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This Team Is Ruining My Life
(But I Love Them)

How I Became a Professional Hockey Fan

Steve “Dangle” Glynn

 Contents
Foreword by Jeff Marek
My First Scar
The Jump to North America
Puck Head
First & Only
Zoo Stories
Getting Schooled
First Year
Seat Filler
Game of Bounces
Welcome to YouTube
Take Me Out to the Ball Game
Flamingo
Tea & Truculence
Junior
The Minors
“We’re Gonna Make You a Star”
Bring Your Lawyer
“EBs” & Flows
Swoosh
Stolen Couch
The Golden Day
Until the Final Buzzer
 Rookie Season
Headlock
Dougie Effing Hamilton
Cabbie
Summer Slump
Your Head in Your Own Boat
My Day as a Senator
Story Time with Smitty
You Have to Know the Game
The Lockout
Mrs. Dangle
Sidney Crosby’s Pants
Home Ice
Toga Party
Where Do You See Yourself in Five Years?
Use Your Head
Just Ask
Loud Noises
Jakin
Infiltrating Suit Country
My First Game
Intermission
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright
 Foreword by Jeff Marek

It’s November 20, 2018, and I’m sitting in the Lotus room at the
Sportsnet hockey studios, on the 10th floor of the CBC building in
downtown Toronto. This is where we watch games while we work
and throw it around about hockey: the rumours, the gossip, who’s
getting traded or punted — all of it grist for the mill in the Lotus. But
best of all, this is where we share stories — most not suitable for
broadcast.
Everybody has either a story or, at the very least, a thought
about Dangle. It’s impossible to hear his name and just shrug. When
people ask me about Steve, the conversation usually goes something
like this: Steve Dangle? Yeah, I know him. He’s a nice bunch of guys.
Tonight, I’m working with NHLer turned beloved hockey analyst
Colby Armstrong. He remembers Dangle from his playing days with
the Toronto Maple Leafs.

I first saw him on one of his now-famous LFRs (I don’t

even know what that means) when I was playing with the
Leafs. I loved to surf the net, especially YouTube. I’d go
down massive rabbit holes, and one night I came across
this video.
Why not give it a click?
This kid popped up in his decked-out Leafs bedroom,
going absolutely bananas over how embarrassing it was
that we got beat by Nashville. I was laying on the couch,
 watching this kid as he just ripped us apart, losing it Leafs
super-fan style.
I yelled to my wife, “Hey, you gotta check out this Leafs
fan,” as I was dying laughing. “This guy’s an animal.”
When I got past how crazy and hardcore of a Leafs fan
he was, I was actually pretty amazed at the style of video. I
had never seen a style like that before. It was so good. I
learned later it’s called jump cuts. I wasn’t even mad he
was destroying us; I was impressed at how good the video
was.
But when I first met him, he was quieter than I thought
he’d be — maybe I was expecting the guy from the video.
Now I work with Steve at Sportsnet. How funny is that?

Like many of you, I first “met” Steve on YouTube; although,

“saw” is a better way to put it. Actually, to say I first “experienced”
Steve on YouTube might be even better. It was 2008, and one of his
videos was linked on Greg Wyshynski’s highly popular and influential
Puck Daddy blog on Yahoo Sports. I hadn’t seen anything like it
before.
Part of me was stunned.
What is this?
And who is this guy?
Steve is a fan talking — and at times screaming — to himself and
his alter ego, Hat Guy, call and response style. But these are more
than just fan videos, and Steve is more than just a fan.
These are open letters to hockey fans about how Steve feels
about his team. Part of it even seems like therapy. Steve is the fan
who has to get it all out.
 I love it.
There’s a rule in our industry: no cheering in the press box. But
there’s no rule about cheering on from your bedroom. Steve was,
and still is, the epitome of the “fan journalist.” To many people in the
broadcast and print world, those two words form a dichotomy, but in
the new era of media currency, it’s become more and more accepted
and commonplace. It represents a refreshing change in many ways:
being honest about your bias.
More than anyone else, I point to Steve when I talk to young
people who want to break into hockey media. His is the way you do
it.
When I started at the Fan 590 in 1995, the only way to get in
was to catch a break. Somebody had to hire you and, generally, you
had to go to small-town Canada to learn how to work in
broadcasting. Maybe you came back, but you probably didn’t. This
industry gives you a reason and opportunity to quit just about every
day. But today, you don’t need to wait for someone to wave a magic
wand over your head and hire you. You can just do it yourself. That’s
what Steve did.
Sure, he had some internships and caught some breaks along the
way, but Steve got in because he used everything around him. Every
bit of technology and every marketing platform — he was on it, and
he stayed on it, consistently cranking out videos and keeping his
name in the mix. Steve was consistent. He started and never
stopped.
Want to be a broadcaster? Start a podcast, start making videos,
write a blog. This has been my message to people looking for a way
in. Build a body of work, and they will find you. They found Steve.
 Steve tapped on the hockey world’s shoulder for years, and when
it turned around, he knew what to say.

Jeff Marek, 2018

 My First Scar

Do you have hockey scars? I have only one, though I don’t recall
getting it.
I was about three and playing ball hockey in the driveway with
the neighbour kids. As my mom remembers it, I ran inside crying
and bleeding from the corner of my left eye. The game must have
gotten crazy, or maybe it was just because I was a motor-mouthed
hyperactive kid who hadn’t developed proper balancing skills yet: I
had apparently ran into the brick corner of our garage.
My mom patched me up, the tears soon stopped, and I started to
run back outside.
“Where are you going?” my mom asked.
I yelled back, “I gotta finish the game!”
It’s what Don Cherry would call a “Good Ol’ Canadian Boy”
moment — but sadly, I don’t have one that relates to actual ice.
Why?
I never played the game.
Although I did fantasize about scoring the Stanley Cup–winning
goal (and I still do), it never really bothered me that I didn’t play
“real” hockey because deep down, I knew I wasn’t destined to be a
star athlete. I wanted something different.
In Anchorman, there’s a scene where Ron Burgundy comes on
the TV at a bar, and a biker shouts, “Hey, everybody! Shut the hell
up! Ron Burgundy’s on!” That is exactly the way Don Cherry and Ron
MacLean were treated at my house during my childhood. I
remember watching “Coach’s Corner” as a kid — whether it was with
my parents, aunts, uncles, and other family members, the reaction
was the same.
Ron and Don would appear on the TV during the first
intermission and yell and scream at each other. There’s no way I
understood what the hell they were talking about; what I was
paying attention to, even at the age of four or five, was how the
adults reacted.
From one rant to another, my family would go from laughing at
Ron and Don to laughing with them. That was fascinating to me.
Every Saturday, Ron and Don had the attention of millions around
the country. More importantly from my little perspective, they had
the attention of every adult in my house. As a kid, all you want is for
adults to pay attention to you and take you seriously. So to me, that
was just as incredible as any Doug Gilmour goal, any Wendel Clark
hit, or any Felix Potvin flashy glove save.
Fast forward about a quarter of a century to spring 2017, and I’m
sitting in a restaurant in Whitby, Ontario, with three friends. I look
up and Ron and Don are talking about Jarome Iginla on “Coach’s
Corner.” At least that’s what I assumed they were talking about
because the sound was off.
A few minutes later, I looked down at my phone. I had text
messages from 17 different people, missed calls, voicemails, and a
bunch of notifications.
I’m not even kidding when I say my first thought was that
somebody had died.
“OMG CALL ME RIGHT NOW!” my wife messaged me. About a
dozen messages from others were some variation of “HOLY SHIT!!!”
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 Ron MacLean had said my name on “Coach’s Corner” live on
Hockey Night in Canada. Apparently, he had seen a video that I had
made for Sportsnet about how Jarome Iginla should have been
named one of the NHL’s top 100 players of all time.
“We’ve never met Steve Dangle, but he said he should have been
one of the 100,” Ron said.
“Who?” Don interrupted.
“Steve Dangle. He’s on Hockey Central every weeknight,” Ron
explained.
Don then went off about how ludicrous it was that Evgeni Malkin
wasn’t one of the top 100 either, but I had got what I needed.
So how the hell did it happen?
Whether you’re a fan of mine, you can’t stand me, or you have
no idea who the hell I am, I want to give you my sincerest thanks
for picking up this book. Time is precious and every single day there
are new ways for us to spend it. The fact that you would choose to
spend some time reading this book or listening to my manic hockey
rants is truly an honour.
I love reading books or hearing stories from hockey broadcasters
about how they got to where they are. Most of them, however, tend
to be older — in their 50s, 60s, 70s — and are accomplished
individuals who have led interesting lives.
While I don’t have the profile of those guys, and I haven’t been
on national television for three decades, and, in fact, I only started
writing this book at the ripe age of 29, just three short years after
moving out of my parents’ house, I’m in the thick of it right now,
trying to establish myself in sports media — an industry that appears
to be shrinking by the day.
 If you are looking to pursue a career in sports, broadcasting, or
anything else for that matter, my hope is that you will find the
stories of me desperately trying over and over again to get my foot
in the sports broadcasting door relatable and proof that you should
never give up. I’ll also tell you all of the dumb mistakes I’ve made
while trying to stick said foot in said door. Hopefully you’ll read about
my silly mistakes and learn from them. If nothing else, hopefully
you’ll laugh.
And if you’re not looking to work in sports media, I hope this
gives you an idea of what people are going through right now as
they try to establish their own career and identity. You may even
relate to many of the stories in this book; even though industries
and technology change, humans are still just human . . .
Some of us just yell louder than others.
 The Jump to North America

My family’s story begins outside of Canada, which makes it

extremely Canadian.
More than 100 years ago, my great-grandfather on my dad’s side
was an orphan in England. Because we don’t know who his parents
were, there’s a natural mystery about his origin. The rumour within
the family is that he’s a royal bastard — not a bad-guy bastard, a
literal bastard. It goes like this: King Edward VII had a child with a
chambermaid and that child is my great-grandfather. Look, I’m just
relaying the story my family told me, OK?
Obviously we couldn’t prove that. Photos of my grandpa as a
young man look quite a bit like King George V’s son, King George VI,
but that’s hardly evidence.
However, my great-grandfather did attend an expensive naval
academy, despite growing up in an orphanage. Who paid for that? I
was even able to find a record of him on a naval ship in 1911. At 18
years old, he was the youngest member of the crew.
But it doesn’t really matter who his parents were. He made a life
for himself, married my great-grandmother, and started a family that
included my grandpa. That’s all that matters.
My grandmother on my dad’s side has an interesting story, too.
Her family lived on the island of Guernsey. While technically one of
the British Channel Islands, it’s actually right off the coast of France.
In fact, most of the streets have French names. Before she began
losing her memory, my grandma also recounted that her family had
Norwegian ancestry and potentially a bit of Irish, but she wasn’t
sure.
Her family had money. My aunt said she heard someone in the
family line had invented something to do with milk cartons. My
grandmother’s father owned a hotel in Guernsey called The Swan.
The problem with him, however, was that he was a royal bastard in
the bad-guy sense. He was a playboy and a gambler. By the time my
grandmother was a young child, her father had racked up such
terrible gambling debt that he was left with two options: send his
children, including my grandmother, to a workhouse or sell off the
hotels. His wife, my great-grandmother, refused to let her children
be sent away, so bye-bye, hotel.
He abandoned his family, never to be seen again.
From a very young age, my grandmother proved she was not to
be messed with. She was at school one day with a painful ear
infection. For some reason, one of her teachers grabbed her harshly
by the ear. My grandma hauled off and headbutted this lady right in
her chest, like she was Zinedine Zidane at the World Cup.
While some of my distant family was in Guernsey as the Germans
occupied the Channel Islands during the Second World War, my
great-grandmother had brought her children to mainland England
years before. There is a story of my grandmother, in her mid-teens,
running around with two large pails of water during the Blitz to help
put out countless fires from the bombings. The next day, with her
adrenaline gone, she couldn’t lift them at all.
My grandpa, proving to be no chicken himself, enlisted in the
navy one day in 1942, when he was just 17. In case you’re not the
biggest history buff, that’s smack dab in the middle of the Second
World War. Think about what you were doing at 17.
 “How old are you?” the man at the office asked.
“Eighteen,” my grandpa lied.
“Right, sure you are,” said the man, continuing to fill out the
paperwork.
Soon after, my grandpa was on a Royal Navy ship bound for the
southwest coast of Italy. He was a signalman, first class.
On my grandpa’s ship’s approach to the beaches of Salerno, it
was hit by a depth charge, an anti-ship missile. He was wounded in
the back during the attack.
Once he managed to swim and drag himself to shore, Grandpa
was rescued by American troops who had already reached the
beach.
“We got a limey,” the Americans told their medics as they
brought my grandpa in to get looked at.
In the shock of the moment, my grandpa thought they said they
were going to cut his leg off. He started fighting them as hard as he
could. When they managed to wrestle him to the table, they told
him they were only going to cut his pants off.
“Oh, OK.” I’ve always loved the way my grandpa tells that story.
To this day, over three-quarters of a century later, my grandpa
still has a chunk of metal about the size of a loonie stuck in his back,
less than an inch away from his spine. They never removed it
because they were too worried about potentially paralyzing him.
Decades later, it was the cause of a few awkward conversations at
airport security.
After my grandpa was fully healed, he was told to report to
Scotland for training for a secret mission. That mission ended up
being D-Day, which I’m proud to say my grandpa participated in.
 After the war, my grandparents married and decided to move to
Canada to live in Scarborough, a suburb just outside of Toronto.
My grandma, a brilliant woman fluent in French, German, and
Flemish, worked in communications throughout mainland Europe
during the war. She found a job doing similar work for Bell Canada.
My grandpa found a government job with the province. One of the
jobs he had was as a television repairman.
Together, they had three children: my dad was born first,
followed by my two aunts.
Then there’s the Italian side of my family.
My nonni both came from a small Italian town called Monteleone,
in the province of Foggia, in the Puglia region. If you can’t be
bothered to google it, it’s right around the Achilles tendon of the
boot.
They both came from generations of farmers. My mom’s parents
were just young children during the Second World War, but my
nonna’s mom and several other family members were arrested
during a riot in 1942.
As the story goes, all the men were off at war. Meanwhile, the
women of Monteleone were at home, angry and starving. One day,
several women were arrested when they tried to stop an officer who
was confiscating a pot of their corn flour. The women were thrown
into a warehouse where they discovered large rations of food. The
fascist-appointed politicians in charge had been hoarding the food.
The three women set fire to the warehouse and broke free.
When the townsfolk, my family included, discovered what happened,
they formed an angry mob outside of the Carabinieri’s office, armed
with clubs and pitchforks. About 180 people were arrested or
detained that day.
 Years later, with the war over and my nonna and nonno in their
late teens, they made their way to a place where a large number of
the town’s population had immigrated: Toronto. It’s not an
uncommon story: my grandparents left with very little money but a
strong family and community connection in town.
My nonno worked as a machinist for Canada Bread. A job like
that comes with perks, like fresh bread for your family each day. My
nonna worked as a seamstress in Toronto’s garment district on
Spadina Avenue. It was piece work, meaning she basically had to
fight off her own coworkers for pieces of fabric to sew.
Before my nonno died of cancer when my mom was just 12 years
old, my nonni had four children: my three uncles and their little
sister, my mom.
My mom’s oldest brother, my godfather Lenny, was the athlete of
the year at his high school and captain of the wrestling team. The
second oldest brother, Rocky, allegedly fought off five guys at once
as a teenager. The third brother, Dom, has about half a foot on both
of them, and his muscles got him into the Toronto Sun as the
Sunshine Boy many years ago. (I’d say that he’d be embarrassed
that I put this tidbit in a book, but he’s had the picture proudly
displayed in his house for as long as I can remember.)
When that same uncle was younger, he used to make a backyard
ice rink by flooding the tomato garden in the winter. And in the
spring, when he left his hockey sticks in the backyard, my nonno
would saw off the blades and use them as tomato-plant stakes. It’s
like they were trying to jam as many Italian-Canadian stereotypes
into one situation as possible.
These family tales might not seem important to my weird little
hockey story, but they are. Without my grandparents taking the risks
they did to move to this country, it’s unlikely I would have grown up
to be a hockey fan. In fact, I wouldn’t have grown up at all because
my parents would never have met.
Despite the potentially intimidating trio of brothers, my dad still
had the nerve to show up at their house and start dating my mom.
My dad had long rocker hair and played the drums. Now over 60
years of age, he still plays in a metal band and beats those drums
like they’re the Ottawa Senators in the playoffs and his sticks are
Gary Roberts.
One day, Dad went to his best friend Mike’s house. When he
showed up, Mike’s younger sister and her friend, a tall, athletic
brunette, were getting ready to go dancing with their fake IDs.
Guess who that friend with the fake ID was. That’s right — my mom.
The moment they laid eyes on each other, they said, “Let’s make
a hockey blogger together.” True romance.
After a few years of dating, my parents were married in 1985,
and they moved to a house in east Scarborough, near the Pickering
border. For those of you who can only navigate Toronto using Drake
lyrics, that’s about a five minute drive east of Morningside.
My mom worked as a secretary at the Yellow Pages not too far
west of their new home. Knowing how she drives, however, the drive
probably took her somewhere between 45 minutes and five days. My
dad worked in Toronto for a company called Cadillac Fairview, which
owns several buildings right in the downtown core. He worked as a
maintenance operator, fixing fans, air conditioners, and so on.
After three years of peaceful marital bliss, during an ice storm on
the night of March 12, 1988, my mom gave birth to a 7 pound, 12
ounce bundle of joy at Scarborough Centenary Hospital. The doctor
said I was the first baby he had ever seen born in a Leafs jersey. I’m
surprised the doctors weren’t more alarmed by that — not because
my mom gave birth to a fully clothed baby but because the Leafs
sucked in the ’80s.
“Are you Steven?” my dad asked, the first time he held me.
Just then, I opened my eyes, and that was that. Thank goodness
I did, too. Dad wanted to name me Keith.
My parents say I hardly ever cried, and when I did, you could
barely even hear me. I guess I figured I’d save my tears for the
lifetime of heartache that comes with Leafs fandom.
My childhood was full of Berenstain Bears stories, Disney books,
and more. My parents read to me often and instilled a love of
reading, storytelling, and imagination at a very young age. The side
effect: I wouldn’t shut up.
When I was a toddler, I went to daycare at the YMCA by the
Scarborough Town Centre. They put me with kids who were a year
older than me because I was yapping circles around the other three-
year-olds, who were still learning to talk.
When I was three years old, a monumental event changed my
family’s lives forever and shaped who I am today.
In the few days prior, Mom told Nonna that she wasn’t feeling
well. Nonna was concerned because the symptoms my mom
described matched the way she felt just before she gave birth. This
was especially concerning because it was July and my sister wasn’t
due to be born until November.
One day, my dad called my mom at work like he always did, but
she wasn’t there. She had gone into labour and was taken to the
hospital. My grandpa drove over to pick my dad up from work and
rushed him to the hospital.
 With my dad at my mom’s bedside, my sister was born at 24
weeks, about four months premature, weighing 1.5 pounds. There’s
a good chance you have a jar of peanut butter in your house right
now that weighs more than my sister did when she was born.
As soon as she came into this world, doctors rushed her away to
another room. She was given a 50/50 chance to live.
Rachel spent most of the first four months of her life in an
incubator with tubes up her nose. The hospital had tiny diapers
specifically made for premature babies, but they had to cut hers in
half. Generally speaking, in the event of premature birth, doctors
hope that the baby makes it to at least 30 weeks before being born.
By then, the organs they need to survive will have been developed
enough. Rachel was born about a month and a half earlier than that.
She was born with blood on the brain and some brain damage and
had a lot of difficulty breathing.
Some of my earliest childhood memories involve visiting Rachel in
the hospital. I remember the big bins full of powder blue hospital
gowns we all had to wear to get into the ward. I remember my
parents being concerned their excitable toddler son would start
poking at things or trip over a cord or something.
At the time, I thought everything that was happening was
normal. All kids get bedtime stories, all kids love the Ninja Turtles,
and all babies spend the first four months of their lives in the
hospital.
After about four months, thanks to the incredible efforts of the
doctors at Mount Sinai Hospital and Sick Kids, my sister came home.
The struggle wasn’t over, though. I was a quiet baby who slept
all night and ate to my heart’s content. Rachel was a whole different
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experience. She came home at just 4.5 pounds and even lost weight
in the first couple of weeks she was home.
For the next few years, Rachel did not sleep properly, so neither
did my parents. Feeding her was a struggle; it would often take up
to an hour and she would sometimes stop breathing in the middle of
it.
At about one year old, my sister was diagnosed with cerebral
palsy, a neurological disorder that inhibits your motor function. My
dad doesn’t like admitting it, but he had a hard time accepting this
information and angrily rejected what the doctor said at first. Much
later, at seven, Rachel was also diagnosed with autism, although the
symptoms had always been there.
Time has made me appreciate the gravity of the things I grew up
with and accepted as normal. I’m older now than my mom was
when my sister was born. I can’t imagine the constant anxiety and
dread my parents lived with every day, just trying to keep their
daughter alive while raising a son at the same time.
Today, Rachel is happy. She still lives at home and will require
care for the rest of her life. She can walk around a little bit, but for
journeys of any distance longer than car-to-house, she needs a
wheelchair. She can’t read, she can’t write, and her speech is
limited. My parents and I can understand what she’s trying to say,
but others are usually confused.
Rachel can sing as loud as anybody I’ve ever met; those tiny
lungs aren’t tiny anymore. She knows the entire script of both Toy
Story and The Lion King, right down to the sound effects. I know
because she recites everyone’s lines five seconds before they do.
She can spell her name. She can use a spoon and fork. She can
smile and laugh. She gives great hugs and knows I’m her brother.
She’s tough. My parents worked very hard to give Rachel and me the
best lives possible.
To add to the stress of my sister’s health concerns, my dad was
already in constant physical pain. Prior to my sister’s birth, my dad
picked something up awkwardly and injured his back while at work
one day. He was in a great deal of pain and when he woke up the
next day, he could barely move.
Well, that sucks, but it happens. Sometimes you wrench your
back a bit, right? He’ll be better in a jiffy.
Days pass, still not better. Weeks pass, still not better. He went
on disability from work. He saw a specialist and they said he was
fine. He saw a different specialist months later and they told him he
was fine, too.
He finally returned to work, still in agony but able to do a few
things. Ironically, returning to work saved him.
The nephew of a co-worker was a kinesiologist and had
chiropractic credentials. After well over a year of living in constant
agony, my dad was sitting in this man’s office explaining his
symptoms, with tears in his eyes.
The man stared at Dad for a few seconds.
“Well, I can tell you one part of the problem just by looking at
you,” he said.
My dad lit up. “What?”
“Your hip’s out.”
My dad had been misdiagnosed and had been living with his hip
out of its socket for the past 15 months. About a week later, with
some muscle, a leather wallet, and what I can only imagine was the
entire dictionary of curse words, they crudely jammed my dad’s hip
back into place.
 Unfortunately, that was only the beginning of dad’s recovery. His
back was weak and injured for years afterward — it’s probably
healthier now in his 60s than it was when he was in his mid-30s. As
he often says, one of the worst parts about the whole experience
was that he couldn’t pick up his toddler son, me.
I’ve learned you can’t put a price on loving parents and you’re
probably not going to fully appreciate what they have done for you
until you’re a little older.
When Rachel was born, my mom didn’t want her son’s entire
summer to be spent visiting the hospital. My mom lost a lot of blood
during childbirth and despite Nonna’s protests, Mom and Dad
brought me to the Toronto Zoo while Rachel was still in the hospital
— all in an effort to make life seem normal. Needless to say, my
mom struggled and didn’t have a great time. She didn’t have to do
that for me, but she wanted to because she cared.
All of this played a part in my upbringing.
The hardships my family endured had lasting effects on me and
my development, and they all contributed to the person I am today.
I never felt neglected or unloved as a kid, though my sister
definitely required more attention than I did. It’s probably normal for
older siblings, especially ones who were previously an only child, to
get jealous when a newborn baby comes around, and I was no
different.
My parents were always home with me, but I often had to
entertain myself. I was obsessed with action figures. One Christmas
I remember getting Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior, and “Macho Man”
Randy Savage action figures from my aunts and uncles. I used to
make all of my toys wrestle each other, even the non-wrestling ones.
“It’s Dr. Peter Venkman of the Ghostbusters versus Raphael from the
Ninja Turtles for the World Heavyweight Championship!”
Toys were lots of fun, but they had nothing on attention.
I began school shortly after my sister was born. My friend Adam
Rodricks, who has been my friend since kindergarten, swears up and
down that one morning in senior kindergarten I pulled my pants
down during “O Canada.” According to his memory, I didn’t wait very
long. “O Ca-na—” Bang! Full moon! Right there! Yeah, I probably got
into pretty big trouble for that one.
And although attention-seeking would be a theme throughout my
school years — “Steven talks a lot in class; Steven is disruptive;
Steven needs to pay more attention,” they’d say — it didn’t stop at
school. One time, when a physiotherapist came by the house to
work with Rachel’s strength and flexibility, I must have felt like I was
being ignored. I had this coffee mug–sized roly-poly toy that was
made of thick, hard plastic. When I decided I was fed up, I sent the
roly-poly flying across the room.
My mom was mortified. “He never does this,” she told the
physiotherapist truthfully.
The physiotherapist wasn’t even phased. They told Mom that
they saw this sort of thing all the time. Siblings of newborns crave
attention. Siblings of newborns who require even more attention
than normal crave it even more.
Mom might have been right that I had never done that with roly-
poly toys. But when the Leafs lost? Oh, I would rip the little Leafs
jersey off my back and whip it across the room. “This is why we
shouldn’t let him stay up to watch the end of the game,” my mom
would say.
 I didn’t just want any kind of attention, though. Sure, there was
the occasional meltdown where I whipped my roly-poly around like I
was Doug Flutie, but I knew the difference between good attention
and bad attention. One form of good attention: laughter.
Cartoons and kid shows were great as a four- or five-year-old,
but what I was interested in was what made my parents laugh.
The creators of kids cartoons are pretty aware that parents get
stuck watching them, so they often throw in a little subtle adult
humour that most kids don’t even understand. Bugs Bunny and
Animaniacs were full of those moments.
The stuff that made my parents laugh was fascinating to me. I
wanted their attention, and I’d get it by making them laugh. I would
ask why the joke was funny but because it was usually
inappropriate, I’d be told, “Ah, you’re a little too young for that.”
So at school, I would just repeat the stuff that made my parents
laugh. Although the kids would straight up say, “I don’t get it,” I’d
get laughs from the teachers, and that was good enough for me.
They probably weren’t even laughing at the joke — they were
laughing at this little five-year-old with a goofy haircut telling jokes
he didn’t even understand.
Another reason I constantly clowned around was to entertain my
sister. She cried a lot as a child. Imagine how frustrating and
confusing it would be to not be able to communicate what you
wanted or how you felt. That’s what she struggled with every day as
a kid. Sometimes she would scream and bawl her eyes out when she
had to get on and off the school bus in front of our house.
Transitions have always been a very upsetting thing for her.
With my parents beat from work and no sleep, I always took on
entertaining Rachel and making her happy as my job. It was the one
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If the certain chivalric romanticism of Weber’s music is hard to
analyze, the special charm of Schubert’s is wholly elusive. We have
to do with an utterly different nature. Weber was an aristocrat, a
rover among wild companions, a hanger-on at the theatre for a while,
if you will, but none the less of distinguished birth, of polished
manners and of fine wit. Schubert was more than any other of the
composers, even more than Haydn, a man of the people. He was
happy to mingle with the peasants, happy to play hours at a time for
their dancing. Beethoven is said to have modelled the music of the
country people’s dance in the ‘Pastoral Symphony’ upon the music
he heard played in a certain country tavern to which at one time he
delighted to go. Brahms in his impoverished boyhood used to earn a
few pence by playing for the sailors’ dancing in the taverns along the
waterfront of Hamburg. But Beethoven regarded himself, as we have
said, as the high priest of an exalted art; and Brahms was hardly less
imperious. Yet Schubert, for all his ideals which rose ever and ever
higher, for all the fact that he numbered acquaintances in the same
aristocratic families which had seen Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven
come and go, remained a man of the people, a singer in the sway of
his art, a loveable, reckless, sentimental and affectionate boy.

All his music is lyrical. The song is never absent from his pianoforte
works, no matter how instrumental parts of them may be. He is
essentially a melodist. His rhythms have the lilt of a dance. These
two elements are not disguised. They undergo no intellectual
transformations. They are as obvious as in the folk-songs and
dances of the country people with whom he loved to associate.
Hence the almost complete lack of sophistication in his music, the
naturalness which distinguishes it from all other music.

His harmonies are strange and warm. They lack the subtlety of
Mozart on the one hand, the frankness of Weber on the other. They
have not the expressive significance of Beethoven. They seem
rather to go beside his music than to go under it. One listens through
them, so to speak, as one might look upon a procession through a
colored mist that now conceals, now discloses, that always plays
magic tricks with the sight. Two harmonic procedures appear more
or less regularly in his music. One is the interchange of major and
minor, the other the bodily shifting of the harmonic fabric up and
down the scale. The latter are changes rather than modulations. By
reason of these unexpected, unaccountable harmonies, his music
sounds now near, now far. One moment it is with us and familiar, the
next it is aloof and strange.

Schubert’s hands were thick, his fingers short and fat. Though he
was not an elegant or a polished player, he had great beauty of
touch and a natural, easy fluency, especially in the rapid passages of
his own works. Richard Heuberger, in his excellent book on
Schubert, points to the fact that most of Schubert’s pianoforte music
is written in keys that require the use of many black notes on the
keyboard; and suggests, as one reason for this, that Schubert found
it easier to play in such keys. It is generally admitted that the key of
G major is the most difficult for the pianist.

Schubert’s pianoforte music comprises many long sonatas, two sets

of impromptus, a set of short pieces called ‘Musical Moments’ and a
number of waltzes and other dances. The sonatas are for the most
part unsatisfactory as such. In such extended forms there is need of
an intellectual command of the science of music, and a sense of
great proportions, both of which Schubert lacked. Hence the
separate movements, the first and even more often the last, are
loose and rambling in structure, and too long for the work as a
whole. There is so little cohesion in the group that one may in most
cases take the individual movements quite out of it and play them
with perfect satisfaction.

Not all the movements are over-long, and some of the sonatas can
be enjoyed in their entirety. Perhaps the most satisfactory from the
point of view of structure is that in A minor, opus 42. In this the first
movement is admirably constructed, firmly knit, full of distinct
contrast, and in the middle section well developed. The andante and
variations is undeniably long, but the formal preciseness of the
following movement and of the rondo succeeds in giving to the group
a definiteness and balance which will pass muster.
A sonata in D major, opus 120, is considerably shorter, but is even
from the point of view of form less satisfactory. The first movement
reveals one of Schubert’s great weaknesses. It happens here to be
almost inconsiderable, but it is none the less evident. This is the lack
of ideas in the treatment of the development section. There are nine
measures which give the impression that Schubert was content to
keep his music going with makeshifts. We have nothing of any
significance, a series of octaves in the left hand answered by a
series in the right, and a full chord at the beginning of each measure,
whereby a desired modulation from the key of C-sharp minor to that
of A major is accomplished.

This is bare music. The passage is so short that it hardly mars the
movement seriously, but unhappily other movements are nearly
destroyed by the weakness at which this one hints. For example, the
first movement of a sonata in A minor, opus 143, which contains
themes that are truly inspired, breaks hopelessly adrift in the
development section. The section is fatally long, too. And what does
it offer to hold our interest? Only measure after measure of an
unvaried dotted rhythm, for the most part in the right hand over
chords which may be beautiful but are seemingly without any aim.
Schubert either does not know what to do or he is utterly lost in
dreaming.

This is real tragedy in music, the ruin of most beautiful ideas by a

fatal weakness. The opening theme promises even more than that of
the earlier sonata in the same key. It is most mysterious, most
suggestive, the very best of Schubert. And the second theme is of
unearthly beauty. But in this weak movement both are lost, both
thrown away. The whole sonata suffers in consequence. The
andante is not especially noteworthy, but the scherzo is a
masterpiece, not only of expression, but of workmanship; and so is
the final rondo.

Similarly, the sonata in B-flat major, written not long before he died,
falls into a heap of ruins. The first theme of the first movement is
matchless in beauty. Schubert is loth to leave it, we are loth to have
it go. A strange melody in F-sharp minor does for a second theme,
and this simply rambles on through sudden changes of harmony until
it reaches the key of F major, only to give way to measure after
measure of equally aimless wandering, with only figures to save the
music from amorphousness. Note then a closing theme of perfect
beauty! Play it with all tenderness, with all the delicate suggestion
you can put into it, and still even this first section of the music is long
and overbalanced. There is a wealth of poetry in it, even a great
depth of feeling and a heart-moving sadness. It seems a sacrilege to
decry it; yet there it stands, frustrate.

The development section is what one would expect, weak in

structure. Yet the second part of it is strangely moving, from the
establishment of the key of D minor to the return of the first theme.
The life of the music seems held in suspense. There is only a steady
hushed tapping of triads, measure after measure, swaying from D
minor to F major and ever back again, with reminiscences of the
rambling measures in F major of the first section, floating here and
there like mist in a dull rain. Strains of the first theme drift by, there
are low muffled trills on D. Finally, the tapping ceases, as rain might
cease; a quiet scale, like drops from the branches of some wet tree,
falls to a low trill, and, after a silence, the first theme comes back into
the music.

One can hardly find sadder or more beautiful music than these
measures, or than the lovely first theme; and yet the movement is
strangely without form and void. The andante which follows it is
overdrawn. The repetitions of the sections in A major might have
been omitted to better effect; but there is no looseness of structure.
The music is unspeakably sad, with the sadness of the songs of the
Winterreise. The scherzo is flawless, the final rondo long but well
sustained. Yet, by reason of the aimlessness of long measures in the
first movement, the sonata as a whole is like a condemned building.
And in this sonata, too, there is an intensity of mood that, except for
the last movement, should succeed in welding the whole group
together. Even the last movement is not entirely independent.
What is most lamentable in all this is that Schubert poured much of
his most inspired music into the sonatas. Little of his music presents
more intrinsically beautiful material. In no other of his pianoforte
pieces did he show such a wide and varied control of the technical
possibilities of the instrument. Yet all would seem to be of little or no
avail. Many of the most precious of his poetic fancies lie buried in
these imperfect works.

Though Schubert was not a virtuoso, he displayed instinct for and

ingenuity in devising pianoforte effects. In the huge ‘Wanderer
Fantasy,’ opus 15, he seems to have set himself the task of
awakening the greatest possible resonance of the instrument. The
big chords and arpeggios in the first movement are not, however,
overpoweringly effective. The variations in the second are more
successful. They certainly look impressive on the printed page, and
the sound of the climax is gigantic. But the stupendous is not natural
to Schubert on the whole. He is more of a poet than a virtuoso. The
first movement and the scherzo of the sonata in D major, opus 53,
are big in effect. The spacing and rhythm in the piu lento section of
the first movement has been pointed out by Heuberger as significant.
The vigorous first subject of the scherzo can make the piano ring.
But in general Schubert shows at his best as regards pianoforte
writing in more delicate measures, and in brilliant rather than
massive and sonorous effects. The last movement of the sonata in A
major, opus 120, is a good example of a piquant style of which he
was master. Here the long scales terminating in chords high up on
the keyboard are quite dazzling.

He was not especially original in accompaniment figures. One finds a

great deal of mediocre Alberti-bass stuff. On the other hand, he is a
master in weaving a more subtle sort of arabesque about his
melodies, or over or below them. One sees this not far from the
beginning of the adagio movement of the big fantasy opus 15, in the
ornamentation of the Fantasia, opus 27, and in the Trio of the
Scherzo in opus 147. The closing measures of the first section of the
first movement of this sonata are very like Chopin. There are many
passages of excellent free writing for the instrument, such as the C
major section of the allegretto in opus 164. This, and, in another way,
the second section of the minuet in opus 122, are very like passages
in the Schumann Carnaval. On the whole his treatment of the
pianoforte is more delicate and more distinguished than Weber’s.

Dr. Oskar Bie has remarked wisely in his history of pianoforte music
that to one who has not a soft touch the beauties of Schubert’s
music will not be revealed. It is particularly in lovely, veiled passages
that he excels. Except for the final rondo almost all of the sonata in
B-flat major to which we have referred is to be played very nearly
pianissimo. The poetic and generous Schumann felt that in certain
parts of the andante of the great C major symphony, a spirit from
heaven might be walking through the orchestra, to which the
instruments would seem to be listening. There are many passages in
the pianoforte music which suggest such ghostly visitations, which
whisper far more than speak. And in such places Schubert’s scoring
will be found to be matchless, as delicate as Chopin’s, though less
complicated.

In spite of the many inspired themes in the sonatas, and of the

variety and richness of pianoforte effects with which they are often
presented, the works are, as we have already said, too faulty or too
weak in structure to hold a secure and honored place in pianoforte
literature. It is vain to speculate on what Schubert might have done
with the form had he lived longer. The last sonata is discouraging.

But in shorter forms there is no doubt that he was a supreme and

perfect artist. The two sets of impromptus and the set of shorter
pieces called the Moments Musicals are masterpieces. It is hardly an
exaggeration to say that in them lie concealed the root and flower of
the finest pianoforte literature produced during the next half century
or more in Germany. Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Brahms owe
immensely to them.

Each set of Impromptus consists of four pieces. The title was not
given to them by Schubert, but was added by the publishers of the
first editions, the Haslingers of Vienna. Schumann suggested that
the first, second, and fourth of the second set might be taken as
three movements of a sonata in F minor. The first of these is very
much after the manner of the first movements of Schubert’s sonatas;
but the first section is not repeated, and the section which at first
might suggest a real development section is repeated entirely at the
end of the piece.

The first impromptu of the first set is built on a single phrase. The
quality of the music is legendary. A sharp preliminary G claims our
attention, and then the story begins, pianissimo, a single voice,
answered, as it were, by a chorus; and what this voice sings, or
rather chants, is the burden of the rest. One might fancy the piece a
series of variations but that there seems to be some story
progressing with it. At times the theme is smooth and serene, as in
the A-flat major section near the beginning, where it floats along over
a rolling accompaniment. Later on it is passing through dark, wild
forests. The agitated triplet octaves, inexorably on G, suggest the
‘Erl King.’ And so ever on, the same phrase, as if it were a lone
soldier on his way through a land now wild and dreary, now sunny.
During the last two pages the restless triplet figures are never still,
and always they come back to beat on G. Just before the end the
agitation stops, but still the G persists, in long octaves, and still the
tramp of the soldier keeps on. What it may mean no one can tell.
The impression is that the strange music continues on, long after our
ears have heard it die away.

The second impromptu is for the most part in a light and happy vein.
There is a constant flow of triplet figures, wonderfully graceful and
sinuous, over the simplest of accompaniments. A sudden change of
mood, an abrupt modulation, usher in a section in the nature of a
trio. There is a bold melody, greatly impassioned, very much after
the manner of Schumann; a breadth of style and a power wholly
different from the light figure-work which has preceded it. But back to
the lighter mood the music comes again, back to the flow of
exquisite, light sound, only to be brought once more to a sudden
check. There is a short coda of greatest vehemence and brilliance.
Here is salon music of a wholly new variety. It has nothing in
common with the showy polonaises and rondos of Weber, nor yet
with the sentimental nocturnes of Field. In fact, one would find it
difficult to find its parallel elsewhere in the literature of pianoforte
music, its strange combination of ingenuousness and grace and wild
passion.

The third is in G-flat major, though it is perhaps better known in the

key of G, to which Haslinger took the liberty of transposing it, much
to the harm of its effect. It is in the nature of a reverie, akin to the
nocturnes of Field in spirit, but far broader in plan and more healthy
in sentiment.

Something of the airiness of the second impromptu is to be found in

the fourth; but here the runs have an harmonic significance rather
than a melodic. They are flowing chords, successive light showers of
harmonies. The very sameness of the figuration adds to the charm,
and does not, it may be added, take away from the difficulty. Only
twice is the gentle vibration so produced interrupted for long; once to
give way to a short melody, once during the long, impassioned
middle-section in C-sharp minor.

What stands out in this group of pieces as a whole is the restraint in

form, so lacking in the sonatas, and the fineness of pianoforte style.
There is a great economy of writing. The piano is left to speak for
itself; it is not often taxed to make music grand enough for the
orchestra. In the second and fourth of the series an accompaniment
is hardly more than suggested, except in the impassioned middle
sections; yet the passage work is in no way of the virtuoso type. It
has a refinement that is, apart from Bach, Mozart, and Chopin,
unusual in pianoforte music. And what is ever worthy of notice in all
the work of Schubert is the prevalent pianissimo. The spiritual visitor
is ever present. One feels that Schubert was wholly lost in his music,
that he surrendered himself utterly to the delight of sound, of softest
sound. The four works are equally inspired. They are full of ecstasy,
full of rapture.
The impromptus of the second set are not so invariably fine, yet as a
whole they are a momentous contribution. The first and the fourth
are longer and more elaborate than any in the first set, and
consequently one feels in them the lack of proportion and control
which weakened the sonatas. The third is, as a matter of fact, a
series of variations; and they can hardly be said to suffer from any
weakness. Rather they are exceedingly well done. However, better
variations have been written—not, it may be remarked, by Weber—
and the form is dangerously likely to prove stupid except in the
hands of a man who has a special skill in it. There is necessarily
lacking a chance for that spontaneity and freedom which one
associates more with Schubert than with any other composer.

The last impromptu is conspicuous for a gay brilliance, perhaps a

better brilliance than Weber revealed, but a less effective one. It
suggests Liszt. Passages remind one of the Gnomenreigen. There
can be no mistaking the Hungarian quality of the melodies, the mad,
rhapsodical, Gypsy style.

The first impromptu contains more of the quality of the extraordinary

Schubert; is perhaps too long, but is full of fine inspiration and
romantic fancy. The opening theme is in ballade style, with a rather
incongruous touch of conventionality here and there. The second
theme is purely lyrical, though the persistent eighth-note rhythm in
which it is presented gives it a spirit of restlessness. It is thrice
repeated, and the figure-work in the high registers which adorns the
third statement of it is effective and beautiful. The theme itself is
silenced unexpectedly and the figure-work leads down again into the
deep registers, where it flows in a hushed arpeggio figure. Over this
a third theme is suggested, which, with its answer woven in the
accompaniment, constitutes a distinct second section of the piece,
releases a different mood. It is for the most part soft, yet it is
strangely impassioned. It leads back again to the first theme and the
whole is repeated, with a change only of key. At the end, the first
theme once more adds a touch of the ballade. The two measures
before the final chords have all the strange power of suggestion
which one associates with Schubert, leaving one with the impression
that the music has rather passed on than ended, as if the song, like
that of the ‘Solitary Reaper,’ could have no ending.

There is no contemporary music with which one may compare these

impromptus. They are not sentimental idylls like the nocturnes of
Field, nor show pieces like the shorter works of Weber. They have
nothing in common with the music of the contemporary virtuosi, nor
with that of any virtuosi. They are extraordinarily rich in genuine
musical worth, and, like all of Schubert’s music, in form or out of
form, inspired. Even more remarkable are the six short pieces called
‘Musical Moments.’ Three of these are but two pages long; only one
more than four. Each is wholly different from the others in mood. In
all of them the pianissimo prevails. Schubert is whispering, not
speaking. They are essentially pianoforte music, too. Though there is
nothing elaborate in the style of them, not the slightest trace of a
striving for new effects, yet it may be questioned if any German
pianoforte music shows greater understanding of what one might call
the secret and intimate qualities of the instrument.

There is practically no thickness of scoring. Only the trio sections of

the first and last are open to even suspicion in this regard. There is
no commonplaceness or makeshift in the accompaniments. The
monotonous tum-tum of the third is necessary in the expression of
the mood of dance and song which the piece embodies, of wild
dancing and intensely emotional song, more than half sad. The
workmanship of all is delicate, whether it be deliberate or instinctive.
There is in all a great appreciation of effects of contrast, of loud and
soft, which are the very first of the peculiarities of the instrument; an
appreciation of the sonority, rich but not noisy, which the pedal
allows; of the charm of soft and distinct passage notes, of vigorous,
percussive rhythm. All is perhaps in miniature; but the six pieces are
the essence of German pianoforte music, both in quality and style;
the very root and stock of the short pieces of Schumann and Brahms
by which they are distinguished.

As to the nature of the separate pieces, little need be said. They are
pure music, perfect art. In the sound of them are their completeness
and their justification. The first may suggest dreams. The figure out
of which it is made is of the woodland. It suggests the horns of elf-
land faintly blowing. It is now near, now far. As the notes of the bugle
will blend in echoes till the air is full of a soft chord, so does this
phrase weave a harmony out of its own echo that, like the sounds of
a harp blown by the wind, is more of spirit than of flesh. Even in the
trio something of this echo persists.

The remaining five keep us closer to earth, are of more substantial

and more human stuff. Yet note in the second, in the second
statement of the first theme after the first episode, how a persistent
E-flat suggests again the ghostly visitor to which the music itself
seems to listen. The third is, as has been suggested, a dance, soft
yet half barbaric. Is the melody sad or gay? It is blended of both, like
the folk-songs of the Slavs and the Celts, the character of which it
breathes. One is tempted to ask if there ever was softer music than
Schubert’s. The music enters its coda here thrice piano, and twice
on its way to the end it grows still softer.

The fourth suggests a prelude of Bach, except for the trio, which
again has the character of a folk-song and again is softer than soft.
The fifth is a study in grotesque. Even here there are fine effects,
such as the echo of the first phrases; but the general impression is of
almost savage accents and harsh dissonances. The last has a touch
of Beethoven, though the melodies are of the kind that Schubert
alone has ever heard, and the harmonies here and there rise, as it
were, like shifting, colored mist across the line of the music.

It cannot be said that the melodies and harmonies of either the

Impromptus or the ‘Musical Moments’ are more inspired than those
of the sonatas. Indeed, there are passages in the latter of more
profound and more intense emotion than finds expression in the
shorter pieces. But most of the sonatas are in ruins. Their beauties
are fragmentary and isolated; whereas nearly all the Impromptus and
all the ‘Musical Moments’ have a beauty and firmness of line and
design as well as of content. For this reason they stand as the best
of his pianoforte works; and of their kind they are unexcelled in
music. They are genuinely beautiful music; they are perfectly suited
to the piano, drawing upon its various qualities without showing them
off; they are finished in detail, balanced and well-knit in structure. A
new epoch in the art begins with them.

It should be mentioned that Schubert’s waltzes and other dances

bear very clearly the stamp of his great genius. They are not
elaborate. Much of their beauty is in their naïve simplicity. They gain
nothing by being dressed up in the gaudy raiment which Liszt chose
to hang upon many of them. They should be known and played as
Schubert wrote them, not as profound or as brilliant music, but as
spontaneous melodies in undisguised dance rhythms. They are, in
fact, dance music, full of the spirit of merry-making, not in the least
elegant or sophisticated. To our knowledge there is no other music of
equal merit and charm composed in this spirit expressly for the
piano. Schubert is unique among the great composers in having
treated dance forms and rhythms thus strictly as dances.

V
All the work of Weber and most of that of Schubert fall within the
lifetime of Beethoven. The three great men constitute the foundation
of the pianoforte music of the great German composers of the next
generation. But Beethoven’s influence is largely spiritual, as Bach’s.
There was nothing more to be done with the sonata after he finished,
and long before his death the progress of pianoforte music had taken
a new turn. It is not inconceivable that before very long Beethoven’s
sonatas will be regarded as the culmination and end of a period of
growth, just as the music of Bach is already regarded; that he will
appear materially related only to what came before him, and to have
died without musical heir. The last sonatas rested many years
generally unknown. His peculiar and varied treatment of the
pianoforte in them found few or no imitators. The technique of the
instrument that Schumann and Chopin employed was not
descended from him; rather from Weber on the one hand and from
Mozart and Hummel on the other.

Even in the matter of form he exercised hardly more than a spiritual

influence, as regards pianoforte music alone. Schumann and Chopin
both wrote sonatas, but the sonatas of neither show kinship to those
of Beethoven. The Brahms sonatas are more closely related to
Weber than to Beethoven. The Liszt sonata in B minor and the Liszt
concertos are constructed on a wholly new plan that was suggested
by Berlioz; and the two long works of César Franck are not even
called sonatas. The sonata in pianoforte music alone had had its
day. The form remained but the spirit had fled. If music came back to
it at all, it came back to sit as it were among ruins.

The change which came over music was but the counterpart of the
change which came over men and over society. It was evident in
literature long before it affected music. It might in many ways be said
to have reached music through literature. The whole movement of
change and reformation has been given the name Romantic. It was
accompanied in society by violent revolutions, prolonged
restlessness, the awakening of national and popular feeling. It is
marked in literature and in music by intensely self-conscious
emotion, by an appeal to the senses rather than to the intellect, by a
proud and undisguised assertion of individuality.

Most great music is romantic music. The preludes of Bach, the little
pieces of Couperin, a great deal of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven
have a personal warmth which is essentially romantic. Music draws
its life more directly from emotions than the other arts. But there are
signs in the music of these men of an objective, an external ideal, to
which they have conformed the expression of their emotions. They
do not work upon the spur of emotional excitement alone. That is but
the germ from which their music starts. They have a power to
sustain. They work with music; and the ideas which they choose to
work with are chosen from a thousand others for the possibilities
they contain of expansion, of alteration, of adaptability to the need of
the work as a whole. Within the limits of this work emotional
inspiration plays its part, adding here and there a bit of harmony, a
new phrase. These are romantic touches. These reveal the quick or
the inert nature back of the music. But back of it all the architectural
brain presides, building a structure of broad design, or of exquisite
proportions. The ideal is commonly known as classical; and these
composers are properly called classical.

The Romantic composers, on the other hand, treasure their moods.

They enshrine their separate inspirations. It is the manner of their
time. They are, as we have said, emotionally self-conscious. This is
one of the marks by which we may know them. The architectural
ideal loses their devotion. They lack, in the first place, the prime
desire to sustain, in the second place, the power. The change shows
itself distinctly in the works of Weber and Schubert, both of whom
are recognized as the first of the Romantic composers.

Take, for example, the sonatas of Weber. The movements are, as we

have ventured to suggest, like broad pictures. They are a series of
figures, of colors and shadows, like tapestries. They conform to the
rules of form, but they have little or nothing of the spirit of it. They
seem to cover the outlines of a story. They suggest the theatre. So
little is their form all-sufficing that we are tempted to fit each with a
chronicle taken from olden days of knighthood. At last Weber does
so himself—gives us stories for two of his compositions.

And the sonatas of Schubert, what a ruin are they! Moments of hot
inspiration, of matchless beauty; well-nigh hours of fatal indifference
and ignorance. On the other hand, he has left us short pieces which
the publishers must needs call impromptus for lack of any other
name; ‘Musical Moments,’ each the full and perfect expression of a
single, swift inspiration. His muse whispers in his ear and before she
has flown away he has written down what she prompted. She makes
short visits, this muse. So much the worse for him if she starts him
upon a sonata. He is soon left with nothing but a pen in his hand.

Weber with his stories, Schubert with his short forms, are the
prototypes of most of the Romantic composers to come. We shall
find everywhere signs of the supremacy of the transient mood.
Stories will be lacking, at least in pianoforte music; but there will be
titles, both vague and specific, labelling the mood so that the music
may exert an added charm. There will be something feverish,
something not entirely healthy in it all. As we shall see, composers
will expend their all in a single page. Yet there will come a warmth
and a now sad, now wild poetry.

The virtuosi, and Weber among them with his showy polaccas and
rondos, speak of the change. They appeal to the general public.
They are sensationalists. The aristocratic amateurs will no longer
hold musicians in dependence. There is a mass of people waking
into life. The crowd makes money, it buys pianos; it will pay to hear a
man, or a woman, perform on the household instrument. It will
submit to the intoxicating, swift fingers, to the display of technique.
Not that the aristocratic amateurs were always less open to such
oratorical persuasion; but the public now holds the money bags, and
it will pay to hear fingers, to see flying arms and streaming hair. Who
will care to hear a man improvise a fugue in five parts? How will they
judge virtue but by virtuosity?

On the other hand, men will begin to write about their art, to defend
their new ideals, to criticize and appreciate the outpourings of each
genius as he comes along, to denounce the virtuosi who have
nothing to show but empty show. A musician holds a place now as a
man, a man of the world and of affairs. He makes a name for himself
as a poet, a critic, a satirist. And on the verge of all this new
development stand Weber and Schubert; the brilliant, witty patriot,
the man who spent his energy that a national opera might be
established in the land of his birth; and the man who had no thoughts
but the joy of his art, the warmth of music, no love but the love of
song, the singer of his race and his companions.
 FOOTNOTES:
[31] Les pianistes célèbres. 2d edition, Paris, 1878.
 CHAPTER VI
MENDELSSOHN, SCHUMANN AND
BRAHMS
Influence of musical romanticism on pianoforte literature—
Mendelssohn’s pianoforte music, its merits and demerits; the
‘Songs without Words’; Prelude and Fugue in D minor; Variations
Sérieuses; Mendelssohn’s influence, Bennett, Henselt—Robert
Schumann, ultra-romanticist and pioneer; peculiarities of his style;
miscellaneous series of piano pieces; the ‘cycles’: Carnaval, etc.
—The Papillons, Davidsbündler, and Faschingsschwank; the
Symphonic Études; Kreisleriana, etc., the Sonatas, Fantasy and
Concerto—Johannes Brahms; qualities of his piano music; his
style; the sonatas, ‘Paganini Variations,’ ‘Handel Variations,’
Capriccios, Rhapsodies, Intermezzi; the Concertos; conclusion.

The progress of German pianoforte music is consistent and

unbroken from the death of Schubert down to the end of the
nineteenth century. All composers, both great and small, with the
exception of a few who would have had music remain in the forms of
Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, even at the price of stagnation little
better than death, submitted themselves and their art to the
influences of the Romantic movement which had placed so distinct a
mark on the music of Weber and Schubert. We meet with relatively
few long works. The best of these are frankly called Fantasies,
claiming little relation to the sonata. Hundreds of sets of short pieces
make their appearance. Rarely have the separate pieces in a set any
conventional or any structural relation. The set as a whole is given a
name, simple and generic, or fantastical. We meet ‘Songs Without
Words,’ ‘Fantasy Pieces,’ ‘Melodies for Piano,’ ‘Nocturnes,’ ‘Ballads,’
‘Novelettes,’ ‘Romances,’ ‘Night Poems,’ ‘Love Dreams,’
‘Rhapsodies,’ ‘Diaries,’ and ‘Sketch-books.’ There are Flower, Fruit,
and Thorn pieces, Flying Leaves, Autumn Leaves, and Album
Leaves, even the ‘Walks of a Lonely Man’ and Nuits Blanches.

Most of these short pieces conform to one of three types. Either they
are moods in music, in which case they have no distinctive features;
or they are genre pieces, a diluted, watery (usually watery) picture
music; or, by reason of the constant employment of a definite
technical figure, they are études or studies. Most of them are mild
and inoffensive. Few of them show marked originality, genuine fervor
or intensity of feeling. They are evaporations rather than
outpourings; and as such most of them have been blown from
memory. A cry against this vigorous wind of Time, harsh and
indiscriminating as in many cases it may appear to be, is hopeless.
Not refinement of style nor careful workmanship can alone save
music from the obliterating cyclone. One may as well face the fact
that only a few men’s moods and reveries are of interest to the
world, that sentimentality must ever dress in a new fashion to win
fresh tears and sighs.

I
The sweetest singer of songs without words was Felix Mendelssohn-
Bartholdy. He sang the sweetest stories ever told. He was thoroughly
prosperous in his day; he was even more than that, he was
admirable and worshipful. The whole of his life reads much like the
accounts of Mozart’s early tours. He was the glass of fashion and the
mold of form in music; not only in pianoforte music, but in orchestral
and vocal music as well. One might continue the quotation, and
remark how the observed of all observers is now quite, quite down;
but one may never say that his music is out of tune and harsh. Its
very mellifluousness is what has condemned it. It is all honey,
without spice. For this reason it has become the fashion now to slight
Mendelssohn, as it once was to revere him.

This is unjust. His pianoforte music is such an easy mark for

epigrams that truth has been sacrificed to wit. There is much in it that
is admirable. Some of it will probably come to life again. Indeed, it
has not all the appearance of death now, choked as it may seem to
be in its own honey. A few of the ‘Songs Without Words,’ the Prelude
and Fugue in E minor, opus 35, some of the short capriccios and the
Variations sérieuses still hold a high place in pianoforte literature.

The mass of his music, however, has fallen into disgrace. This is not
wholly because the world ate too much of it and sickened. One does
not look askance at it as one looks at sweets once immoderately
devoured and henceforth distressful even to the eye. One sees
weakness and defects to which its fate may be attributed.

At the basis lies a monotony. His melodies and harmonies are too
unvaryingly alike. He is a slave to milky mannerisms. The curves of
his melodies are endlessly alike; there is a profusion of feminine
endings, dwellings in commonplaceness, suspensions that have no
weight. His harmonies are seldom poignant. His agitation leads no
further in most cases than the diminished seventh. To this he comes
again and again, as regularly or as inevitably as most Romanticists
went to tombstones for their heroics. The sameness of melody, the
threadbare scheme of his harmonies, these mark a composer with
little great creative force.

In the pianoforte music one finds even a lack of ingenuity. He has

nothing to add to the resources of the instrument. He knew himself to
be sterile in pianoforte figures. The ‘Songs without Words’ show but
two or three types of accompaniment, and these are flat and
monotonous. There are the unbroken chords, usually without a trace
of subtlety in line, such as we find in the first, the fifteenth, the
twenty-first, the thirty-seventh, and numerous others. There are plain
chords, usually triads, monotonously repeated, as in the tenth,
twentieth, twenty-second, and thirty-ninth, flat with the melody, or in
syncopation as in the fourteenth and seventeenth. There are the
rocking figures such as one finds in all the ‘Gondola’ songs, in the
so-called ‘Spring Song,’ and in the thirty-sixth. Only rarely does he
give to these figures some contrapuntal flexibility, as in the fifth and
in the thirty-fourth, known as the ‘Spinning Song,’ and in the
eleventh.

There are many songs which have no running accompaniment,

which are in the simple harmonic style of the hymn tune. These are
usually extremely saccharine. The few measures of preludizing with
which they begin are monotonously alike—an arpeggio or two, as if
he were sweeping the strings of his harp, as in the ninth and the
sixteenth. Some, however, are vigorous and exciting, like the
‘Hunting Song’ (the third), and the twenty-third, in style of a folk-
song.

It is the lack of variety, of ingenuity and surprise which makes the

‘Songs without Words’ so extraordinarily sentimental and inanimate
as a whole, both to the musician and to the pianist. The
workmanship is always flawless, but there is little strain to pull it out
of perfect line. Mendelssohn had considerable skill in picture music.
The overture to ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream’ and the overture
suggested to him by his visit to Fingal’s Cave are successful in this
direction. It is worthy of note that at least two of the best of the
‘Songs without Words’ are in the nature of picture music—the so-
called ‘Hunting’ and ‘Spinning’ songs. The gondolier songs likewise
stand out a little from the rest in something like active charm. These
offer him an external idea to work on and he brings to his task a very
neat and sensitive, though unvaried, technique.

He had also a gift, rather special, for light and tripping effects. It does
not often show itself in the ‘Songs without Words.’ There is one in C
major, published after his death, which shows him to advantage in
this vein, and the light ‘Spring Song’ has a touch of it. Among his
other pieces the Rondo Capriccioso in E major and the little scherzo
in E minor stand out by virtue of it.

Of the longer pieces we need touch upon only two. These are the
Prelude and Fugue in E minor and the Variations sérieuses. The