Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Part 8

To this Schumann replied with needless heat, and his friends began to joke him about his "disinterestedness." He was getting moody, and there were times when he was silent for days. His pa.s.sion for Clara Wieck was consuming his life. He resolved to go direct to Frederick Wieck and have it out.

They are always called "the Schumanns"--Robert and Clara. You can not separate them, any more than you can separate the great Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett. "Whomsoever G.o.d hath joined together, let no man put asunder," seems rather a needless injunction, since we know that man's efforts in the line of separation have ever but one result: opposition fans the flame.

Just as Elizabeth Barrett's father forcibly opposed the mating of his daughter, so did Frederick Wieck oppose the love of his daughter Clara for Robert Schumann.

And one can not blame the man so very much--he knew the young man and he knew the girl; and deducting fifty per cent for paternal pride, he saw that the girl was much the stronger character of the two. Clara had already a recognized reputation as a performer; her playing had made her father rich, and he was sure that greater things were to come. Beside that, she was only seventeen years old--a mere child.

Robert was twenty-six, with most of his future before him--he was advised to win a name and place for himself before aspiring to the hand of a great artist: and so he was bowed out.

He took the matter into the courts, and the decision was that, as she was now eighteen years old, she had the right to wed, if she were so minded.

And so they were married; but Frederick Wieck was not present at the ceremony to give the bride away.

Schumann was essentially feminine in many ways, as the best men always are. In spite of his mental independence, he did his best work when shielded in the shadow of a stronger personality. Without Clara, Robert would probably be unknown to us. She gave him the courage and the confidence that he lacked; and she it was who interpreted his work to the world.

Heine characterized Meyerbeer's "Les Huguenots" as "like a Gothic cathedral whose heaven-soaring spire and colossal cupolas seem to have been planted there by the sure hand of a giant; whereas the innumerable features, the rosettes and arabesques that are spread over it everywhere like a lacework of stone, witness to the indefatigable patience of a dwarf."

Very different is the work of Robert Schumann, who, like his master Schubert, knew little of the architectonics of the Art Divine. But Schubert seems to have been the first to give us the "lyric cry"--the prayer of a heart bowed down, or the ecstasy of a soul enrapt.

Schumann built on Schubert. Music was to Schumann the expression of an emotion. He saw in pictures, then he told in tones, what his inward eye beheld. He even went so far as to give the names of persons, their peculiarities and experiences on the keyboard. It is needless to say that the tension of mind in such experiments is apt to reach the breaking strain. We are under bonds for the moderate use of every faculty, and he who misuses any of G.o.d's gifts may not hope to go unscathed.

The exquisite quality of Robert Schumann's imagination served to make him shun the society of vulgar people. The inability to grasp things intuitively hara.s.sed him, and he acquired a habit of keeping silence, except with the elect. He lived within himself, unless Clara were by, and then he leaned on her.

And what a strong, brave and beautiful soul she was! In a sense she sacrificed her own career for the man she loved. And by giving all, she won all.

Most descriptions of women begin by telling how the individual looked and what she wore. No pen-portraits of Clara Schumann have come down to us, for the reason that she was too great, too elusive in spirit, for any snapshot artist to attempt her. She never looked twice the same. In feature she was commonplace, her form lacked the cla.s.sic touch, and her raiment was as plain as the plumage of a brown thrush in an autumn hedgerow. She was as homely as George Eliot, Mary Wollstonecraft, Rosa Bonheur, George Sand, or Madame De Stael. No two of the women named looked alike, but I once saw a composite photograph of their portraits and the picture sent no thrills along my keel. Their splendor was a matter of spirit. Have you ever seen the Duse?--there is but one. In repose this woman's face is absolute nullity. She starts with a blank--you would never take a second glance at her at a pink tea. Her dress is bargain day, her form so-so, her features clay.

But mayhap she will lift her hand and resting her chin upon it will look at you out of half-closed eyes that never are twice alike. If you are speaking you will suddenly become aware that she is listening, and then you will become uncomfortable and try to stop, but can not; for you will realize that you have been talking at random, and you want to redeem yourself.

The presence of this plain woman is a challenge--she knows! Yet she never contradicts, and when she wills it, she will lead you out of the maze and make you at peace with yourself; for our quarrel with the world is only a quarrel with self. When we are at peace with self we are at peace with G.o.d.

The Duse is a surprise, in that her homeliness of face masks an intellect that is a revelation. Her body is an exasperation to the tribe of Worth, but it houses a soul that has lived every life, died every death, known every sorrow, tasted every joy, and been one with the outcast, the despised, the forsaken; and has stood, too, clothed in shining raiment by the side of the great, the n.o.ble, the powerful.

Knowing all, she forgives all. And across the face and out of the eyes, and even from her silence, come messages of sympathy--messages of strength, messages of a faith that is dauntless. Great people are simply those who have sympathy plus. Clara Schumann knew the excellence of her chosen mate, and through her sympathy made it possible for him to express himself at his highest and best. She also guessed his limitations and sought to hold him 'gainst the calamity she saw looming on the horizon, no bigger than a man's hand.

When he was moody and there came times of melancholy, she invited young people to the house; and so Robert mingled his life with theirs, and in their aspirations he shook off the demons of doubt.

It was in this way that he became interested in various rising stars, and although in some instances we are aware that his prophecies went astray, we know that he hailed Chopin and Brahms long before they had come within the ken of the musical world, that so often looks through the large end of the telescope. And this kindly encouragement, this fostering welcome that the Schumanns gave to all aspiring young artists, is not the least of their virtues. We love them because they were kind.

Clara Schumann was wise beyond the lot of woman. She knew this fact which very few mortals ever realize: The triumphs of yesterday belong to yesterday, with all of yesterday's defeats and sorrows--the day is Here, the time is Now. She did not drag her troubles behind her with a rope, nor wax vain over achievements done. When the light of her husband's intellect went out in darkness and he lived for a s.p.a.ce a lingering death, she faced the dawn each morning, resolved to do her work and do it the best she could.

When death came to Robert's relief, her one ambition, like that of Mary Sh.e.l.ley, was to write her husband's name indelibly on history's page.

The professedly and professionally cheerful person is very depressing.

The pessimist always has wit, for wit reveals itself in the knowledge of values. And the individual who accepts what Fate sends, and undoes Calamity by drinking all of it, is sure to have a place in our calendar of saints.

Clara Schumann, a widow at thirty-seven, with a goodly brood of babies, and no income to speak of, lived one day at a time, did her work as well as she could, and always had a little time and energy over to use for others less fortunate.

Such fort.i.tude is sure to bear fruit, and friends flocked to her as never before. The way to secure friends is to be one.

Madame Schumann made concert tours throughout the Continent and England, meeting on absolute equality the music-loving people, as well as the Kings of Art. She played her husband's pieces with such a wealth of expression that folks wondered why they had never heard of them. And so today, wherever hearts are sad, or glad, and songs are sung, and strings vibrate, and keys respond to love's caress, there is in hearts that know and feel, a shrine; and on this shrine in letters of gold two words are carved, and they are these: THE SCHUMANNS.

[Ill.u.s.tration: SEBASTIAN BACH]

SEBASTIAN BACH

The name of Bach would have been famous in musical history without Johann Sebastian, but with his name added it becomes the most ill.u.s.trious that the world has ever known. Bach had many pupils, but none surpa.s.sed his own sons, six of whom became great musicians, but with these the musical faculty died.

--_Sir Hubert Parry_

SEBASTIAN BACH

The art of today is imitative. Once men had convictions, but we have only opinions, and these are usually borrowed. The artificiality of life, and the rush and the worry afford no time for great desires to possess our souls.

We average well, but no Colossus looms large above the crowd and goes his solitary way unmindful of the throng: we look alike, act alike, think alike, and in order that the likeness may be complete, we dress alike.

To wear a hat of your own selection or voice thoughts of your own thinking is to invite unseemly mirth, and finally scorn and contumely.

The great creators were solitary, rural in their instincts, ignorant and heedless of what the world was saying and doing. They were men of deep convictions and enthusiasms, unmindful of laughter or ridicule, caring little even for approbation.

No "boom town" can possibly produce a genius: it only fosters sundry small Napoleons of finance. America is a nation of boomers--financial, political, social and theological.

We have sarcasm and cynicism, and we possess much that is clever, all produced by s.n.a.t.c.hes of success, well mixed with disappointment and the bitterness which much contact with the world is sure to evolve. Our age that goes everywhere, knows everybody's business, and religiously reads only "the last edition," produces a Bill Nye, a Sam Jones, a Teddy Roosevelt, a DeWitt Talmage, a Hopkinson Smith, a Sam Walter Foss, a Victor Herbert; but it is not at all likely to produce a Praxiteles, a Michelangelo, a Rembrandt, an Immanuel Kant or a Johann Sebastian Bach.

What Shakespeare is to literature, Michelangelo to sculpture, and Rembrandt to portrait-painting, Johann Sebastian Bach is to organ-music.

He was the greatest organist of his time, and his equal has not yet been produced, though nearly three hundred years have pa.s.sed since his death.

"The organ reached perfection at the hands of Bach," says Haweis. As a composer for the organ, Bach stands secure--his position is at the head, and is absolutely una.s.sailable.

In point of temperament and disposition Bach bears a closer resemblance to Michelangelo than to either of the others whose names I have mentioned. He was stern, strong, self-contained, and so deeply religious that he was not only a Christian but a good deal of a pagan as well. A homely man was Bach--quiet, simple in tastes and blunt in speech.

The earnest way in which this plain, unpretentious man focused upon his life-work and raised organ-music to the highest point of art must command the sincere admiration of every lover of honest endeavor.

Bach was so great that he had no artistic jealousy, no whim, and when harshly and unjustly criticized he did not concern himself enough with the quibblers to reply. He made neither apologies nor explanations. The man who thus allows his life to justify itself, and lets his work speak, and who, when reviled, reviles not again, must be a very great and lofty soul.

Bach was a villager and a rustic, and, like Jean Francois Millet, used to hoe in his garden, trim the vines, play with his children, putting them to bed at night, or in the day cease from his work to cut slices of brown bread which he spread with honey for the heedless little importuner, who had interrupted him in the making of a chorale that was to charm the centuries. At times he would leave his composing to help his wife with her household duties--to wash dishes, sweep the room or care for a peevish, fretful child. After the evening prayer, like Millet, again, when his household were all abed, he would often walk out into the night alone, and traverse his solitary way along a wintry road, through the woods or by the winding river, a dim, misty, shadowy figure, spectral as the "Sower," lonely as the "f.a.got-Gatherer," talking to himself, mayhap, and communing with his Maker.

In his later years, when he traveled from one village or city to another to attend musical gatherings, he was always accompanied by one or more of his sons. His ambition was centered on his children, and his hope was in them. Yet nothing has been added to either organ-building, organ-playing or composition for the organ since his time.