Lecture 3

This will be the third delivery of my puzzle pieces. My mother and sisters left Vienna in ’92 or ’93 (I am not quite sure which) and went back to the cleaner of the twin cities near my birthplace. They went to join my father, whose business kept him there. I was handed over to some strangers and became a kind of lodger. After three years, my entire family came back to Vienna. My father died there in 1927, and in 1942 my mother, at the age of eighty-four, was taken away by the Nazis and never heard of again. My sisters escaped to the United States.

During the three years of my family’s absence from Vienna, I had two sets of lodgings. The first was solid and unattractive, the second noisy and exciting. In the second there were three sons older than I and one daughter who was younger. The three sons went to the university. In their free time they either practiced saber duels in the hallway or gobble-competition exercises in the dining room. The object of the latter was to empty a big jug of beer in one quick gulp. This was my first introduction to academic life. It was very amusing.

In my first lodgings, with the comparatively dull people, I had a tutor I did not like very much. Perhaps because he was untidy. He was a medical student, very learned and scholarly, and also deeply interested in music. When I met him again decades later he was a prominent functionary in the administration of the City of Vienna, in charge of art supply to labor. My next tutor—the last in my life, because after I was fourteen I did not have any more instruction—was one of the three militant students in my second lodgings. He too was a medical student. I don’t remember having learned much either from the scholar or the fighter. They probably taught me a lot, and if I did not learn much it was my own fault.

Until my thirteenth year I had, as I have already mentioned, lessons not only with Leschetizky, but also with an assistant of his. I was expected to be at the piano for at least three hours every day. That was, I see now, a moderate demand. Nowadays, students are asked to spend at least six hours at their instrument. I, more often than not, did less than my three. What did I do the rest of the time? I had four teachers—the two piano teachers, my tutor, and the teacher in theory. I used to walk to my music lessons. I didn’t like the tram and it was cheaper to walk; I was also fond, and still am, of walking. Thus I walked even if it took hours. That is the way I spent much time.

Occasionally, I went to the Imperial Opera or to the Imperial Playhouse. That normally took eight hours. I used to be there at three o’clock and queue up until seven, when the gates were opened; then I rushed up four flights of stairs in a wild race to be one of the first to secure a seat in the gallery. One had a very good time during these queuing hours. Everyone had sandwiches in his pocket, and lively conversations ranging from gossip and jokes to opinions and theories went on as uninterruptedly as water flows in a river. There were, of course, many, mostly young, musicians, among them often Arnold Schoenberg, he, too, racing up the stairs. The older people, naturally, could not always keep pace. One did not see or hear too well in the gallery. Yet I have rarely enjoyed theatrical performances as much as then. That is another way I spent my time.

I said I had no contact with other children, and I never had any toys. I hardly ever received any presents, but please don’t pity me. It was an extremely happy youth. I was contented, rather fat—I still am—and worked leisurely. I think I belong to the lazy type of man. I am still lazy. I have often struggled to overcome my laziness: at times I hated being lazy, but eventually I accepted this innate defect, comforting myself with the illusion, or belief, that it enabled me to be more alert in the intervals between the spells of, let me call it euphemistically, meditation. Without a regular occupation, with no talent for systematic work, but fairly quick perceptions and a curious mind, a person might easily indulge in the virtues of inertia—which reminds me of Nietzsche’s comforting aphorism “Idleness is the beginning of all philosophy; thus, is it conceivable that philosophy could be a vice?” This, you understand, refers ironically to the proverb “Idleness is the beginning of all vices.” Neither the aphorism nor the proverb seems to me to be the full truth. Yet as I am, I prefer the Nietzsche version. It is more flattering. And, in this connection, I suggest one admit the term “alertia” to our vocabulary.

Vienna’s last performance of brilliance and charm presented, on the surface, very lively activities in the intellectual sphere as well as in other rather more exacting fields. These activities were, however, lacking in real strength, seriousness, and sincerity. At their best they revealed lucidly the many facets of the cherished decadence of the Viennese. It was a fate, not a fault. They sensed that fate, as I have said already.

Just at the door of the fin de siècle the City of Vienna was ruled for several years by an officially anti-Semitic regime. Her mayor, the well-known Dr. Karl Lueger, was the undisputed leader, or better, misleader, against the poor Jews. Compared with recent events, the Lueger brand of anti-Semitism was very, very mild, although at that time it seemed very wild. I personally did not suffer or notice much of that ugly regime, except that for a long time I retained a certain uneasiness in lonely streets after dark. Encouraged by Lueger, it was a favorite sport of patriotic male adolescents to bully and beat, with a jolly brutality, children whom they thought to be Jewish. I was molested only once, and I am not sure whether the motive for the attack was Austrianism or mere drunkenness on the part of the few lads. Though a very happy child in general those days, I learned the meaning of fear.

I was entirely independent, never regimented. Since I did not go to school, it was of no consequence if I failed in my work. With the one exception I mentioned, I was never examined, and thus I was spared the stigma of not having passed. I was, to be true, also deprived of being praised officially. I did not have to live to a schedule. Even my music lessons were not regular. Arriving at a given hour at Leschetizky’s, I generally had to wait two hours before my lesson began. The lesson always lasted at least another two hours—thus some more of my time was consumed. There was still a surplus for which I really cannot account.

By and by I became acquainted with more and more people—very dear people, the same type of persons, or families, whom I have met or established contact with all my life. It must have been my destiny which directed me to such relationships. These people were usually moderately wealthy, always very cultured and interested in all spiritual movements and values, but hardly ever mentioned in newspapers. They were not in the “public eye.” There were, needless to say, a few exceptions to this. Whether I have evaded the publicized ones, or they me, is an open question.

These friends of mine treated me as a member of their families and always made me participate in the gatherings of the grown-ups. Some of them had children of my age. These children obviously hated me, for good reasons. When I arrived for a dinner party given by their parents it was already their bedtime, or else they had to learn what they were expected to know in school the next morning. No wonder they were jealous, but how could I help them? I remember an extremely embarrassing scene illustrating this bitterness. A boy of my own age who had to go to school the next morning was presented before dinner to his parents’ guests. He was allowed to shake hands. He did this perfectly politely. Then he was given some ice cream to eat, the only part he was allowed, so far as I know, of the excellent menu of many courses that we were offered afterwards. After he had spoken to everybody but me, he suddenly jumped at my throat, a second before the door to the dining room opened, slapped my face with a smack and great bravura and disappeared rapidly. He must have had this prank planned for some time. I, of course, appeared as blasé and as composed as I could afford to be, and tried to take it with a smile. I have not forgotten it. This boy who took his revenge on me approached me, after his parents had died, many years later, in the friendliest manner. Now we were both eligible for the same festivities. The old reason for his enmity was no more.

I also had the good luck to meet the most promising young poets, writers, and painters, and some of the already established ones. Violent arguments were fashionable at that time between the conservatives and the progressives, although the violence was not too convincing, maybe not even genuine. It seemed rather affected. The Viennese did not catch fire from the subjects of the controversies: they caught it from their own enthusiasm. They were afraid of even a small amount of sobriety.

I remember two architects, then famous and vehemently criticized for their war on beauty, who were pioneers in the creation and development of much that is now commonplace. I also remember a number of painters and sculptors and designers who deserted the camp of the traditionalists and organized a progressive group which they named the “Vienna Secession.” The poster of their first exhibition, a very pleasant and harmless one, aroused a storm of indignation. The whole town acted as if insulted. The same wild despair was noisily expressed when a very noble and well-proportioned edifice was finished—built by Adolf Loos, one of these revolutionary architects. I thought it was very beautiful. Twenty years later it was shown with pride as evidence of the spirit of Vienna.

Karl Kraus—a sharp-tongued pamphleteer in a weekly called The Torch, for which only he himself wrote—exposed in Savonarolesque sermons what he thought to be the moral and spiritual debasement of Vienna. He had a strong influence on gifted young people, but none on the conditions he wanted to crush by his words. Anyone interested in this last phase should read a remarkable book: The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil. It is instructive but tiresome to go through this monumental obituary of a society. The feeling of decadence was so strong that the best intellects began to distrust the honesty of their own impulses and the validity of the values they believed in. They tried several escapes. Primitivity was the salvation. Since being primitive and simple was denied to them, they turned to the child and the so-called savage. With them, at least, the honesty was not in doubt. This is my own interpretation of the rather sudden infatuation with the exotic after the esoteric, and with purity after the raffinement. Maybe this phase was just the transition from decadence via nature to Hollywood. The worship of the child was the transition to its new economic position as an important customer. Babies are, of course, the ideal customers: they want everything they see.

Young and old, just before the turn to primitivity, discussed endlessly contemporaries like Tolstoy, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Ibsen, and others. Their works were then bestsellers. I saw the Vienna debut of Eleonora Duse. I was present at the Vienna debut of Yvette Guilbert, the famous French diseuse, although I, as a boy of fifteen, had no business being there. With no school in the morning I could stay at nightly debates as long as they lasted. They ranged from positivism to occultism—with everything in between. The flavor of decadence was never missing. This explains my impulse (enhanced by the advice of some friends) to go westwards, to Germany. The Germans were immensely, though rather secretly, respected and admired by the Viennese, with a kind of condescending awe. They considered them barbaric and boorish in comparison with the beauty, elegance, and culture of the Viennese, with their charming (though empty) politeness—in the upper classes—and their soft speech. Nevertheless, a niggling inferiority complex slightly disturbed their self-esteem.

Let me, for a moment, return to my own contributions to Viennese culture, before I left for Berlin. I had much contact with Leschetizky pupils who came from all corners of the earth. I had almost no competition, not because of my qualifications, but because there was simply no boy of my age engaged in the same work. Even with the rival I mentioned earlier there was no real competition, for he was primarily a pianist, and I a musician. We played a different type of repertoire. The two prodigies I spoke of at the beginning no longer had any publicity.

In the meantime, my parents came back to Vienna. I stayed with them for my last three or four years there. I also started teaching and earned a little money to supplement the still-continued support of my patrons. My pupils were all older than I. Even Leschetizky, when I was fourteen, occasionally sent me some of his pupils, for consultation, not for lessons. He said, “Go to Schnabel, and look through this piece with him,” which honored and flattered me very much and, very welcome, improved my financial status as well.

One of the families in Vienna whom I knew well had relatives in Berlin who were much interested in art. One day they surprised me with the announcement that their brother had suggested I should come to Berlin and stay with him as long as I liked. I accepted this invitation with great satisfaction, curiosity, and hopes. My only regret was to be separated, and at such a distance, from a girlfriend—as they are called here.

One day in the spring of 1898—I think it was May—I took a train to Berlin. I must have traveled for sixteen hours. When I arrived, there was no one at the station to meet me. I took, as advised, an open horse-drawn coach and told the driver to take me to the address I had been given. The streets in Berlin were very pretty at that time of the year; the chestnut trees were in bloom along the canal. I was strongly impressed. After Vienna, the distances seemed immense. (The horse didn’t move very fast either.) Two things struck me before I had spoken to any Germans, except the porter and the cab driver. First, I saw signs on all apartment houses: Aufgang nur für Herrschaften. This is almost untranslatable. The closest would be: “Entrance [actually “ascent”] for masters only.” Later on I found out—which goes without saying—that the quarters of the lower classes posted no such warnings. It was, however, not the fact of having two staircases in a house, it was the way in which this practical device was indicated which was so new and startling to me. This seemed so very different from easy-going, leisurely, aristocratic, democratic Vienna. There is such a thing as a democracy of aristocracy, and in Vienna, if a man did not talk too much about his rights, he had quite a good life. The second shock I received from another sign, this on restaurants. It said: Weinzwang, which means: “Wine compulsory.” These were two ineradicable impressions.

I approached my address, but the street to which I was going was under repair and closed to all vehicles. I did not know what to do. I had several bags. I thought, “This is horrible. They should have done something about it.” Just then I saw a very nicely dressed chambermaid approaching me to ask whether I was Mr. Schnabel. She had been sent to the corner where they thought I would stop. She helped me with the bags and led me to my destination. The name of my host was Cassirer. They were very prosperous, in the lumber business, I think, although they never mentioned that. All their children and grandchildren later played more or less important parts in German intellectual life. One of the five sons, Ernst, became a highly reputed philosopher. He died in New York not long ago. From Hamburg University, where because of Hitler he could not stay, he went to Gothenburg, in Sweden, then to Oxford, finally to Yale and Columbia. His cousin was an internationally known art dealer and one of the first and most efficient promoters of the French Impressionists and the generation of artists following them, a man who helped launch Manet, Cézanne, Van Gogh, Picasso, and so on. After he died, he was acknowledged to be one of the greatest experts in this field.

It was very good for me to come into such a family. There were five brothers with lots of children and I had a splendid time. They rarely asked me to play for them. I had no work to do at all, but apparently my host, Mr. Eduard Cassirer, did not quite approve of my conduct. I was sixteen then, grown-up—by my own judgment. I stayed up late and slept until noon. Perhaps I even started to flirt with his daughter. Anyway, one day I received a note from him saying that my room was needed for a relative who had just announced that he was coming to Berlin. In other words, I was given notice. However, one of my host’s brothers was so indignant at this lack of understanding for a young man of talent that he decided to make it up to me. He said, “Now Schnabel, don’t worry. Go to any hotel you want and I will pay for everything.” So I chose a hotel where a close friend of mine, a young lady from Vienna, had just arrived, and I still don’t know whether Mr. Cassirer ever guessed the reason for my choice.

My first stay in Berlin was, you can easily understand, a thoroughly pleasant experience and also gave my career a promising push. I had been introduced to several persons familiar with the musical world. They encouraged me to come back to Berlin the following winter for a debut recital.

When I returned to Vienna, they greeted me as if I had traveled around the world. I went to see Leschetizky. He also treated me now as one who was fully fledged. I was no longer the pupil but a guest and friend; he asked me to play for his pupils. This was, in reality, no change of practice, for during the whole time I was with him as a pupil I used to play in every “class,” as the weekly gatherings of all his pupils were called. They met, by order, every Wednesday night for years, later every second Wednesday, from early October to late in May. The only difference between my role as a guest and my function as a student was that now the master did not interrupt and criticize me—though there was certainly sufficient reason to do so.

Among my friends in Vienna were some who used to invite me to spend the summer with them, mostly in the mountains. I was thus early acquainted with the Alps. Every Viennese is—the mountains (not very high ones) look over Vienna. Leschetizky and many of my friends lived in suburbs close to these mountains. My lifelong passion for mountaineering and hiking dates from pre-Vienna days, for my birthplace was also surrounded by hills not unlike those adorning Vienna. It is not too easy in America to satisfy this passion. Of all human beings, the most ignored in the States seems to be he who walks out of love, just for the joy in walking. I nevertheless tried. The four summers I spent in New Mexico were most enjoyable, though very different from my European experiences. Cattle, horses, and woodcutters were responsible for something that resembled trails. It took weeks to discover them. And in four summers of walking in the woods there, every day for at least eight miles, I never met a single soul. True, it was a remote and unknown place, and no sightseers, motorists, or tourists ever approached it. Yet there were villages and one city close to them. I went another summer to Colorado’s very, very beautiful mountains, woods, and lakes. There were many people around but the majority of them were on horseback—a great disadvantage to a wanderer. The smell, the dust, the stopping to let the riders pass—I did not go back. I am too old and too lazy for adjustment of this kind.

I have now come to the end of the Austrian section, the first part of this report. My thirty-three years’ stay in Germany will form the second. During all these thirty-three years I retained, by the way, my Austrian citizenship.

After my debut recital in Berlin I went once more, for the summer, back to Vienna. (There are no mountains around Berlin.) In the autumn of the same year I returned to Germany, this time for good. For my second visit to Berlin, that which included my debut recital, I arrived equipped with several letters of introduction to a few more individuals interested in art and to a few others active in promoting it. With most of these people, the contacts then established lasted as long as permitted by life—or until forced by Hitler to be interrupted. Each of them was kind and generous, even Mr. Cassirer who once, in fully justified indignation, had asked me to leave.

My debut recital in Berlin was of course given in the smallest hall. It was under the management of Hermann Wolff, at that time the ruling impresario in Germany, especially in the realm of concerts. He was not the type of manager we know now in the States. He was, before turning to music, professionally successful in some other business. A passionate music fan and quite remarkable in his own domestic music supply, he desired to become an insider, to devote himself entirely to music and musicians. He preferred the company of musicians to any other company and found that the best chance to establish closer and permanent contact with them was to become their representative in business matters. He abandoned his uninteresting branch of business and approached his favorite musicians: Liszt, Wagner, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Joachim, Hans von Bülow, Anton Rubinstein, Sarasate, Patti, etc.—composers, teachers, performers (not yet lecturers), offered them his services, and started. He died years before the First World War. His wish for association with music and musicians had, for decades, been fulfilled. His widow continued in his spirit, which with the enormous expansion of the music market was no easy task. Intimacy and noblesse in public life were—I have already pointed several times to their fate—reduced to inconspicuousness, though by no means killed. Hitler also stopped the Wolff agency. Wolff’s son, Werner, formerly a successful conductor of the opera in Hamburg, lives now, with his wife, an opera singer, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. They try, and I hear with astonishing results, to give music there a “l(fā)ift.” Pioneer work. He is also the author of a Bruckner biography, published in New York. Title: Rustic Genius. His precious collection of letters written to his father by practically all the great musicians of half a century is a treasure to be envied.

Hermann Wolff was somewhat curt, even sour, in his attitude toward me, the young man from Vienna. Yet he was never unkind or unjust. The main thing was that without any words or fuss he started to help my public career. Maybe his severity had an educational purpose. He did not ask me to provide photos, or to see the press. Nothing of that kind. Our present standard of publicity was still far in the future, at least in Germany. I had to play; that was all.

At my first recital I played a Schubert sonata. This was hardly ever done at that time, or before. I did not do it to be different, but simply because I loved it—I had my best success with it. It was not at all as boring as its reputation made one expect it to be. Some reviews were very favorable. Others advised me to change my occupation. One recommended I should apply for a teacher’s position at the Institute for African drum languages (Trommelsprache). I did not change my occupation; I even got engagements (through Hermann Wolff, and without publicity). From the day of my recital on, I earned my living, quite alone. It was not exactly opulent. In the first years of my career, when autumn arrived, I had not a penny left. I had eaten up everything, and if no new engagements were in sight, I naturally felt uneasy, impatient, pessimistic even. I always had access, however, to the help of some friends. One of my first engagements was in Potsdam (at the moment a much publicized place). I played a concert with a military band. It was horrible. My fee was $10. You see, I really started at the bottom. Nowadays cadets are presented in generals’ uniforms, novices urged to appear, as Venus appeared, perfect and immortal—“stars” at first appearance! This does much harm. Now your questions, please. I hope you have prepared many today.

Discussion

— What do you think should be the ideal of an artist in performing music?

A.S.: I don’t understand your question.

— I mean in the interpretation of music, what should be his ideal?

A.S.: His ideal is to materialize all he wants to materialize. He wants, of course, only as much as he at a given time understands of what music as a whole and music in a single example demands. How much this is depends on his talent alone, in each phase of its development. The same holds true for his capacity to judge whether he is doing what he wants to do. Whatever his gifts, he ought to make, all his life long, the greatest efforts to reach the maximum of his capabilities—which requires more than one gift.

— You say “as much as he understands.” What do you think should be the basis of his understanding?

A.S.: I am not telling you anything new in telling you that, as far as my knowledge goes, nothing in the world has ever grown from the exterior to the interior. The interior is the basis for understanding. There is the desire, the force, the gift. If somebody who has no talent whatsoever for music, and no desire either, were to undergo a scientific treatment for the chemical production of musicality in him, I wonder whether a good musician would emerge. Your question seems to me mechanical. It ought to be taken for granted that one who undertakes a performance of a piece of music has, even before he performs it, some idea of it. The idea may not be his own and he may change that idea, whether his own or borrowed, yet an idea of what he wants remains the premise. Yesterday I was asked how it is that for me some pieces of music seem inexhaustibly fertile terrain for discoveries, a never-failing source of joy, a perpetual challenge, while others are comparatively limited, hedged in, get stale, rusty, or shabby. Now, it can well be that someone else sees only a province where I divine a universe, and vice versa, of course.

— Do you think it all comes from within a person?

A.S.: Love has to be the starting point—love of music. It is one of my firmest convictions that love always produces some knowledge, while knowledge only rarely produces something similar to love.

— Can there be a standard by which to evaluate a performance?

A.S.: You admit that a difference exists between quality and quantity. There is, however, no legal validity, no committing evidence, of quality in art. I remember an evening spent with a select group of boys, called the Saturday-nighters, in Harrow, England. They invited “experts” in all fields to talk to them informally. There was, as we are having here, also a discussion. The boys had prepared traps with tricky questions for me. One of the questions was, “What is it that creates beauty in a work of art?” I had no time to think. I simply let my tongue go, and said, “Your reaction to it.” Nobody can convince you that a piece of music is beautiful if to you it is not. I would not even try to convince you. I can’t prove it. Cause and effect are both within yourself.

— Is there no other measure to apply to art? Is it impossible to say objectively whether it is good or bad, except in the case of a few technical components of performance?

A.S.: This freedom from an obligatory standard of tests and terminology is a drawback—or maybe a privilege—of music. If an actor pronounces words wrongly, if, for instance, he says beau-tee-ful, everyone who speaks his tongue would know it and that would finish his career. Not so with musicians. Wrong pronunciation is common among celebrated performers, but music is not a common language and only a small minority of listeners notices it. It is a technical defect. Yet the musician’s career will not be finished, for music expresses something different to everyone who hears it. As I have already said before, the same music does not express the same thing to the same person each time he hears it. It is wrong when it deviates conspicuously from the written text in regard to time values and dynamics, but this is only a technical defect, the result of inattentiveness, or slovenliness, not a sign of an inferior musical quality. The meaning and the essence of music can only be communicated by music. It is hopeless to try it with words, or colors, or movements. And the reaction to music can never be objective. To say that “rain is dry” is nonsense, is not true. Such categories do not exist in music.

Each time I read annotations in programs I wonder what their raison d’être and what their consequences may be. I should have listed them among the articles unknown in my boyhood. I think they are unnecessary, and can be very confusing, because discrepancy between the composer’s or performer’s and the annotator’s conceptions of a composition is often more evident than any accord. Whether only a few or many of the persons served with the literature and with the sounds are aware of the often diametrically opposed approaches is irrelevant. Those who are aware will become prejudiced, one way or the other. I found some unimaginable remarks in annotations to some of my own programs. In one case the so-called second subject—in a sonata—was placed in the top voice, simply because it was the top voice, and made two measures long, though the composer had given it to an inner part and five measures’ space. It took me some time to solve this enigma. Not as perverse but more bewildering was when another time I read, “And now follows a jolly rondo,” referring to a piece I thought to display unmistakably an atmosphere of despair and feverish suffering. I do not know who is right. What bewildered me and still bewilders me is that I shall never find out whether the audience heard a jolly piece or a tragic piece. It is conceivable that for them it was jolly—for as such was it announced in print. You see, there is no art in which illusion has such force as in music. Naturally!

The one note I don’t like in your question is your trust in authority. If I, or some other musician, were to give you the information for which you ask in a sufficiently scientific and intellectual manner, you would, it seems to me, accept it as a dogma.

— Oh, no.

— You haven’t mentioned anything about where Leschetizky got his training.

A.S.: He studied with Carl Czerny. That is all I know. And Carl Czerny with Beethoven, as, of course, you know.

— He stands out among the teachers. You said the training you got from him couldn’t possibly be evaluated.

A.S.: You must not underrate the part nature plays in the creation of gifted people; so I would say that what led the pupil to training, and where it led him, he got from providence.

Do you know that Beethoven’s teacher was Mr. Christian Neefe? I don’t think he was a great man. He was just available in Bonn. If all good musicians required a great man as a teacher in order to be good musicians, there wouldn’t be too many of them, I am afraid. That applies to all branches of teaching. Why are you interested in Leschetizky’s training?

— Because he is still recognized as outstanding, whereas most of his contemporary teachers are forgotten.

A.S.: Your question reminds me of a curious scene after one of my recitals in the U.S.A., at a very famous college in Oberlin, Ohio. Many of the students, after the recital was finished, rushed to the artist’s room. The first one to arrive was a very sweet girl of perhaps sixteen who, breathless, asked me, “Are you, or have you, a teacher?” I replied, “I do not understand.” “I want to know whether you are taking or giving lessons.” Now I said, “My dear child, I am too old to take lessons, but I can still learn. I am learning from you.” She disappeared like a vapor. The head of the school hurried to whisper to me, “She was not one of ours!”

Anyhow, you can’t go to the teacher of Leschetizky for lessons. Nature will continue to provide some good teachers. Are you distrustful of nature?

— I hope this isn’t a foolish question, but I was told by a pupil of Gabrilovich that he broke away from Leschetizky’s teaching. I am curious to know what reason he could have had for that breakaway from Leschetizky.

A.S.: I didn’t know that Gabrilovich ever taught piano. He never told me. He was my intimate friend, but he never discussed this subject with me. I have, in many respects, ideas very different from Leschetizky’s, but that doesn’t impair my admiration for him and his educational work. I have to be as I am. You see, we have no choice. We do our best, and have no guarantee. I am what I would call an “active fatalist.”

— In your edition of the Beethoven sonatas, is there any way of telling which is your pedaling and which is his?

A.S.: All his own pedal markings are referred to in footnotes.

— Don’t you think the difference between his and our pianos should be seriously considered?

A.S.: It should. But the result will not be the disavowal of Beethoven’s very daring and revealing use of the pedal. I have played on the old pianos; I had access to the marvelous collections in Vienna and in Berlin. Both cities have a collection of old pianos. I have played on Bach’s, Beethoven’s, Weber’s, and other pianos. In Beethoven’s case, the effect of the pedaling demanded by him was exactly the same on the old instruments as on the new ones. The old piano is different from the modern piano in that you couldn’t do on the old ones all you can do on a modern piano. On that, however, you can do all that was possible on the old ones. In all his compositions for piano, Beethoven made only thirty or a few more pedal marks, on thousands of pages. His pedal instructions appear only in such places where he knew that the “normal” performer would have considered them sinful. Now I do not say that Beethoven was interested in the childish game of shocking or pleasing Philistines. He simply created, also in pedaling, the unexpected, fantastic, adventurous. The effect is often what one now labels impressionistic sonorities. The “usual” pedaling, practically never marked by him, is part of the instrument. It belongs to piano playing. The piano is played with hands and feet. One changes the amount of pedal ad libitum, according to the room, to one’s mood, to the occasion—but one always, automatically, employs the pedal—except in such passages as Beethoven explicitly demanded it; just there it is obligatory. The markings by Beethoven have to be observed under all circumstances, in every room or mood or company, because they are an inseparable part of the music as such, and if one does not observe these pedal marks, the music is changed. That is my opinion.

That little story of the differences between antique and modern pianos has a tough constitution; it is again and again presented as the one excuse for the abolition of Beethoven’s unambiguous orders in regard to pedaling. The story also excuses him: had he known the modern piano he would surely have changed the orders! An equally neat story, and just as tough, ascribes some allegedly coarse sounding measures in his later works to his deafness. Now, in the case of the pedal orders, I told you it makes no difference what piano you use. I can add that even Beethoven’s contemporaries tried to evade them, with similar reasoning, I am sure. In the second case, his deafness seems, miraculously enough, to have influenced just a few measures.

There remains the problem why musicians shy away from Beethoven’s pedal marks. They are still today deemed impermissible, and ignored by our greatest performers. One of them enlightened me. Asking him why he had ignored it, thus making complex music pallid, he answered, “It hurts me.” Reflecting what in the world it could be that “hurt” him, I concluded it could only be the generations-old fear of sounding two different harmonies simultaneously, even if the bass does not move. It is not my job to trace the origins of such superstitions. I am certain you can find them in a library.

— When you were giving your first lecture, you mentioned the fact that Madame Essipoff put a coin on the back of your hand and asked you to play without dropping it. You succeeded then, you said, but would fail now, for you have changed the method in the meantime. What is the difference?

A.S.: I don’t believe in finger playing. The fingers are like the legs of a horse. If its body wouldn’t move, there wouldn’t be any progress; it would always remain on the same spot. If someone would strain his wits to devise, in addition to fingering, indications for handing, wristing, forearming, elbowing, upper-arming, for the feet, etc., annotation in time values and articulation, should we accept such an innovation? Definitely not, for the approach to music via our eyes, which is already a widely cherished habit now, would eventually eliminate the ears entirely, and with them the organs commissioned to direct and control what we do to music.

I am coming back for a moment to fingers. They should not be used as hammers. They require too much training and attention that way. Differentiation becomes very difficult and unreliable. The fall of weights out of a static frame is an anti-musical picture. Flexibility, relaxation, spontaneous command, combined service of all actions to the requirements of expressive musical performance, promises better results, with smaller expenditure, than fixation can arrive at. Expression means going out, and up. In and down movements, falling weights, I repeat, are self-imposed impediments, if expressiveness is the aim of a pianist. I know there is a school denying the piano the legato, registering it among the percussion instruments. The literature composed for it is the best refutation of that “scientific” assertion.

I have no experience in teaching beginners. My pupils, who all start with me at an advanced stage of preparation, do, in general, quite well with the elasticity principle. By the way, I never—pardon me, a man my age should not use the term “never”—hear a pupil play a piece twice. I trust him, that what he has learned in one piece will be applied to the next, and so on. I want him, in a few years, to go through as much music with me as possible, as many pieces as possible. When I was teaching at the Academy in Berlin, my pupils were in a certain danger. Other teachers there were preparing the piece or pieces to be performed by their pupils publicly (at the institute) for the whole season. My students came to me only once with their display notice. They competed nevertheless with honors.

I think that too much of education is based on pessimism. I wonder whether this is a productive basis. With my temperament I cannot believe in it and that is why I say I have changed my technique. It does not imply condemnation of the technique I abandoned.

— What about Madame Essipoff’s training?

A.S.: I know I can play the Czerny studies although I have never seen them since, but if I tried to play them as I played them then, with that standardized hand, I would feel very uneasy. If I do it with my way of playing, it is always relaxed and round and articulate. Also, I think the body has to be as articulate as the music. Music is modulation, so if our bodies are not modulating, and our hands are standardized, playing is much more difficult. That is why with that technique so much practicing is required. Some play as much as ten hours a day. I don’t know how they do it.

— Have you done much ensemble playing?

A.S.: Very much. I have also composed much chamber music. Now I play it only rarely. There is no real chamber music any more in our public musical schedule, except string quartets. This is deplorable. I will have to talk about this next Tuesday because one doesn’t know any more what a sonata is. Sonatas for piano and one string or wind instrument, or works for piano and voice, are misrepresented and thus misunderstood. The piano part is considered an accompaniment, though the piano, in an emergency, could do the duo (though a little damaged) without the violin, or in a Lied also play the singer’s part, together with its own. The piano provides, so to say, the symphonic substance, has the greater musical share, simply because it has a wider range and ten fingers available. Only in a lower type of music is the “soloist” more important. The original idea of a concerto was to let all participants concertize. Each one got his say. But let us return to the duo calamity. A “star” (singer or instrumentalist) receives thousands of dollars for a part, his or her pianist perhaps fifty to one hundred. He may be more musical than the “star” but probably feels too depressed and degraded to try his best. Where he should lead, he has to obey. Almost all violin and cello virtuosos compel “pianists” to subordinate the requirements of the music to their employers’ vainglory or—limitations. Nearly every fiddler tells his pianist that under all circumstances he is too loud—he does not mean he is too loud for the music, but too loud for the fiddle.

Even composers are expected to keep not too far off the traditional demarcation line. You probably know Beethoven’s wonderful answer to his friend Schuppanzigh, the violinist, who complained that a certain passage in a new quartet “can simply not be played on a violin”—not even by a man who, like Schuppanzigh, had played all previous quartets to the master’s satisfaction. Beethoven snorted back, “What do I care for your damned fiddle.”

Chamber music, including Lieder and small vocal ensembles, belongs to the home. It is all too rare there nowadays. Records are no adequate substitute. Yesterday I found a surprising juxtaposition of Irving Berlin and Schubert in a paper. Irving Berlin has composed 2,000 songs, and Schubert only 600. Schubert, to be true, died at thirty-one. Statistics!

— What did Thomas Mann and Stefan Zweig say about your playing? And were they as much as you aware of the tremendous and rapid changes taking place since they were born?

A.S.: Neither the one nor the other has ever said—to me—a word about my piano playing. I do not know whether they have ever heard it. But I have met both of them. I suppose that in regard to the epochal developments our feelings and behavior had much in common. Stefan Zweig I knew particularly in his relation to music as an unbelievably na?ve man, with a very cheap taste. In fact, he said things to me which I had to hear two or three times to believe. Please don’t quote me on this. He was a man of some talent; particularly in his early production, he did some quite nice things. Yet he loved music. So did Thomas Mann. He was a staunch Wagnerite. The case of Wagner is obviously not too easy. Hanslick, Nietzsche, Shaw, and many other writers and thinkers have speculated about it. Thomas Mann was also engaged in attempts to clarify it. All this philosophical, psychological, and sociological research is, to my mind, not applicable to music. Wagner’s work does not consist only of music. It remains problematic and is thus perhaps the sharpest expression of the nineteenth-century spirit. My conversations with Zweig have not been very satisfactory. He has written one libretto for Richard Strauss; I met him chiefly in his last years in England. He was very depressed. You know he committed suicide afterwards.

Thomas Mann has now written a book which has not been published, called The Career of a Musician. As soon as it is published you will see that some of his ideas are not quite tenable. I have read parts of the book; he loves music in a much more profound way than Zweig. Writers, in general, don’t have such a spontaneous relation to music as painters and scientists. Especially physicists and mathematicians enjoy music without any extra-musical interference. Writers are more self-conscious, inclined to translate every experience into words. This cannot be done with music; therefore their reactions to music are often not pure enough.

— Have you never heard music adequately described by words?

A.S.: Very rarely. Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann, the protagonist in Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann—wrote about music, or, of music, in a manner convincing enough to make even a musician happy. He was an astonishing fellow, a wonderful romantic, real judge, poet, painter, writer, composer, bon vivant, and whatnot. Two biographies, one of Mozart, the other of Berlioz, by Walter J. Turner succeed, though his understanding of music is not quite equal to that of a good, professional musician in transporting the reader into the region of creative genius—and that is some poetical achievement.

— What do you think of Tovey?

A.S.: He was an extraordinary man. I saw him fairly often and loved those meetings. Each time I learned a lot. And had much fun too, for he would suddenly, with an absolutely unexpected twist, change from scholar to farceur, boyishly beaming if I did not follow quickly enough.

— Do you think it is possible that a close relation can exist between musicians and critics?

A.S.: Why not? Yet I am not competent to talk on the subject of authors of newspaper reviews, if you mean them. They do not write to inform musicians; their job is to inform the public. I am, of course, also a part of the public, but naturally least in musical matters. I do not read what they write, thus I am not very familiar with the critics’ work. There is apparently a demand for it, otherwise it would not have survived. That not all of them are equally qualified is just as certain as it is in the case of musicians, or other exacting occupations.

Are you aware that the critic is a man who is employed to give his opinion? If you do not agree with one critic’s judgment, you may be right or he may be right. Nevertheless, he has fulfilled his duty. If you read several reviews about the same event, and they are all unanimous, your information has some basis; if they are contradictory, and you do not trust one of them more than another, you have no information at all. You must—unbiased—go and find out for yourself. The critic, however, cannot be criticized for criticizing.