Lecture 1

Before I begin to talk on the subject I have chosen for our meetings here, I wish to say a few introductory words. First of all, I am sure that I have already revealed that the English language is not—unfortunately for you—my mother tongue. I had my first lesson in English at the age of thirty-eight. It was offered to me by an old friend who, even as a schoolboy in Vienna, was especially interested in English. He was already trying then—and continued with the experiment all his life—to translate Shakespeare’s Sonnets into German. So I accepted his offer with enthusiasm. He brought to my first lesson a little book which, naturally, I expected to be a primer. Looking at the title, I guessed that it must be something else, a kind of reader. The title was The Hunting of the Snark. What “hunting” meant I knew from English pictures, so I asked, “What is a snark?” “I don’t know,” was his reply. After that we both agreed, without any harm done to our relationship, that another, less humorous type of teaching might be more practical for my purposes. I engaged a professional teacher, an English woman. Because my time for instruction was very limited, I suggested that she should accompany me on my daily walks, should let me try to speak English, and should simply tell me when I went wrong. My vocabulary was, of course, much smaller than that of so-called basic English, but through her corrections it was rapidly widened. We did this for two months or so, and that was my entire instruction in English. Perhaps this is not the worst method of learning a language—for a middle-aged person.

Not only is my English imperfect, but I am, actually, not entitled to do what I am going to do here because I am “only a musician,” as a gentleman once said when I complained at a rehearsal about some arrangements on a platform. As quoted to me by somebody who sat in the auditorium next to this gentleman, his words were: “What is he so fussy about? He is only a musician.” I extended his criticism immediately to Mozart, one of whose works I had to perform on that occasion, and was quite content.

When I received the invitation to take this chair, I remembered that I was “only a musician” and wrote a letter, a few passages of which I shall read to you:

That I esteem your invitation to be a guest instructor at your Institute a high honor and a true satisfaction goes without saying. Allow me to add that this invitation, however, has also made me slightly uneasy. You credit me with abilities outside the sphere of my natural vocation. I, on the other hand, am quite certain of having no gifts other than some of those required by that vocation. The rather exclusive, and thus one-sided, department of the art of music in which I am employed demands my services as a, let me say, “direct” musician, one in charge of the production of music. The “indirect” musician, a fairly new calling, takes music to pieces, relates it to extra-musical conditions, proceeds methodically, analytically—for which I believe myself to have no talent whatsoever—and undertakes to represent music chiefly with words and figures. The “direct” musician, to express it in a not quite correct metaphor, is a gardener; the “indirect” musician a botanist. The art of music is abstract and transcendental (that makes the metaphor incorrect), and is never purposive or descriptive (which makes the attempt of translating it into words still more of a Sisyphean labor). The only medium by which to establish contact with musical ideas is tones. They are the medium of expression in which I have professional training. With words, above the average level of common usage, I am a dilettante. You expected me, I know, to speak of music. But quite apart from the insurmountable difficulty—as I see it—of presenting, or indicating, with a medium other than tones the essence, interior life, origin, spontaneity, or function of music, I have no training, no experience, and no ambition to do that. Anybody who communicates knowledge at the University of Chicago must, of course, be an expert—at least in the technique of communicating through words and figures. To acquire such a technique takes time. “Direct” music demands all my time. I imagine, certainly, that “experts” range from nonentities to validities. Yet they are all experts. The amateur, even he with the most vivacious mind, has to stay at home.

I now have to explain to you why I did not stay at home, why I am here, in spite of my unsuitability for this job. Well, the reply to my letter was a deadly attack on my apprehensions, for it did not deny the risk involved and did not tie me to a program. Thus, I agreed to attempt, unprepared, this excursion, on condition of mutual absolution should it end in failure. The next step was to consider a subject for this talking venture. Eventually I decided, after much thought and some discussions with friends, to give you a summary of my career as a musician. It started when I was seven years old; I am now sixty-three. I have chosen this subject not because I think of myself as somebody important, but only because my career has taken me from what I would call the last flowering of an individualistic age to the first unfolding of a collectivistic one. I have been almost everywhere where the art of music has a market. I have lived in many different countries. I have met very many people of great talent and some others of great reputation. Many of the things which I am going to tell you will be known to you already, but yet I think you might not be bored to hear them once more. The procedure I suggest for our meetings is to let me talk three-quarters of an hour, and then to change to a discussion of the same length of time.

The career of a musician ought to be—it is, actually, and in many ways—different from the careers of artists in other fields of art. All comparisons of the other arts with music are necessarily somewhat superficial. The art of music needs, essentially, not much contact with social groups, or concern with social problems. By the art of music I understand here the comparatively very young art of absolute music, and never applied or auxiliary music. This absolute, autonomous, independent music has developed into what is perhaps the most exclusive medium for the spiritual exaltation of the active individual in an intimate, private sphere of personal experience. Music is one of the performing arts with which, in practice, one can be alone, entirely alone. Theatrical art is not comparable with music because the actor always reproduces or represents what is in everybody’s orbit of experience. He uses language, the means of communication of all men. He can hardly act alone in his home. He needs an ensemble, and he is part of visible human acts. Dancing can be abstract, or symbolic, but even then it remains sensual and technical. As a creative art music is also different from other arts, from the literary, the pictorial, the architectural. The writer describes and interprets what he has seen and experienced. The painter also describes, or at least he did before abstract painting appeared, though even this is not to be compared with music.

In the performance of music, if one uses the piano, one can actually play all the music composed for performance, and can be alone. I am inclined to assume that the Well-Tempered Clavier was meant by Johann Sebastian Bach to be heard just by the one person who plays it.

It is good to remember that music created in Germany and Austria after its emancipation from Italian and Dutch influences consisted more and more of types best suited to the sphere of exclusive, personal experience. Before the development and transition of music from auxiliary to absolute, it was chiefly in the service of the church and the court. It was, of course, also in use for some other social and domestic purposes. The autonomy of music led to its isolation from any function. Music became an end in itself. Chamber music (in the modern sense), piano pieces, the Lied, were—so far—the final forms of this process. Possibly the supplying of inspiring and elevating activities for the individual could go no further. Now we are already witnessing an attempt to transform this isolated type of music, following the trend toward collectivism, into music with a social function. It is a matter of opinion whether there are some values that will never be suited to mass circulation. I cannot conceive of the day—and, besides, I do not yearn for it—when everything will be for everybody. Some of the most delicate types of music are already conspicuously neglected. That was to be expected. And it is quite consistent that the most popular performer of music is now the orchestra. It has, in the meantime, increased to 100 players or more. Music might, in the next few decades, become an attractive reservoir for the absorption of unemployed persons, and orchestras may swell to more and more players, even if only a certain number really plays, while the others get paid for standing by. I am curious to see (if the years are given me) where this attempt to take an exclusive world created for the individual into an expanding public sphere will lead.

Today, I would say, music has already suffered. I would, however, not say that public life has not benefited. It has, and music is still great.

I announced that I would give you an account of my career. What I have said so far is clearly not a part of it, but rather a confession of faith. It is time to begin the narrative.

* * *

I was born in a small Austrian village which belonged to the Austrian part of Poland. My parents were Austrian subjects whose religion was Jewish. The little village was a curious place. I don’t have too definite memories of the happenings during the first ten years of my life, but rather distinct ones of places and smells. My birthplace was tiny and rather poor—a kind of suburb to a small town. This small town was the twin to a somewhat larger town which one reached over a bridge, under which I never saw any water flow. The other town belonged to the Austrian province of Silesia. Socially these three places were very different. Bielitz was the name of the largest, as long as it belonged to Austria. After the First World War, it came to Poland and is now named Bielsko.

In Bielitz lived the so-called upper classes, which meant in that case a majority of non-Jews and non-Poles. They were rather haughty—snooty we would say now. The town, I have to admit, was undoubtedly much cleaner than the other two places, and therefore its smells are not so manifest in my memory as those of the others. The people in Bielitz were mostly Protestants.

Biala, its twin, was more of an agricultural center. There were many Poles, but they were not considered, generally, real Poles. I remember that the contemptuous name given to these people within Austria was that of “water Poles”—“diluted Poles,” so to say. They were mixed with the poorer Jews. It was a lively place. Bielitz was cleaner, but its twin was more lively—thanks to the Poles and Jews and poverty, perhaps.

The people living in Lipnik, my birthplace, were apparently still poorer. I remember only one street; it was the whole place. The pride of it was the house of a liquor maker. His son became a musician, and later a dear friend of mine. They were the first well-to-do people with whom I came into contact. These details may not be quite correct, because I have no notes, no material at all which could help me in telling you all these things and those which will follow. A few years after I was born my parents moved to the clean town. In their religious observances they were mildly orthodox: many of my relatives, for instance my grandparents, were strictly orthodox. When my parents moved to Vienna afterwards, they became externally more and more assimilated.

Almost all these poor or middle-class Jewish families were very ambitious to help their children to rise into a higher sphere of existence and experience. When I was six years old, my elder sister (I had two sisters) started to take piano lessons. My mother told me—I don’t know how reliable this is—that I, without having lessons, succeeded in doing what she was taught much quicker than she. I simply went to the piano and did it. My sister’s piano teacher thought that a boy who could do this must have musical talent, and she started teaching me. After a year she thought I should be taken to Vienna for a talent test by some experts, who would decide whether I had the equipment to become a professional musician. In the meantime I had a few lessons with two other—both male—piano teachers in Bielitz. I remember only one of them. He lived in the tower of a rather ugly castle, belonging to a Polish nobleman. During a lesson he would suddenly disappear through a trapdoor. This impressed and also frightened me. I now have a pretty good idea as to what he was doing during the ten minutes before he returned. I am sure he enjoyed a bottle of wine—I remember the smell.

At that time I also had my first tutor for general education. He was an old man with a white beard, and he was not too tidy. For a short time I learned Hebrew from him, but can hardly remember a single word of it. I didn’t continue with it. It was only taught to me from my fifth to sixth or seventh year.

In 1889, when I was seven, I was taken to Vienna to play for Professor Hans Schmitt. I also had some letters of recommendation to other Viennese people. I cannot say what impression Vienna made on me. After all, I was only a baby! Hans Schmitt was a professor at the Conservatory of the Society of Friends of Music, one of the most famous institutes in the world. He was the author of “the thousand daily exercises” (or perhaps a few less). He also had a white beard. You, here and now, cannot imagine most men having beards; in my boyhood, however, beards were the rule. They were very decorative. The emperor had most carefully trimmed whiskers, so everybody who wished to look serious and dignified also had whiskers or beards, including my father, my uncles, and so on. Professor Hans Schmitt accepted me as a pupil. Some other people heard me too—musicians and music lovers—and declared unanimously that I had the equipment to become a professional musician. Thus, from my seventh year on, I was considered a professional musician, by the decision of my patrons and my parents. They made me a pianist. I had no choice. I might, otherwise, have become a composer. Officially I have remained a pianist, although secretly I always did and still do compose. I neither deplore nor regret this destiny. The piano is a quite satisfactory instrument—for a musician. What I learned with Professor Schmitt, I cannot say—I simply don’t remember. It was obviously not inspiring, or perhaps I was not yet sufficiently aware. My work with him lasted for two years. Then I was sent to another man—of him I shall speak later.

I was mentioned to some wealthy people who were keenly interested in helping young talent and my mother was summoned to see the heads of their charity departments, or, as one might also call them, relief-of- conscience departments. Three of these rich families supported me for the next eight years without ever asking, or expecting, to see me or to hear me. This was sheer luck. Up to my fifteenth year I got monthly allowances which my mother, and later on I myself, had to collect at their offices. Decades later I once met a descendant of one of my sponsors and told him that his grandfather had helped me to study music and to enjoy my boyhood—he hardly listened!

The leading music store in Vienna at that time was still the kind at which you could buy nothing else but music and, perhaps, music paper; there were no dolls, as you can find nowadays in music stores in America—in some you can even buy refrigerators. How strange, that our age of specialists should be less exclusive than the previous age. We combine, somehow, specialization with standardization. The man running this music store in Vienna, Albert J. Gutmann, was very enterprising and rather influential in the history of public musical life in the second half of the nineteenth century. All great musicians of the epoch kept personal contact with him, and the gatherings at his home, every Sunday afternoon, were internationally known—as a “star parade,” as one would now call it here. On each of these occasions some music was performed, most often contemporary, to promote some young composer. He also sold pianos, in another shop, and arranged concerts. When I was eight he arranged a private concert for me, to arouse interest in my talent. It was given in the small hall connected with his piano salesrooms. I played the D minor Concerto by Mozart, still considered a work accessible chiefly to children—traditional misconceptions of this sort have an astonishing longevity. My concert must have been quite successful. It prolonged and improved my chances of being supported continuously and sufficiently to cover my own expenses and those of my mother and two sisters who had come with me to Vienna. My dear parents were ambitious but they were not greedy, so I was spared the fate of being an exploited prodigy. After this first semi-public performance I did not perform in public before I was fourteen. Then, of course, I was thought to be grown up—a musician, just like other musicians.

I remember very distinctly two other candidates for world fame in Vienna, a girl and a boy, both my age, who, unlike me, were exhibited as prodigies. Both came from a milieu similar to mine. This touches on a very interesting problem I should like to discuss another time. They both got much publicity; I did not get any. To this very day I have retained a certain reserve about publicity. I don’t know exactly why I feel averse to it, but I felt so even when I was only seven years old. These two children played often at the imperial court. I never did, which, of course, disappointed my mother. It was always in the papers that one or the other of my two young colleagues had played for the kaiser, played for the crown prince—I had not played for anybody. I remember that one day a friend of my family came and teased me, asking, “Now, what about you? Did you see that Poldi Spielmann has again played before crowned heads and that Ilona Eibenschütz has composed a polka and dedicated it to the Archduke So-and-so, and that it is displayed in the windows of Gutmann’s store? Your name is not there.” My mother told me that I answered, “What does the kaiser know about music?” Perhaps I did. My mother, in any case, had much imagination.

When I was nine, somebody advised my mother that for me to continue with that (allegedly) dry, uninspiring Professor Schmitt made no sense, that there was in Vienna a much superior teacher, a Professor Leschetizky. He did not teach at a conservatory. He had no official position. He lived rather aloofly and hardly appeared anywhere in public. He had not played in public for a long time. My mother took me to see him. My memory of this event is fairly clear. (I had advanced to the perceptivity of a nine-year-old human being.) I remember that I waited two hours in a small room before Leschetizky appeared. He was always late. If you came for a lesson at eleven o’clock, he began it at one o’clock. He, too, had a beard, though it was not yet quite white. His house seemed to have a much more inspiring atmosphere than my previous teacher’s studio. We felt this immediately. It was not just the atmosphere of a thousand daily exercises. Leschetizky asked me, after I played part of my repertoire for him, to sight-read. He opened, I remember, the piano score of Cavalleria Rusticana, which had been published just a week before. My sight-reading must have satisfied him, for he accepted me as a pupil.

The first year his wife, Madame Essipoff, a then-famous piano virtuoso, actually took care of my piano studies and he heard me only on a few occasions. Madame Essipoff was very kind to me. I had to play studies and exercises, chiefly Czerny’s, I remember. She used to put a coin (a gulden) on my hand, a silver coin almost as big as a silver dollar, and if I played one Czerny study without dropping it, she gave it to me as a present. I think that was sweet of her. In the meantime, I have changed my way of handling the piano so radically that now if I were to play only a few tones the coin would drop. I don’t think that the “static” hand is a recommendable technique for the expression of music. For very young beginners, however, it might, temporarily, be the only method.

At Leschetizky’s I established contact for the first time with an international crowd. He had pupils from countries all over the world, the majority from the United States. Paderewski had been one of his pupils. Their relations cannot have been too happy; this was clearly indicated by the hesitation of each to mention the other, and even more by what they said about each other when forced to say something. I have not read Paderewski’s memoirs, but somebody reported to me that references to Leschetizky are rare in them and always cool. Maybe this report was not correct. I never found out what was at the bottom of their, let me call it, alienation. However, Paderewski, who has never denied being his pupil, was such a sensation, such a hero in the States, that American students flocked to Leschetizky.

Soon Leschetizky himself began instructing me. He said to me repeatedly throughout the years, and in the presence of many other people, “You will never be a pianist. You are a musician.” Of course I did not make much of that statement, and did not reflect much on it; even today I cannot quite grasp it. However, he made the distinction.

I think I have talked enough for today. I have, to be true, arrived only at my tenth year, but fortunately we have eleven more opportunities. So, let us now begin with the discussion.