which the use of the damper-pedal and of sympathetic vibration gives to the piano. But there cannot be true orchestral writing without polyphony. [That is, concurrence of melodies.-D. G. M.] Polyphony is absolutely essential to large works. If your piece is in a small-how do you say? cadre

D.G.M. Frame?

M. Paderewski. If your piece is in at small frame, you can get on fairly well without polyphony, but not if it has large proportions. That is why the French impressionists make a mistake in neglecting the traditional polyphonic way of writing. They are sometimes very extreme in their search for "originality," even giving us page after page of those parallel fifths we have been taught to fear. In passages like this (going to the piano and playing at random series of consecutive

they are delightful-they are the "reflets dans l'eau."

D. G. M. And what is your opinion of M. d'Indy?

M. Paderewski. I should not class him with the extreme modern school. As a matter of fact, M. d'Indy is not excessively modern. Partly because of his age (he is, you know, a much older man than Debussy, Ravel, and the others) and partly because his work, unlike theirs, is founded on tradition, we do not think of him as an extremist. On the other hand, however, he is not a very original melodist, and is often lacking in genius. I heard, the other day, played by your Symphony Orchestra here, his "Wallenstein" Trilogy. I had not heard it for six years, but it sounded sixty years old. It does not wear well. One thing he has written which shows true power-his "Chant de

la Cloche," founded on Schiller's "Lied von der Glocke." This is a genuinely beautiful work, in which spontaneity and scholarship are perfectly combined.

D. G. M. Your general criticism of the modern French music would be, then, in a word, that it does not usually combine these qualities?

M. Paderewski. But of course there are exceptions. I should not like to forget the work of Rabaud, a young Frenchman of most remarkable talent. He has written a fine symphony, and an opera, "La Fille de Roland," which is a truly great work. As various circumstances were against it, it was a financial failure, but it will surely be performed again. It is thorough music-real art. Most of the modern Frenchmen, however, seem to forget that music is not merely an art, but also a science. Just look, by way of contrast, at Wagner's wonderful "Die Meistersinger." This work seems to me the supreme effort of the human mind. constantly come back to it, I study it afresh each year, and always I find something new in it to admire.

I

D. G. M. And Brahms? Are you one of those who feel that he represents the science of music without the art?

M. Paderewski. Oh, no! Brahms at his best has very deep and true emotion. His chamber-music, for example. The two splendid Quartets with piano

D. G. M. The A-major Quartet? M. Paderewski. Very beautiful, very beautiful. The Andante is as fine as Beethoven.

D. G. M. But his piano music-did I not read somewhere of your saying that Brahms's piano music was "all treble and bass"?

father, you know, was a contrabassist― (D. G. M. laughs heartily)—and through his infancy he hears constantly the dum, dum, dum (imitating motion of contrabass-player) of this instrument. Later, I suppose, an unconscious reaction made him try for contrast, and go to the other end as high as he could; and so in some things it is all the very low and the very high, without any middle at all. (General laughter.) This is the case in some of his song-accompaniments. At some cradles, you know, the angels stand; but at others it is the contrabass!

D. G. M. And his orchestral style? M. Paderewski. He did not quite have the instinct of orchestration. His scoring lacks resonance, transparency, brightness. Brahms was born in Hamburg, and the North Germans are not a poetic people. They are prosaic, matter-of-fact. Later, when he got to Vienna, he underwent a great change. He expanded, mellowed, and his music took on a new atmosphere.

D.G.M. You spoke of Beethoven in connection with his A-major Quartet. Should you call him a descendant of Beethoven?

M. Paderewski. In music there is never exact heredity. Each man is individual. Yet about Brahms there is something oddly heterogeneous. There is undoubtedly a Beethoven element in him, but it is mixed with an element of Schumann. Yes, there is a great deal of Schumann in Brahms. And then there is Schubert, too, as for example in his waltzes. In the andantes of his first and third symphonies there is even Mendelssohn, and not very good Mendelssohn at that. One phrase especially,

M. Paderewski (laughing). Ah, you must not take a single remark, apart from what went with it, and so get a wrong impression. When I said that, I was thinking of a curious feature of his écriture, his mode of writing for piano. A sort of atavistic freak of nature, a hereditary trait, made him abuse the bass. His

is

etc.

pure Mendelssohn. And then, of course, the finale of the same C-minor Symphony has the theme so like Beethoven's "Hymn of Joy."

D. G. M. Is it not a curious thing to you, M. Paderewski, that there is so much music in the minor mode?

M. Paderewski. Music expresses, first

of all, sadness rather than joy. The first music was song. When people are sad and depressed, and therefore quiet and indisposed to activity, then they sing. Their state of quiescence, undisturbed by bodily motions, is favorable to song, and song is thus the natural means of expressing melancholy and grief. When people are full of joy, then they cannot sit still; they must let off their surplus energy by violent physical motion; and so dance is the expression of joy. But the quiet mood comes oftener than the lively one, and in music song comes before dance.

D. G. M. It interests me that you are formulating precisely the theory of the origin of music which Sir Hubert Parry, the English composer and writer, advances in his book, "The Evolution of the Art of Music." Do you know it?

M. Paderewski. No, I have not seen it. D. G. M. Parry, however, does not believe that song comes before dance. What leads you to that conclusion?

But

M. Paderewski. It would of course be difficult to get evidence on a matter that lies so far back in musical history. in our present-day music the song element is more important than the dance element, and, moreover, it is a strange fact that the greatest music is in the minor mode. Look at Schumann's piano-pieces, for instance. There are a few, such as the "Toccata," the "Carnival," the "Phantasie," etc., in major; but the "Études Symphoniques" are in minor, and the two sonatas also-F-sharp minor and G-minor -and the concerto is in A-minor. And think of how constantly Mendelssohn writes in minor.

D. G. M. In his Scotch Symphony one gets very tired of the everlasting A-minor, E-minor, and D-minor.

M. Paderewski. Yes.

Mendelssohn's

use of the minor mode may be connected with the Jewish tendency to complaint, to querulousness, which is in turn due to the trials and vicissitudes the race has suffered. But, in spite of this, I place Mendelssohn very high. His Violin Concerto is one of the most perfect works in this form ever written.

1 Variations and Fugue on an original theme, opus 23. 2 By impressionism I mean a quality which it is difficult to explain to the layman. It is, however, somewhat analogous to one kind of impressionism in painting. Just

D. G. M. Nevertheless, I cannot help vastly preferring Schumann.

M. Paderewski. The trouble is that Mendelssohn was so long and constantly heard that he became hackneyed. Schumann had to wait long to get a hearing at all, whereas Mendelssohn at nineteen was unanimously acclaimed as a master by the public. And he was a master. Form came to him naturally, instinctively. Even in Beethoven we often see traces of a struggle with form; joints and seams obtrude themselves. In Mendelssohn this is never the case. Everything is fluent, spontaneous, and elegant. The content of his music is sometimes weak, flat, lacking in vigor, but the form is always consummate.

D.G.M. M. Paderewski, if you will allow me to say so, your own recent compositions seem to me very remarkable in their combination of rich coloring with masterly form. The Sonata I heard only once, at your New York recital, and it is too complex to appreciate without study; but the Variations 1 I have not only heard you play, but I have studied carefully, and I think them splendid. That you may not think I say this in empty flattery, I will tell you frankly that I do not care nearly so much for some of your earlier pieces.

Mme. Paderewski. What pieces? What do you not care for?

D. G. M. Well, for example, I do not care so much for the Concerto in A-minor, opus 17.

Mme. Paderewski. The concerto is one of my favorites among my husband's compositions. I love it more and more.

M. Paderewski. Yes, I wrote the concerto a good while ago, but it is well done.

D. G.M. Oh, I do not mean that it is not a fine composition. But it does not seem to me so strong, so rugged, so original, as the Variations. They seem to me to combine in a remarkable degree the most various and interesting tendencies of modern music. Besides the modern French impressionism 2 they have a Brahms-like solidity of structure and polyphony.

M. Paderewski. I utterly repudiate

as in a picture a certain warmth and richness of tone may be produced by superimposing on the lines of the design a sort of haze, or penumbra, of coloring (attained often by thickly studded spots of pure pigment), so in much

any debt to the French impressionism. As I have just been telling you, I do not believe in the modern French school, because it is not founded on tradition. It is erratic, bizarre, wayward. It strives only for "originality"; it has no true mastery. No, there is nothing French in what you call my impressionism. I used these effects of dissonance, particularly of seconds,1 long ago, many years ago, before they had come into common use. In my little "Barcarolle," in the "Album de Mai," published in 1883, you will already find this use of seconds. See here! (Goes to piano and plays part of the "Barcarolle.") Again I used them in my Toccata, "Dans le Desert," opus 15, and in the Concerto, opus 17, and in the French songs to texts by Catulle Mendès-do you know them? I have written in this way for years, and now you tell me it is "French impressionism."

D. G. M. Pardon me, M. Paderewski, I think you mistake my meaning. I do not mean in the least that you imitate the French composers. I mean simply that there is in your Variations (for example in that very lovely variation number XV, which is so deliciously smeared, so to speak, with delicate dissonance) a kind of tonal effect which I naturally compare with the effects of Debussy and others, simply because we have heard so many of their works here that we are more familiar with them than with other impressionistic compositions.

M. Paderewski. My dear Mr. Mason, I am not offended with you. But I acknowledge no such debt as you suggest to the French composers. When I wrote that fifteenth variation I thought to myself, "Presently some one will label that 'French impressionism.'" You say I use dissonances in a certain way. I do this because I am an accomplished musical scholar. The modern French are, many of them, not accomplished musicians; they have not mastered their art; they are in some respects amateurs; they have no polyphony. Debussy is a man of great talent, of remarkable talent, corrupted by his admirers, who see in him an iconoclast,

modern music a similar richness of tonal effect is produced by superimposing on the salient melodies and fundamental harmonies a penumbra of dissonant tones-tones which do not merge with the others, but veil and cloud them. A more or less systematic study of these effects, so im

an enemy to tradition. They applaud and acclaim him because he tears down the great, because he is an iconoclast. If he were himself to become a master,—an icon on his own account,-they would be the first to turn upon him and tear him down, too. And Maurice Ravel, with his "Miroirs" and his "Animaux," is an amateur very ingenious, full of interesting effects, only they are not music. All of the modern French music of this kind put together is not worth one quartet of Brahms! Brahms! Originality, originality-is it original to drink like this? (Taking up a glass and holding it in the reverse of the usual position, with wrist strained backward.)

D. G.M. Indeed, I feel quite as you do about the French music, and, as I have said, I sincerely admire your Variations.

M. Paderewski. I am not much interested in my compositions after they are done. I play them in my recitals, and I prepare them as carefully and conscientiously as I prepare everything, but I play them as if they were not my own. Composers are of two kinds, you see: those who love their children, and those who are indifferent to them. I belong to the latter class.

Mme. Paderewski. Yes, he is a stepfather, and a very bad one! (Consults watch and rises.) And now, Mr. Mason, as we must go out at three o'clock, you have just seventeen minutes in which to finish your discussion.

D. G. M. Will you tell me, M. Paderewski, your opinion of Richard. Strauss?

M. Paderewski. Ah, Strauss is a man of remarkable talent, of wonderful skill. I have great reverence for him. Nevertheless, he has few themes, few really musical ideas, and he develops these by an intellectual, rather than by an emotional, process. At least his development of them is not what I might call creative. There are few lyrical melodies of deep emotional power in his works outside of his songs, some of which are exceedingly beautiful. In fact, Strauss seems to be

portant in contemporary music, will be found in my essay on Chopin, in "The Romantic Composers."-D. G. M. 1 "Seconds are the most dissonant of musical intervals, consisting of adjacent tones; e. g. C and D, or C and D-flat (major or minor second).-D. G. M.

primarily interested not in emotional expression, but in characterization. Besides Strauss, there is in Germany another young composer, a man of great promise. D. G. M.

Do you mean Max Reger?

M. Paderewski. Yes. Max Reger may do great things. He has remarkable technic, especially a wonderful polyphonic skill. You must look at his Variations for two pianos on a theme of Bach, and at his Variations and Fugue (one piano) on a theme of Beethoven. They are marvels. His fugues, I do not hesitate to say, are the best since Bach.

D. G. M. What, better than the fugue in Brahms's Handel Variations?

ent-more Bach-like. Reger has an instinct for the veritable Bach style. Nikisch, who played his "Sinfonietta" in Leipsic, thought it ugly; but it is not so

to me,

Mme. Paderewski (entering, dressed to go out). You will hate me, Mr. MasonD. G.M. Quite the contrary, I assure

you

Mme. Paderewski. But we must positively be going now.

M. Paderewski (rising and shaking hands). Good-by, good-by. Do not forget to look up the seconds in the Barcarolle," and the songs on texts by Catulle Mendès. Good-by.

(Exeunt M. and Mme. Paderewski.)