Читать книгу Franz Liszt - James Huneker - Страница 16

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I possess, and value as a curiosity, a copy of Liszt's Etudes, Opus 1. The edition is rare and the plates have been destroyed. Written when Liszt was fresh from the tutelage of Carl Czerny, they show decided traces of his schooling. They are not difficult for fingers inured to modern methods. When I first bought them I knew not the Etudes d'Execution Transcendentale, and when I encountered the latter I exclaimed at the composer's cleverness. The Hungarian has taken his opus 1 and dressed it up in the most bewildering technical fashion. He gave these studies appropriate names, and even to-day they require a tremendous technique to do them justice. The most remarkable of the set—the one in F minor No. 10—Liszt left nameless, and like a peak it rears its head skyward, while about it cluster its more graceful fellows: Ricordanza, Feux-follets, Harmonies du Soir (Chasse-neige, and Paysage). The Mazeppa is a symphonic poem in miniature. What a superb contribution to piano literature is Liszt's. These twelve incomparable studies, the three effective Etudes de Concert (several quite Chopinish in style and technique), the murmuring Waldesrauschen, the sparkling Gnomenreigen, the stormy Ab-Irato, the poetic Au Lac de Wallenstadt and Au Bord d'une Source, have they not all tremendously developed the technical resources of the instrument? And to play them one must have fingers of steel, a brain on fire, a heart bubbling with chivalric force; what a comet-like pianist he was, this Magyar, who swept European skies, who transformed the still small voice of Chopin into a veritable hurricane. Nevertheless, we cannot imagine a Liszt without a Chopin preceding him.

But, Liszt lost, the piano would lose its most dashing cavalier; while his freedom, fantasy, and fire are admirable correctives of the platitudes of the Hummel-Czerny-Mendelssohn school. Liszt won from his instrument an orchestral quality. He advanced by great wing-strokes toward perfection, and deprived of his music we should miss colour, sonority, richness of tinting, and dramatic and dynamic contrasts. He has had a great following. Tausig was the first to feel his influence, and if he had lived longer would have beaten out a personal style of his own. Of the two we prefer Liszt's version of the Paganini studies to Schumann's. The Campanella is a favourite of well equipped virtuosi.

In my study of Chopin reference is made to Chopin's obligations to Liszt. I prefer now to quote a famous authority on the subject, no less a critic than Professor Frederick Niecks, whose biography of Chopin is, thus far, the superior of all. He writes: "As at one time all ameliorations in the theory and practice of music were ascribed to Guido of Arezzo, so it is nowadays the fashion to ascribe all improvements and extensions of the pianoforte technique to Liszt, who, more than any other pianist, drew upon himself the admiration of the world, and through his pupils continued to make his presence felt even after the close of his career as a virtuoso. But the cause of this false opinion is to be sought not so much in the fact that the brilliancy of his artistic personality threw all his contemporaries into the shade, as in that other fact, that he gathered up into one web the many threads new and old which he found floating about during the years of his development. The difference between Liszt and Chopin lies in this, that the basis of the former's art is universality, that of the latter's, individuality. Of the fingering of the one we may say that it is a system, of that of the other that it is a manner. Probably we have here also touched on the cause of Liszt's success and Chopin's want of success as a teacher."

Niecks does not deny that Liszt influenced Chopin. In volume 1 of his Frederick Chopin, he declares that "The artist who contributed the largest quotum of force to this impulse was probably Liszt, whose fiery passions, indomitable energy, soaring enthusiasm, universal tastes and capacity of assimilation, mark him out as the opposite of Chopin. But, although the latter was undoubtedly stimulated by Liszt's style of playing the piano and of writing for this instrument, it is not so certain as Miss L. Ramann, Liszt's biographer, thinks, that this master's influence can be discovered in many passages of Chopin's music which are distinguished by a fiery and passionate expression, and resemble rather a strong, swelling torrent than a gently gliding rivulet. She instances Nos. 9 and 12 of Douze Etudes, Op. 10; Nos. 11 and 12 of Douze Etudes, Op. 25; No. 24 of Vingt Quatre Préludes, Op. 28; Premier Scherzo, Op. 20; Polonaise in A-flat Major, Op. 32. All these compositions, we are told, exhibit Liszt's style and mode of feeling. Now the works composed by Chopin before he came to Paris and got acquainted with Liszt, comprise not only a sonata, a trio, two concertos, variations, polonaises, waltzes, mazurkas, one or more nocturnes, etc., but also—and this is for the question under consideration of great importance—most of, if not all, the studies of Op. 10 (Sowinski says that Chopin brought with him to Paris the MS. of the first book of his studies) and some of Op. 25; and these works prove decisively the inconclusiveness of the lady's argument. The twelfth study of Opus 10 (composed in September, 1831) invalidates all she says about fire, passion, and rushing torrents. In fact, no cogent reason can be given why the works mentioned by her should not be the outcome of unaided development. [That is to say, development not aided in the way indicated by Miss Ramann.] The first Scherzo alone might make us pause and ask whether the new features that present themselves in it ought not to be fathered on Liszt. But seeing that Chopin evolved so much, why should he not also have evolved this? Moreover, we must keep in mind that Liszt had, up to 1831, composed almost nothing of what in after years was considered either by him or others of much moment, and that his pianoforte style had first to pass through the state of fermentation into which Paganini's playing had precipitated it (in the spring of 1831) before it was formed; on the other hand, Chopin arrived in Paris with his portfolios full of masterpieces, and in possession of a style of his own as a player of his instrument as well as a writer for it. That both learned from each other cannot be doubted; but the exact gain of each is less easily determinable. Nevertheless, I think I may venture to assert that whatever may be the extent of Chopin's indebtedness to Liszt, the latter's indebtedness to the former is greater. The tracing of an influence in the works of a man of genius, who, of course, neither slavishly imitates nor flagrantly appropriates, is one of the most difficult tasks. If Miss Ramann had first noted the works produced by the two composers in question before their acquaintance began, and had carefully examined Chopin's early productions with a view to ascertain his capability of growth, she would have come to another conclusion, or, at least have spoken less confidently."

To the above no exception may be taken except the reference to the B-minor Scherzo as possibly having been suggested by Liszt. For me it is most characteristic of Chopin in its perverse, even morbid, ironical humour, its original figuration; who but Chopin could have conceived that lyrical episode! Liszt, doubtless, was the first who introduced interlocking octaves instead of the chromatic scale at the close; Tausig followed his example. But there the matter ended. Once when Chopin heard that Liszt intended to write an account of his concerts for the Gazette Musicale, he said: "He will give me a little kingdom in his empire." This remark casts much illumination on the relations of the two men. Liszt was the broader minded of the two; Chopin, as Niecks points out, forgave but never forgot.