses of wine.

The first he drank to the memory of the great man who had just been laid to rest, and the other to the memory of him who should be first to follow Beethoven to the grave. In less than two years he himself lay beside him.

Schubert, in his youth, once asked a friend, after the performance of some of his own songs, whether he thought that he (Schubert) would ever become anything. His friend replied that he was already something. "I say so to myself, sometimes," said Schubert, "but who can do anything after Beethoven?" At a later day he said of the master, "Mozart stands in the same relation to him as Schiller does to Shakespeare. Schiller is already understood, Shakespeare still far from being fully comprehended. Every one understands Mozart; no one thoroughly comprehends Beethoven."

Although Beethoven lived in Vienna during nearly the whole life of Schubert, and for some years very near to his house, the two composers were almost strangers. Schindler, Beethoven's biographer, does indeed state that they met in 1822, but the story has been much doubted.