Alan Walker.

Hans von Bulow: a life and

times. Oxford University press, 2010
February 10, 2015

5 It would demean Bülow to be remembered by such anecdotes alone.

He strode across the world of 19th century music like a colossus. Bulow was
music’s great reformer. He set out to make a difference. His career was
epoch making, and it unfolded in at least six directions simultaneously. He
was a renowned concert pianist; a virtuoso orchestral conductor; a respected
teacher; an influential editor of Bach, Mendelssohn Chopin, and Beethoven in
the performance of whose music he had no rival; a scourge as a music critic,
whose articles resembled the spraying of antiseptic on bacteria; a composer
whose music while it is hardly played today, deserves a better fate than
benign neglect.

6 Bulow came to be regarded as the greatest classical pianist of his time,

renowned for his fidelity to the score. His creed was never in doubt. The role
of the performer was to be the servant of the composer, not his master.
Today such a view is commonplace, but not in Bulow’s time. . . .When Bulow
confronted a musical masterpiece he believed that he was in the presence of
greatness. And he expected his listeners to share his sense of reverence.
When they did not, he chastised them. Like the prophets of old, the
interpreter was a chosen one, there to be ushered into the presence of God
in order to take back the Word to the people. . . .His aphorism ‘in the
beginning was rhythm’ is an obvious modification of the opening verse of
Genesis. He once described Bach’s 48 preludes and fugues as the Old
Testament of music, and Beethoven’s 32 Piano Sonatas as the New. To which
observation he added, ‘We must believe in both’> in an interview in The
Etude he observed I believe in Bach the father, Beethoven the son, and in
Brahms, the holy ghost of music. The abandon and excess that sometimes
characterized the playing of his great rival Anton Rubinstein, with its self-
indulgent departures from the text, was for him a form of blasphemy as if
the bible was being used to justify a personal opinion. . . .Rubinstein ambled
onto the stage like a big bear; Bulow appeared rapidly like someone afraid
that the bank will close before he can make his deposit. Bulow complained
that Rub can make any number of errors during a performance and nobody
is disturbed. If I make a single mistake, it will be noticed immediately by
everyone in the audience. Rub was described during his celebrated tour of
America as a storm king at the piano riding the instrument as hew ould a war
charger. His errors in tech were concealed beneath a thunder of sound, or
else atoned for by the superb eloquence of his expressions. Bulow was
exactly the opposite—a precise careful uncompromising studious technician.
He was the swiss watchmaker of pianists. The jeweled perfection of his
playing was a thing to behold. Everything was so tightly sprung that he could
not afford to make an error.

[See fn 9 on page 7 for reference Bulow selected writings, 1850-1892. 2nd

ed.]

20 descended from a distinguished military family in Germany whose

lineage can be traced back to the 13 century, personal discipline and the
need to excel were instilled in B from childhood. He spoke four modern
languages, German, French, Italian, and English and was well versed in the
classics, writing both Greek and Latin. He was deeply read in the philosophy
of Schopenhauer, whose pessimistic view of the world appealed to him.
Optimism for Bulow was an impossibility, a preposterous principle on which
to base one’s life. Pessimism, he once observed has made me more light
hearted, more philanthropic, more tolerant, more at ease, than that other
absurd doctrine. He daily looked the world in the face and saw it for what it
was: a ridiculous tragedy over which one has little control. For B there was
no promise of anything at the end of the difficult road that life had made out
for him. But good Schopenhauerian that he was, he found redemption in one
simple idea: it was not enough to have life, one must live it. And live it he
did. Bulow packed so much activity into his relatively brief span of years,
that there are times when the biographer can hardly keep pace with him.
Nonetheless, the complex pleasures of his company make the journey well
worthwhile.

38 He learned Chopin etudes as a teenager. And tempest and moonlight

sonata. At 15 he had learned Hummel concerto in a minor and field’s
concerto in a major. For technical training he turned to the studies of
Moscheles and de Meyer, and Czerny’s school of velocity. Mendelssohn and
Henselt were a regular part of his regimen as well. By 14 he was already
learning Mendelssohn’s rondo capriccioso, a work he was later to play to
perfection. Bach 48 he eventually mastered in their entirety. He informs that
he used to practice the 2-part fugue in E minor book I with each hand in
octaves, an interesting idea that he got from Otto Goldschmidt, a fellow
student at the conservatory and pupil of Mendelssohn.
38-39tribute to his one-time teacher Friedrich Wieck, father of Clara
Schumann: you were the one who first taught my ear to hear, who
impressed upon my hand the rules of correct formation and who led
my talent from the twilight of the unconscious into the bright light
of the conscious. He who fosters the invisible seed with such
unusual conscientiousness, care, and love, may claim a co-creator’s
share in the developed fruit.

45 it was Liszt’s piano playing that left the deepest impression. Liszt
played two of his new and still unpublished concert paraphrases on Wagner’s
Tannhauser: Wolfram’s song O du mein holder Abendstern, and the famously
difficult overture. As the 19 year old observed Liszt’s unbridled approach to
interpretation, he became aware of a chief defect in his own playing: a lack
of abandon. Bulow had presented himself to Liszt as a perfect representative
of the Leipzig school-classical, correct, conservative. These qualities were
not to be despised, especially when they were covered with a veneer of
professional polish that B was now bringing to all his performances, but they
were not enough. B was simply a good soldier whose playing lacked the feu
sacre. He sensed at once what was required of him. I must completely cure
myself of a certain angular want of freedom in conception . . .when I have
conquered the technical difficulties of a piece, in modern pieces especially, I
must let myself go more, according to how I feel at the moment. [fn Liszt
stopped from sheer exhaustion when nearing the end of playing Tannhauser
overture and paused for a moment before continuing. He turned to B and
remarked “you can write down today in your diary that I have played the
Tannhauser overture to you.

56 Liszt got back to Weimar on Sunday Oct 12 and the lessons began the
next day. Master and pupil worked on the last sonatas of Beethoven, the
more significant compositions of Chopin and Schumann, and newer works of
Liszt himself. Liszt promised to help B build a repertoire that no other pianist
could show. Since Liszt never taught technique Bulow was left very much to
his own devices in this area, and he chose to continue working on Czerny’s
School of Velocity and the studies of Adolf Henselt, on which “I crucify, like a
good Christ, the flesh of my fingers in order to make them obedient,
submissive machines to the mind as a pianist must. To make the crucifixion
yet more severe B installed in his rooms a piano with a particularly stiff
keyboard and he drilled his fingers on this instrument daily.

57 Weimar:
Most cultured centers in Germany.

Thrived under patronage of Grand Duchess Maria Pawlowna of Saxe Weimar,

sister of Tsar Nicholas of Russia.

Century unbroken association with the arts.

Bach lived and worked there

Goethe and Schiller.

Good orchestra and opera house.

Liszt turned Weimar into a vanguard of modern music.

Conservative cities like Vienna Berlin Leipzig and Paris put modern music
into a straitjacket and made it impossible for younger composers to gain a
foothold

A new generation of musicians now turned to Liszt and Weimar for

leadership.

Weimar became a mecca of contemporary music

Steady stream of artists converged on the small town

Composers, painters, sculptors, poets, dramatists, scientists, politicians were

frequent visitors attracted by Liszt’s magnetic personality. Liszt lived in the
‘Altenburg’

77 He described the experience of teaching the count’s daughters as

analogous to the national torture of Persia, the wrong notes dripping into his
ears like the constant drops of water on the skull of a convict. A daily walk at
noontime in the surrounding park helped him to recover his composure.

86 On Jan 22 1857 Bulow delivered the world premiere of Liszt’s sonata in

B minor in the englisches Haus hotel. The sonata had taken him more than
two years to prepare under the guidance of Liszt himself. B had not
proceeded very far before certain gentlemen of the press experienced signs
of distress. The sonata appeared to them to be in no fixed key with thematic
contrasts that were so extreme they gave the impression of being non
sequiturs.

Critics said the sonata was an invitation to hissing and stamping and not only
had it nothing to do with beauty but it conflicted with nature and logic. It is
tempting to adjust some words of Ives and remark that “their ears were on
wrong.”

Hanslick said the sonata was a steam-driven mill which nearly always runs
idle.

129 Wagner assured Bulow that he would be released from the bondage of
teaching once he had severed ties to Berlin. The music school in Munich
became an albatross around Bulow’s neck, prolonging his connection with
Munich long after Wagner and Cosima had left the city. To bulow was left the
burden of not only directing the faculty, but drawing up the curriculum as
well, which included auditions, end of term examinations, student concerts,
and other mundane things that fall to a director’s lot. As head of the piano
department he spent countless hours preparing some instructive editions for
the piano students.

135 Bulow conducted the first Tristan. King Ludwig regarded the event as
so significant that he marked it by granting a pardon to all those who had
participated in the 1849 uprising.

The public premier of Tristan May 15, 1865 is a date widely regarded as one
of the most extraordinary in the Wagner calendar. On that day bailiffs broke
into Wagner’s house with an order to attach a lien on his furniture against
settlement of debts owed to Julie Schwabe. Cosima dashed over to the royal
treasury begging release of 2400 florins. Then a knock at the door and there
was Ludwig Schnorr with the calamitous news that his wife Malvina,
Wagner’s Isolde had lost her voice after taking a vapour bath. The
performance was postponed. Guests from all over Europe without lodging
had to return home. Curse over Tristan, Wagner feared would never be lifted.

164 Work was to be Bulow’s redemption. In Italy he returned with renewed

zeal to his piano playing recovered his concert fingers, and laid the
groundwork for the world tours that were to bring him an international
audience. He also embarked on a profound study of the late Beethoven
sonatas and the Diabelli Variations, compositions that he was to make very
much is own and which were eventually included in his edition of
Beethoven’s keyboard music, in 1871.

173 Bulow appears to have never learned how certain things should be
dealt with. His way of handling dispute and disagreement was to avoid
diplomacy altogether, and plunge into a military campaign instead. He
reversed the famous aphorism of Clausewitz that war is an extension of
diplomacy by other means, and simply went to war, leaving diplomacy to
take care of itself.

333 bulow had a huge influence on piano ped. He was willing to sacrifice
so much of his time to an activity that he held in near contempt, and which
he had once described as slavery of the most annihilating kind, speaks
volumes about the high regard in which he held Raff

333 epigraph: the interpreter should be the opposite of a grave digger: he

should bring what is buried into the light of day.

350 Later after he had worked with Liszt and had taken on all the trappings
of a modern virtuoso, adding many big romantic works to his repertoire, he
became a very different artist, but never lost sight of the time honored
principles of piano playing—a beautiful sound, clear articulation, balance of
interior voicing, fidelity to the composer’s intentions—which he tried to pass
on to his students.

351 By contrast Bulow’s editions of the Chopin etudes should be revived. Its
creative ideas on fingering, its highly preparatory exercises derived from the
music itself, and its general tips on how to practice these difficult pieces,
place it in a similar category to Cortot’s more celebrated edition of these
same etudes. To give just one absorbing example: in order to obtain greater
physical security in the “Black Keys” study Bulow recommends transposing it
from G-flat major to G major—in which the right hand would play exclusively
on the white keys, whereas in the key of G-flat major it plays exclusively on
the black keys. Any pianist who can do this well, will find that his newly
acquired skill conveys immediate benefits on the original.

351 fn 39 few pianists would disagree with Bulow’s assertion that the
etude in A-flat major Op 10/10 is the most difficult in the entire collection
because of its myriad rhythmic complexities. “Whoever can play this Study in
a really finished manner, may congratulate himself on having climbed to the
highest point of the pianist’s Parnassus,” he observed.

356 Bulow’s presentation of the last five Beethoven sonatas in one evening
was already legendary. But this Beethoven Cycle was different. It required
the listener to have what Germans call Sitzfleisch—staying power. These
concerts were diametrically opposed to Anton Rubinstein’s historic recitals in
which the Russian bear presented his audiences with a chronological
smorgasbord of musical history, covering a 300-year period from Byrd to
Chopin and even to Rubinstein himself. Rubinstein’s recitals were unusual
and enormously popular, but they revealed little about how things came to
be as they were. Bulow went for what mattered: the story of one creator’s
life of the mind, so to speak, through a presentation of style in motion. The
sophisticated listener could hear Beethoven’s musical character changing
before his very ears, as the composer remodeled the classical structures of
the past, slowly emerged with a new harmonic language, and eventually
drove the keyboard itself to the brink of impossibilities.

357 fn5 Hugo wolf’s opposition to Brahms has been determined for all
time by his remarkable observation that a single cymbal crash of Liszt’s was
worth more than all the Brahms symphonies combined.

359 fn 11 Daniela kept Bulow informed about Liszt’s final illness and death
in Bayreuth. Perhaps to spare his feelings, she withheld from him the
distressing sequence of events—involving medical malpractice and family
neglect—that constituted Liszt’s last ten days on earth, and to which she
herself had been a daily witness. In a letter to Daniela, Bulow wrote It was
really a divine dispensation that he should have faded out painlessly at
Bayreuth. At the same time in the interest of his posthumous fame I should
certainly like to see his mortal remains removed to Hungary. It is evident
that Daniela had become a mouthpiece for the Bayreuth publicity machine,
which had already begun churning out news that Liszt had faded away
painlessly, the word “Tristan” on his lips. Liszt’s death was not benign, and
his last word was not “Tristan”. It was “Luft!” He could not breathe. A
comprehensive account of Liszt’s disturbing demise may be found in my
Death of Franz Liszt (Walker)

382 fn 25 It was Bulow’s incorporation of the Luftpause into orchestral

music that disturbed many musicians because they were unused to it. Yet
the Luftpause and its second cousin the agogic accent, are among the more
expressive devices available to the interpreter, and are employed by soloists
all the time. Bulow was modelling himself on the great singers, who must
needs breathe if they are to survive the song. One can still hear something
of the tradition in the Brahms recordings of Bruno Walter and in light of this
conductor’s early admiration for Bulow it is legitimate to assume that he was
influenced by his predecessor. For the rest Bulow regarded musical
performance as a form of speech and even spoke of a musical punctuation
with commas, semicolons and periods. Damrosch provided two telling
examples of Bulow’s use of the comma in the first movement of Beethoven’s
Ninth Symphony.
404 We should like to know his reasons for performing this movement so
slowly. Bulow made no public reply although he could easily have reminded
everyone that even during Beethoven’s lifetime the composers metronome
markings were regarded as notoriously unreliable and Beethoven himself
had sometimes changed his mind about them. For the rest, the thought of
the hapless critic holding a score of Beethoven symphony in one hand and a
stopwatch in the other presents an image best left undisturbed. ‘

405 discussion of Bulows explanation of metronome marks and Beethoven.

“If you do not understand the difference between a piece called a Menuet,
and a piece that must be played in the tempo of one (tempo di Menuetto)
you do not really understand the problem.

406 Bulow was now in his 60th year and some listeners thought he had lost
something of his digital flexibility. It is true that he no longer possessed
either the strength or the opportunity to practice with the unrelenting
persistence of former years. Occasionally his fingers would stumble, and now
and then he might even drop a phrase. But none of this mattered in the
context of these magical afternoons. The old master was not performing as a
virtuoso, but interpreting as a disciple of the supreme musical creator of the
century. Against this, we should recall that at his final recital on April 5 Bulow
summoned the strength to play the Fugue from the Hammerklavier sonata
as an encore.

454 The funeral procession of Bulow passed along in front of the opera
house where Gustav Mahler had assembled the orchestra on the terrace for
a performance of Siegfried’s Funeral March from Wagner’s
Gotterdammerung. The day’s events had had a profound effect on Mahler,
who later revealed that he was inspired to compose the finale of his
Resurrection Symphony—which ends with a choral setting of the same
Klopstock poem “Auferstehen” he had heard during the funeral service.

Fn 35 this information comes from Mahler himself. The words of the poem
run:

Rise again, yea, thou shalt rise again,

My dust, after short rest!
Immortal life! Immortal life
He who called thee will grant thee.
To bloom again art thou sown!
The Lord of the Harvest goes
And gathers in, like sheaves,
Us who died!
The psychoanalyst Theodor Reik put forward the interesting notion that
Bulow—who had harshly rejected the first movement of this symphony, the
so called Todtenfeier or funeral rites, a few months earlier, a rejection which
had brought the composition of this symphony to a temporary standstill—
was unconsciously perceived by Mahler to be an authoritarian father figure
and rival, whose death now resulted in an emotional breakthrough for the
younger musician. Reik reconstructed Mahler’s unconscious death wish
against Bulow as follows ‘As certain as you are now dead because I wished it,
will my work which you rejected, be victorious and become immortal.’ The
traumatic scene in which Mahler played through the Todtenfeier movement
to Bulow on the piano in Nov 1891 only to observe him with his hands over
his ears, is central to this analysis.

458 Some felt a monument should be erected to him. It never was. Bulow
for his part would surely have preferred the wisdom of Cato the Elder 234-
149 BC:

‘I would rather have men ask why I have no statue, than why I have one.’

463 check out this piece: Bulow’s Reverie Fantastique op 7

Tarantella op 19

Konigs march op 28

Tannhauser 4-hand march and chorus