_ WITH DEPPE
CHAPTER XXIV
Gives up Kullak for Deppe. Deppe's Method in Touch and in Scale-Playing. Fräulein Steiniger. Pedal Study.
BERLIN,
December 11, 1873.
Since I last wrote you I have taken a very important step, which is
this: After taking three or four lessons of Kullak I HAVE GIVEN HIM UP! and am now studying under a new master. His name is Herr Capelmeister Deppe. I suppose you will all think me crazed, but I think I know what I am about. He seems to me a very remarkable man, and is to me the most satisfactory teacher I've had yet. Of course I don't count in the unapproachable Liszt when I say that, for Liszt is no "
professeur du piano," as he himself used scornfully to remark.
I made Herr Deppe's acquaintance quite by chance, at a musical party given for Anna Mehlig by an American gentleman living here. I had often heard of him, and was very anxious to know him, but somehow had never compassed it. He is a conductor, to begin with, and I have often seen him conduct orchestral concerts. In fact, that was what he first came to Berlin for, a few years ago--to conduct Stern's orchestral concerts during the latter's absence in Italy. Deppe is an accomplished conductor, and I have never heard Beethoven's second Overture to Leonora sound as I have under his bâton.
But it was Sherwood who first called my attention to him as a teacher. He rushed into my room one day, and said, "Oh, I've just heard the most beautiful playing that ever I heard in my life!" I asked him who it was that had taken him so by storm, and he said it was a young English girl named Fannie Warburg, and that she was a pupil of Deppe's. "Well, what is it about her that is so remarkable," said I. "Oh,
everything!--execution, expression, style, touch--all are
perfect! I never heard anything to equal her, and I feel as if I never wanted to touch the piano again."
This was such strong language for Sherwood, who is generally very critical and anything but enthusiastic, that my interest was immediately excited. He went on to tell me that Deppe had been training this young English girl, now only eighteen years of age, with the greatest care, for six years, and that he had such an interest in her that he did not confine himself to giving her lessons only, but set himself to form her whole musical taste by taking her to the best concerts and to hear the great operas, calling her attention to every peculiarity of structure in a composition, and giving her all sorts of hints which only a man of profound musical culture
could give. Sherwood said, moreover, that in summer he made her go to Pyrmont, which is a watering place near Hanover, where he goes himself every year, and that there he heard her play
every day Mozart's concertos and all sorts of things. I thought to myself at the time that the man who would take so much trouble for a pupil as that, would have been just the one for me, for it was easy to see that Deppe was teaching more for the love of Art than for love of money--a rare thing in these materialistic days! Afterward, you know, Miss B. spoke to me about him in Weimar, and I wrote you what she said.
Well, as I was saying, I went to this musical party given to Anna Mehlig, where there were a number of musicians and critics. I was listening to Mehlig play, when suddenly Sherwood, who was also present, stole up to me and said, "Come into the next room and be introduced to Deppe." At these magic words I started, and immediately did as I was bid. I found Deppe in one corner looking about him in an absent sort of way. He was a man of medium height, with a great big brain, keen blue eyes and delicate little mouth, and he had a most cheery and sunny expression. He shook hands, and then we sat down and got into a most animated conversation--all about music. I told him how interested I was by all I had heard of him--how I had returned to Kullak for a last trial--how tired I was of his eternal pedagogism, and how I should like to study with
him.
He asked me what my chief difficulty was, whereupon I answered "the technique, of course." He smiled, and said "that was the smallest difficulty, and that anybody could master execution if they knew how to attack it, unless there was some want of proper development of the hand." I said I had studied very hard, but that I hadn't mastered it, and that there was always some hard place in every piece which I couldn't get the better of. He said he was sure he could remedy the deficiency, and that if I would show him my hand without a glove, he could tell directly what I was capable of. I wouldn't pull it off, however, because I was afraid he might find some radical defect or weakness in it, but I was so charmed with the way he made light of the technique, and with the absolute certainty he seemed to have that I could overcome it, that I promised him that I would go and play to him the following Wednesday.
Accordingly on the following Wednesday I presented myself. I had expected to stay about half an hour, but I ended by staying
three solid hours, and we talked as fast as we could all the while, too! So you may imagine we had a good deal to say. He lives in two little rooms on the Königgrätzer Strasse, only four doors from the W.'s, where I boarded for so long. Now if I had only known I was close to such a teacher! We must often have passed each other in the street, and where
was my good angel that he did not touch my arm and say, "There's the man for you?"--Frightful to think how near one may be to one's best happiness, or even salvation, and not know it!
Deppe's front room was pretty much filled up with a grand piano, which, as well as the chairs and most other articles of furniture, was covered with music. I glanced over the pieces a little, and there was nearly every set of Etudes under the sun, it seemed to me, as well as concertos and pieces by all the great composers, fingered and marked with pencil in the most minute way. It was enough simply to turn the leaves, to see what a study he must have made of everything he gave his scholars. His inner room had double doors to it to prevent the sound from penetrating. I rapped at the outside one, and presently I heard a great turning and rattling of keys, and then they opened, and Deppe was before me. He put out his hand in the most cordial and friendly way, and greeted me with the most winning smile in the world. I took off my things and began to play to him. He listened quietly, and without interrupting me. When I had finished he told me that my difficulties were principally mechanical ones--that I had conception and style, but that my execution was uneven and hurried, my wrist stiff, the third and fourth fingers[F] very weak, the tone not full and round enough, that I did not know how to use the pedal, and finally, that I was too nervous and flurried.
[Footnote F: In German, the fourth and fifth fingers.]
"If possible, you must get over this agitation," said he. "
Hören Sie Sich spielen (Listen to your own playing). You have talent enough to get over all your difficulties if you will be patient, and do just as I tell you." "I will do anything," I said. "Very good. But I warn you that you will have to give up all playing for the present except what I give you to study, and
those things you must play very slowly."
This was a pleasant prospect, as I was just preparing to give a concert in Berlin, under Kullak's auspices, and had already got my programme half learned! But I had "invoked the demon," and I felt bound to give the required pledge.--So here I am, after four years abroad with the "greatest masters," going back to first principles, and beginning with five-finger exercises! I had never been given any particular rule for holding my hand, further than the general one of curving the fingers and lifting them very high. Deppe objects to this extreme lifting of the fingers. He says it makes a
knick in the muscle, and you get all the strength simply from the finger, whereas, when you lift the finger moderately high, the muscle from the whole arm comes to bear upon it. The tone, too, is entirely different. Lifting the finger so very high, and striking with force, stiffens the wrist, and produces a slight jar in the hand which cuts off the singing quality of the tone, like closing the mouth suddenly in singing. It produces the effect of a blow upon the key, and the tone is more a sharp, quick tone; whereas, by letting the finger just fall--it is fuller, less loud, but more penetrating. I suppose the hammer falls back more slowly from the string, and that makes the tone
sing longer.
Don't you remember my saying that Liszt had such an extraordinary way of playing a melody? That it did not seem to be so loud and cut-out as most artists make it, and yet it was so penetrating? Well, dear,
there was the secret of it! "
Spielen Sie mit dem Gewicht (Play with weight)," Deppe will say. "Don't strike, but let the fingers
fall. At first the tone will be nearly inaudible, but with practice it will gain every day in power."--After Deppe had directed my attention to it, I remembered that I had never seen Liszt lift up his fingers so fearfully high as the other schools, and especially the Stuttgardt one, make such a point of doing. That is where Mehlig misses it, and is what makes her playing so sharp and cornered at times. When you lift the fingers so high you cannot bind the tones so perfectly together. There is always a break. Deppe makes me listen to every tone, and carry it over to the next one, and not let any one finger get an undue prominence over the other--a thing that is immensely difficult to do--so I have given up all pieces for the present, and just devote myself to playing these little exercises right.
Deppe not only insists upon the fingers being as curved as possible, so that you play exactly on the tips of them, but he turns the hand very much out, so as to make the knuckles of the third and fourth fingers higher than those of the first and second, and as he does
not permit you to throw out the elbow in doing this, the
turn must be made from the wrist. The
thumb must also be slightly curved, and quite free from the hand. Many persons impede their execution by not keeping the thumb independent enough of the rest of the hand. The moment it contracts, the hand is enfeebled. The object of turning the hand outward is to favour the third and fourth fingers, and give them a higher fall when they are lifted. This strengthens them very much. It also looks much prettier when the outer edge of the hand is high, and one of Deppe's grand mottoes is, "When it
looks pretty then it is right."
After Deppe had put me through five-finger exercises on the foregoing principles, and taught me to lift each finger and let it fall with a perfectly loose wrist, (a most deceitful point, by the way, for it took me a long while to distinguish when I was stiffening the wrist involuntarily and when I wasn't,) he proceeded to the scale. He always begins with the one in E major as the most useful to practice. His principle in playing the scale is
not to turn the thumb under! but to turn a little on each finger end, pressing it firmly down on the key, and screwing it round, as it were, on a pivot, till the next finger is brought over its own key. In this way he prepares for the thumb, which is kept free from the hand and slightly curved.--He told me to play the scale of E major slowly with the right hand, which I did. He curved his hand round mine, and told me as long as I played right, his hand would not interfere with mine. I played up one octave, and then I wished to go on by placing my first finger on F sharp. To do that I naturally turned my hand outward, so as to make the step from my thumb on E to F sharp with the first, but it came bang up against Deppe's hand like a sort of blockade. "Go on," said Deppe. "I can't, when you keep your hand right in the way," said I. "My hand isn't in the way," said he, "but
your hand is out of position."
So I started again. This time I reflected, and when I got my third finger on D sharp, I kept my hand slanting from left to right, but I prepared for the turning under of the thumb, and for getting my first finger on F sharp, by turning my wrist sharply out. That brought my thumb down on the note and prepared me instantly for the next step. In fact, my wrist carried my finger right on to the sharp without any change in the position of the hand, thus giving the most perfect legato in the world, and I continued the whole scale in the same manner. Just try it once, and you'll see how ingenious it is--only one must be careful not to throw out the elbow in turning out the wrist. As in the ascending scale one has to turn the thumb under twice in every octave, Deppe's way of playing avoids twice throwing the hand out of position as one does by the old way of playing straight along, and the smoothness and rapidity of the scale must be much greater. The direction of the hand in running passages is always a little oblique.
Don't you remember my telling you that Liszt has an inconceivable lightness, swiftness and smoothness of execution? When Deppe was explaining this to me, I suddenly remembered that when he was playing scales or passages, his fingers seemed to lie across the keys in a slanting sort of way, and to execute these rapid passages almost without any perceptible motion. Well, dear,
there it was again! As Liszt is a great experimentalist, he probably does all these things by instinct, and without reasoning it out, but that is why nobodys else's playing sounds like his. Some of his scholars had most dazzling techniques, and I used to rack my brains to find out how it was, that no matter how perfectly anybody else played, the minute Liszt sat down and played the same thing, the previous playing seemed rough in comparison. I'm sure Deppe is the only master in the world who has thought that out; though, as he says himself, it is the egg of Columbus--"when you know it!"
Deppe always begins the scale in the middle of the piano, and plays up three octaves with the right, and down three octaves with the left hand. He says that all the difficulty is in going up, and that coming back is perfectly easy, as all you have to do is to let the fingers run! He always makes me play each hand separately at first, and very slowly, and then both hands together in contrary direction, gradually quickening the tempo. After that in thirds, sixths, octaves, etc.
* * *
BERLIN,
December 25, 1873.
As you may imagine, this is anything but a "Merry Christmas" for me, for I am simply the most completely
bouleversée mortal in this world! Here I was a month ago preparing to give a concert of my own. Then I have the good or bad luck to make Herr Deppe's acquaintance, and to find out how I "ought" to have been studying for the last four years. I give up Kullak and my concert plan, thinking I'll study with Deppe and come out under his auspices. After two lessons with him, comes your letter with the news of this awful national panic in it.--
Could anything be worse for a person who has really
conscientiously tried to attain her object? I'm like the professor who gave some lectures to prove a certain theory, and when he got to the fourteenth, he decided it was false, and devoted the remaining ones to pulling it all down!
However, after practicing the scale on Deppe's principles, I find that they open the road to an ease, rapidity, sureness and elegance of execution which, with my stiff hand, I've not been able to see even in the dim distance before! One of his grand hobbies is
tone, and he never lets me play a note without listening to it in the closest manner, and making it sound what he calls "
bewüsst (conscious)."--No more mechanical "straying of the hands over the keys (as the novelists always say of their heroines) thinking of all sorts of things the while," but instead, a close pinning down of the whole attention to hear whether one finger predominates over the other, and to note the effect produced. I was perfectly amazed to see how many little ugly habits I had to correct of which I had not been the least aware. It seems as though my ears had been opened for the first time! Such concentration is very exhausting, and after two or three hours' practice I feel as if I should drop off the chair.
I forgot to say before, that Deppe enjoins sitting very low--that is--not higher than a common chair. He says one may have "the soul of an angel," and yet if you sit high, the tone will not sound poetic. Moreover, in a low seat the fingers have to work a great deal more, because you can't assist them by bringing the weight of your arm to bear. "Your elbow must be
lead and your wrist a
feather." Of course the seat must be modified to suit the person. I prefer a low seat myself, and have even had my piano-chair cut off two inches.
Before definitely deciding to give up Kullak and come to
him, Deppe insisted that I should hear one of his scholars play. Fannie Warburg is in England on a visit, so I could not hear
her, but he has another young lady pupil of whom he is very proud, named Fräulein Steiniger. This young lady had been originally a pupil of Kullak's, and I had heard her play once in his conservatory. She was a girl of a good deal of talent, but not a genius. Deppe said that when she came to him she had all my defects, only worse. She has been studying with him in the most tremendous manner for fifteen months, and he wanted me to see what he had made of her in that time. She was going to play in a concert in Lübeck, and he was to rehearse her pieces with her on Saturday for the last time. He begged me to come then, and accordingly I went.
I was very much struck by her playing, which was remarkable, not so much for sentiment or poetry, of which she had little, but for the
mastery she had over the instrument, and for the perfection with which she did everything. There was a clarity and limpidity about her trills and runs which surprised and delighted. Her left hand was as able as the right, and had a way of taking up a variation like nothing at all and running along with it through the most complicated passages, which almost made you laugh with pleasure! There was a wonderful vitality, elasticity and
snap to her chords which impressed me very much, and a unity of effect about her whole performance of any composition which I don't remember to have heard from the pupils of other masters. The position of the hand was exquisite, and all difficulties seemed to melt away like snow or to be surmounted with the greatest ease. I saw at a glance that Deppe is a magnificent teacher, and I believe that he has originated a school of his own.
Fräulein Steiniger played a charming Quintette by Hummel, a beautiful Suite by Raff, a Prelude and Fugue by Bach, and two Studies, and all, as it seemed to me, exactly as they
ought to be played. After she had finished, we had a long talk about Kullak. She said she staid with him year after year, doing her very best, and never arriving at anything. At last, as he did nothing for her, she resolved to strike out for herself, and went to Deppe, who was at that time conducting Stern's orchestral concerts, and asked him if he would not allow her to play in one of them. Deppe received her with his characteristic kindness and cordiality, but told her that before he could promise he must first hear her in private, and he set a time for the purpose.
She had prepared Beethoven's great E flat Concerto, which everybody plays here. It is as difficult for Deppe to listen to that concerto as it is for Liszt to hear Chopin's B flat minor Scherzo. "We poor conductors!" he will exclaim, "will the artists
always keep bringing us Beethoven's E flat Concerto? Why not, for once, the B flat, or a Mozart concerto?
Then we should say '
Ja, mit Vergnügen (Yes, with pleasure).'
Aber Jeder will grossartig spielen heutzutage (But everybody wants to play on a grand scale now-a-days). The mighty rushing torrent is the fashion, but who can do the wimpling, dimpling streamlet? Nobody has any fingers for the
kleine Passagen (little fine passages). Sie
haben, Alle,
keine Finger (
None of them have any fingers)." He then winds up by saying
he is the only man in Germany who knows how to give them "fingers." "
Ich weiss worauf es ankommt (
I know what it depends on)!"
Nevertheless, he listened patiently for the thousandth time to the E flat concerto, as Steiniger played it. He then quietly called her attention to the fact that
she had "no fingers," and she was in perfect despair. He saw that she was energetic and willing to work, and he at once took her in hand and began to drill her. She withdrew entirely from society and devoted herself to practicing, following his directions implicitly. She is now a beautiful artist, and he chalks out every step of her career. I don't doubt she will play in the Gewandhaus in Leipsic eventually, which is the height of every artist's ambition, and stamps you as "finished." Then you are recognized all over the world. Deppe does not mean to let her play here till she has first played in many little places and succeeded. As he said to me the other day, "When you wish to spring over tall mountains, you must first jump over little mounds (
kleine Graben.)" He counsels me to take a lesson of this young lady every day for a time, so as to get over the technical part quickly.
As for Deppe's young protégée, Fannie Warburg, whom he has formed completely, everybody says that she is wonderful. Fräulein Steiniger says that when you hear her play you feel almost as if it were something holy, it is so perfect and so extraordinarily spiritual. She is only eighteen. Deppe showed me the list of compositions that she has already played in concerts elsewhere, and I was astonished at the variety and compass of it. Every great composer was represented.
Among other refinements of his teaching, Deppe asked me if I had ever made any pedal studies. I said "No--nobody had ever said anything to me about the pedal particularly, except to avoid the use of it in runs, and I supposed it was a matter of taste." He picked out that simple little study of Cramer in D major in the first book--you know it well--and asked me to play it. I had played that study to Tausig, and he found no fault with my use of the pedal; so I sat down thinking I could do it right. But I soon found I was mistaken, and that Deppe had very different ideas on the subject. He sat down and played it phrase by phrase, pausing between each measure, to let it "sing." I soon saw that it is possible to get as great a virtuosity with the pedal as with anything else, and that one must make as careful a study of it. You remember I wrote to you that one secret of Liszt's effects was his use of the pedal, and how he has a way of disembodying a piece from the piano and seeming to make it float in the air? He makes a spiritual form of it so perfectly visible to your inward eye, that it seems as if you could almost hear it breathe! Deppe seems to have almost the same idea, though he has never heard Liszt play. "The Pedal," said he, "is the
lungs of the piano." He played a few bars of a sonata, and in his whole method of binding the notes together and managing the pedal, I recognized Liszt. The thing floated!--Unless Deppe wishes the chord to be very brilliant, he takes the pedal
after the chord instead of simultaneously with it. This gives it a very ideal sound.--You may not believe it, but it is
true, that though Deppe is no pianist himself, and has the funniest little red paws in the world, that don't look as if they could do anything, he's got that same touch and quality of tone that Liszt has--that indescribable
something that, when he plays a few chords, merely, makes the tears rush to your eyes. It is too heavenly for anything. _