Old Fogy | Page 2

itself in tone.
I never entirely understood Old Fogy. In one evening he would flash
out a dozen contradictory opinions. Of his sincerity I have no doubt;
but he was one of those natures that are sincere only for the moment.
He might fume at Schumann and call him a vanishing star, and then he
would go to the piano and play the first few pages of the glorious A
minor concerto most admirably. How did he play? Not in an
extraordinary manner. Solidly schooled, his technical attainments were
only of a respectable order; but when excited he revealed traces of a
higher virtuosity than was to have been expected. I recall his series of
twelve historical recitals, in which he practically explored all pianoforte
literature from Alkan to Zarembski. These recitals were privately given
in the presence of a few friends. Old Fogy played all the concertos,
sonatas, studies and minor pieces worth while. His touch was dry, his
style neat. A pianist made, not born, I should say.
He was really at his best when he unchained his fancy. His musical
grotesques are a survival from the Hoffmann period, but written so as
to throw an ironic light upon the artistic tendencies of our time. Need I
add that he did not care for the vaporous tonal experiments of Debussy
and the new school! But then he was an indifferent critic and an
enthusiastic advocate.
He never played in public to my knowledge, nor within the memory of
any man alive today. He was always vivacious, pugnacious, hardly
sagacious. He would sputter with rage if you suggested that he was
aged enough to be called "venerable." How old was he--for he died

suddenly last September at his home somewhere in southeastern
Europe? I don't know. His grandson, a man already well advanced in
years, wouldn't or couldn't give me any precise information, but,
considering that he was an intimate of the early Liszt, I should say that
Old Fogy was born in the years 1809 or 1810. No one will ever dispute
these dates, as was the case with Chopin, for Old Fogy will be soon
forgotten. It is due to the pious friendship of the publisher that these
opinions are bound between covers. They are the record of a stubborn,
prejudiced, well-trained musician and well-read man, one who was not
devoid of irony. Indeed, I believe he wrote much with his tongue in his
cheek. But he was a stimulating companion, boasted a perverse
funny-bone and a profound sense of the importance of being Old Fogy.
And this is all I know about the man.
James Huneker.

I
OLD FOGY IS PESSIMISTIC
Once every twelve months, to be precise, as the year dies and the sap
sinks in my old veins, my physical and psychologic--isn't that the
new-fangled way of putting it?--barometer sinks; in sympathy with
Nature I suppose. My corns ache, I get gouty, and my prejudices swell
like varicose veins.
Errors! Yes, errors! The word is not polite, nor am I in a mood of
politeness. I consider such phrases as the "progress of art," the
"improvement of art" and "higher average of art" distinctly and
harmfully misleading. I haven't the leisure just now to demonstrate
these mistaken propositions, but I shall write a few sentences.
How can art improve? Is art a something, an organism capable of
"growing up" into maturity? If it is, by the same token it can grow old,
can become a doddering, senile thing, and finally die and be buried
with all the honors due its long, useful life. It was Henrik Ibsen who

said that the value of a truth lasted about fifteen years; then it rotted
into error. Now, isn't all this talk of artistic improvement as fallacious
as the vicious reasoning of the Norwegian dramatist? Otherwise Bach
would be dead; Beethoven, middle-aged; Mozart, senile. What, instead,
is the health of these three composers? Have you a gayer, blither, more
youthful scapegrace writing today than Mozart? Is there a man among
the moderns more virile, more passionately earnest or noble than
Beethoven? Bach, of the three, seems the oldest; yet his C-sharp major
Prelude belies his years. On the contrary, the Well-tempered
Clavichord grows younger with time. It is the Book of Eternal Wisdom.
It is the Fountain of Eternal Youth.
As a matter of cold, hard fact, it is your modern who is ancient; the
ancients were younger. Consider the Greeks and their naïve joy in
creation! The twentieth-century man brings forth his works of art in
sorrow. His music shows it. It is sad, complicated, hysterical and
morbid. I shan't allude to Chopin, who was neurotic--another empty
medical phrase!--or to Schumann, who carried within him the seeds of
madness; or to Wagner, who was a decadent; sufficient