Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 4.djvu/113

THALBERG. some surprising effect, and thereby to find at every moment 'autre chose.' Schumann, who knew human nature well, says that to criticise Thalberg would be to risk a revolt of all the French, German, and foreign girls. 'Thalberg sheds the lustre of his performance on whatever he may play, Beethoven or Dussek, Chopin or Hummel. He writes melody in the Italian style, from eight bars to eight bars. He knows wonderfully how to dress his melodies, and a great deal might perhaps be said about the difference between real composition, and conglomeration in this new-fashioned style; but the army of young ladies advances again, and therefore nothing remains to be said but, He is a god, when seated at the piano.' (G. S. iii. 75.)

That Thalberg, like De Beriot, once took a grand motif of Beethoven and distorted it into 'effective variations,' enraged Schumann, as it must every true musician. His was a certain mission: elegance and effect; to pour a rain of rosebuds and pink diamonds into the eager listener's ear and enchant him for the moment—no more.

It is interesting to learn the opinion of two great authorities both in piano and composition, viz. Mendelssohn and Rubinstein, on the relative merits of Liszt and Thalberg. Mendelssohn, in his Letters, speaks of the 'heathen scandal (Heidenscandal) both in the glorious and the reprehensible sense of the word, which Liszt created at Leipsic.' He declares Thalberg's calm ways and self-control much more worthy of the real virtuoso. Compare this with Liszt's opinion of himself, when he has been heard to say, after Thalberg's immensely successful concerts, given at Vienna after his return from Paris, that 'he hoped to play as Thalberg did, when once he should be partly paralysed and limited to the use of one hand only.' Undoubtedly Liszt's execution was more brilliant, and particularly more crushing. The strings flew, the hammers broke, and thus Chopin said once to him, 'I prefer not playing in public, it unnerves me. You, if you cannot charm the audience, can at least astonish and crush them.' Mendelssohn continues, in his comparison of the two men, that Liszt's compositions are beneath his performance, since above all 'he lacks ideas of his own, all his writing aiming only at showing off his virtuosity, whereas Thalberg's "Donna del lago," for instance, is a work of the most brilliant effect, with an astonishing gradual increase of difficulties and ornamentation, and refined taste in every bar. His paw (Faust) is as remarkable as the light deftness of his fingers. Yet Liszt's immense execution (Technik) is undeniable.' Now put against this, what Rubinstein said, when asked why in a Recital programme he had put Thalberg's Don Juan fantasia immediately after Liszt's Fastasia on motifs of the same opera: 'Pour bien faire ressortir la différence entre cet épicier et le Dieu de la musique.' Unnecessary to point out that with Rubinstein the 'God of music' is Liszt, and Thalberg the 'grocer.' Thalberg, a perfect aristocrat in look, never moved a muscle beyond his elbow. His body remained in one position, and whatever the difficulties of the piece, he was, or at any rate he appeared, unmoved, calm, master of the keyboard, and what is more difficult, of himself. Liszt, with his long hair flying about at every arpeggio or scale, not to mention his restlessness when playing rapid octaves, studied his public unceasingly. He kept the audience well under his eye, was not above indulging in little comedies, and encouraging scenes to be played by the audience—for instance, that the ladies should throw themselves upon a glove of his, expressly forgotten, on the piano, tear it to bits and divide the shreds among themselves as relics! It gave a sensational paragraph! Thalberg thoroughly disdained such a petty course. In their fantasias—because, not until the gray hair adorned the celebrated Abbé's forehead, did his orchestral fertility assert itself—there was a marked difference to this effect: Liszt heaped, as Mendelssohn and Schumann said, difficulty upon difficulty, in order to furnish himself with a pretext for vanquishing them with his astounding mechanism. His smaller works, arrangements of Schubert's songs, Rossini's 'Soirées musicales,' etc., or the little Lucia fantasia—which so pleased Mendelssohn—with its arpeggios and shakes for the left hand excepted, there are very few that le commun des martyrs of the pianist-world could even attempt to play. In his Puritani fantasia and others there are sometimes shakes for the last two fingers, extending over several pages, which he himself played divinely, his shake with the little finger being most stupendous; but who else could do it? His concertos, unhandsome and unmusical, requiring a strength and execution very rarely to be met with, are not grateful, while Thalberg's compositions are so. In the latter, first of all, you find the fundamental basis of all music—singing. Where there is not one of those graceful little Andante-cantabile which he ordinarily puts at the beginning of his pieces, one finger is sure to sing a motif which the others in varied modes accompany. Whether the figure be that of chromatic scales as in the Andante, or the motif be surrounded with arpeggios as in 'Moïse,' or interwoven in scales as in the minuet of 'Don Juan,' or changing hands as in the Airs Russes, or specially brilliantly arranged for the left hand to play the motif, with accompanying chords written on two lines, while the right hand plays a brilliant variation noted on a third line, as in his fantasia on 'God save the Queen'—you always hear the two hands doing the work of three, sometimes you imagine that of four, hands.

Forty years ago photography had not reached its present place in artistic life—at least not portrait photography—and the likenesses of artists depended on the engraver: witness the wonderful portrait of Jenny Lind engraved at that date. At Vienna that was the grand time for the lithographers. Kaiser and the famous Kriehuber made the most successful portraits both of Thalberg and Liszt, especially of the latter, who courted advertisement of any kind, as