In France there has been a national school this long time in which all the young composers are educated; a school which has turned out men like Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Delibes, Massenet, and a great and honored roll of composers and artists. French music differs from German primarily in taking itself less seriously. Everything tends to be shorter; there is a more fanciful and capricious use of passing tones and by-tones of every sort, and its general complexion is that of daintiness and sensuous sweetness, rather than of deep thought. The French school is therefore well adapted for imparting refinement to the style of a performer.
The writers of the Scandinavian peninsula have certain peculiarities in their melody which impart to their work a trait of local color. This one finds in the writings of Grieg, Svendsen, and to some extent in those of Gade. A similar coloring was hit upon much earlier by Mendelssohn in the beginning of the "Hebrides" overture.
America can not be said, as yet, to have attained a national school. We had one genius who might be called self-instructed--viz., Louis Moreau Gottschalk. All of our composers since have been German educated, or educated under teachers who themselves were German taught, and as yet our music is little more than a slightly modified German production, although our composers are beginning to show as much originality and force as the better class of the writers of any country.
Selecting only those names the most prominent in the several countries, and more particularly the composers who have distinguished themselves in pianoforte music, the following seem, on the whole, the most worthy of our attention:
In Germany--Brahms, Dvorak, Raff, D'Albert, Nicode, Moszkowski, Jensen, Reinecke, Paderewski, and Scharwenka.
In Russia--Rubinstein, Henselt, Tschaikowsky, Balakirew, Glazounow, and Karganoff.
In France--Stephen Heller, Saint-Saëns, Pierne, Faure, Widor, Guyrand, and Benoit.
In Scandinavia--Grieg, Gade, Svendsen, Kjerulf, and Meyer-Helmund.
In America--Gottschalk, Mason, Wollenhaupt, Foote, Chadwick, MacDowell, and others.
Born at Hamburg, May 7, 1833. Died at Vienna, April 3, 1897.
In Johannes Brahms we have a musical master of the first order. His quality as master was shown in his marvelous technic, in which respect no recent composer is to be mentioned as his superior, if any can be named, since Bach, as his equal. This technic was at first personal, at the pianoforte, upon which he was a virtuoso of phenomenal rank; but this renown, great as it is in well-informed circles, sinks into insignificance beside his marvelous ability at marshaling musical periods, elaborating together the most dissimilar and apparently incompatible subjects, and his powers of varying a given theme and of ever unfolding from it something new. These wonderful gifts--for such they were, rather than laboriously acquired attainments--Brahms showed at the first moment when the light of musical history shines upon him. It was in 1853, when the Hungarian violinist, Edouard Remenyi, found him at Hamburg and engaged him as accompanist, and having ascertained his astonishing talents, brought him, a young man of twenty, to Liszt at Weimar, with his first trio and certain other compositions in manuscript. The new talent made a prodigious effect upon Liszt, who needed not that any one should certify to him whether a composer had genius or merely talent. And that Brahms on his own part made the regrettable mistake of falling asleep while Liszt in turn was playing for him his newly completed sonata for pianoforte, is an incident which was important only for the moment. The Liszt circle took up the Brahms cult in earnest, played the trio at the chamber concerts, and the members, when they departed to their homes, generally carried with them their admiration of this new personality which had appeared in music.