ページの画像
PDF
ePub

who cannot now bring such productions forward, because their effects appear so wild and singular, that they bewilder the performers. The real truth is, that there is no production of the human mind so magnificent, so sublime, so truly and awfully religious, as his grand posthumous mass. The more we study it, the greater the beauties-and beauties of a kind almost miraculous-that open upon our mind; but some years must elapse, and the present generation of performers be swept from the face of the earth, before it will be executed so as to be generally under

stood.

The same may be said of his posthumous quartets, whieh we have heard tried by some of the greatest performers of Europe, who certainly cannot yet comprehend them. The one in C sharp minor, is the most severely criticised, though, with due deference, we venture to assert, that it teems with beautiful poetry and intense feeling; and we have no hesitation in predicting that, twenty or thirty years hence, it will stand as the highest and most intellectual chamber composition ever penned.

As a performer on the piano-forte, Beethoven was superior to most; but as an improvisatore on that instrument, he was unrivalled. In this branch of the art, Hummel and Mendlessohn will strive in vain to equal him. The strains which he elicited from the piano-forte, even after a veil of darkness had been interposed between him and the art he loved, were more than earthly. But he was seldom heard, because he never played to any body, seldom even to himself; and it was only when some accidental circumstance of very rare occurrence brought him into contact with an instrument, that he instinctively poured forth, through its medium, the ardent workings of his imagination.

Beethoven died very poor. He received not in his own country, during his life, that high patronage and encouragement to which his transcendant talents gave him so just a claim. He was too often neglected in favor of individuals, between whom and Beethoven there was as great a distance as between Raphael and a sign-painter. But he lived and died a philosopher, little moved by the jealousy of his contemporaries, and leaving the care of his fame to posterity. His death occurred in 1827, during a thunder-storm-an incident so congenial to the dark sublimity of his imagination; and in the midst of its terrors, his soul was wafted to heaven, his name remaining upon earth, with his immortal works, as an eternal monument of his glory.

ON ITALY.

From the Italian of Felicaja.

Paraphrased by Lord Byron, in the 4th Canto of Childe Harold.'

ITALY! my own dear Italy! thou who hast

That fatal boon, beauty, to all below

A funeral dower; but most to thee whose brow

Is diademed with misery-would thou wast

Or not so fair, or mightier, so that they

Might fear thee somewhat more, or love thee less,

Who, basking in thy beams of loveliness,

Doom them to perish daily-ray by ray.

Then, not as now, in torrents down would pour

Armed multitudes from thine Alps; nor should we see

Quaffed by fierce Gallic hordes, nor run with gore

The Po; nor in the stranger's hand would be
The sword, not thine, nor to defend thee, nor

Conquer'd or conqueress, wouldst thou hug thy slavery.

CONFESSIONS OF A MUSIC-HATER.

'Music has charms,' &c.

CONGREVE! you live. Music had no charms for some of the greatest men that ever lived; for instance, Burke, Fox, Windham, Swift, Johnson; and what is more, Mr. Congreve, it has none for me. To be plain with you, I hate it more than Hotspur hated poetry; and am of opinion that Čollin's heavenly maid' was no very distant relative of the three Furies. No music for me but that of the spheres, which has one pleasing peculiarity I never yet met with in any of the melodies of earth—it is imperceptible to the sense of hearing.

Now, dear Mr. Editor! do not give yourself the trouble: I know what you are about to say

'The man that has not music in his soul,

And is not moved by concord of sweet sounds, &c.'

Why, there is not a boarding-school miss of all my acquaintance that has not dinned that luckless quotation into my ear at least one hundred times; and it happens to be remarkably ill-chosen; for in the first place I have no objection to any gentleman or lady having as much music in their souls as they like, provided they keep it there, and do not try to force it into mine; and, secondly, I can solemnly assure you, there is not in the world a person who has been more moved by the concord of sweet sounds,' as you call it, than I myself; for pianos, barrel-organs, and ballad-singers have not only moved my choler, but compelled me to move my residence oftener than I could tell you in a long winter's night.

The best and greatest king that England ever had was decidedly Edward 1. He did exactly as I should do, had I the crown on my head, and the sword of justice in my hand, for one month: he made a general persecution and havoc of all the bards and minstrels, in other words, of all the musicians, vocal, and instrumental, in his dominions. He did well; and I honor him with all my heart and soul. Heavens! how I should rejoice to see the return of those days. Then should I be revenged on the Barnetts, and the Bishops, and the Brahams, and the Paganinis, and the Pastas. What a glorious sight it would be to see a regiment of heavy dragoons amongst the Russian horn-band, hewing and cutting the miscreants down in every direction; or to see a battalion of the Guards with fixed bayonets charge the orchestra of the King's Theatre, and in the middle of one of their infernal overtures, put them to indiscriminate slaughter, from the first violin down to the last bagpipe! Companies of light-horse might be employed to massacre all stragglers and street-performers, while the police might break into the boarding schools and academies, strangle all the young ladies they find at the harp or pianoforte, and take the masters and professors alive to be put to death at leisure by the slowest and most ingenious tortures. Were I a monarch, I would order all this and more; so utterly do I loathe and abhor the whole singing, scraping, blowing, thumping fraternity. I would inspire another Gray with another

'Ruin seize thee, ruthless king!'

and delight in imagining some future Scott, whining over a solitary

[ocr errors]

ballad-singer, escaped the general carnage, and exclaiming in pitiful strains,

'The bigots of the iron time

Pronounced his harmless art a crime.'

Harmless art! the art of a fiddler, or an organ-grinder, a harmless art! Pray, Sir Poet! what may be your opinion of the profession of a cutpurse and incendiary?

Suppose we were to try our hand at the 'Lay of the last Thief:' we have no doubt we could make an excellent ditty of it.

"The way was long, the wind was cold,
The thief was hungry, weak, and old;
The last of all the thieves was he
Who filched a watch, or forged a key;
For, well-a-day! their date was sped,
His nimble brethren all were dead,
And he discouraged and opprest,

Wished to be with them, and at rest.'

Sir, my wrath at music and musicians is not without reason. It is my lot to have a large circle of friends and relations, and my life is not worth a pin's fee, because of the perpetual onslaught made on my tympanum, not only with the human voice, but with a greater variety of musical instruments than Nebuchadnezzar had in all his band. What vexes me most is, that they take infinite pains and spare no expense to make themselves perfectly expert at this branch, for such it is, of the science of ingeniously tormenting. The young ladies get up at six, and practise ten hours a-day, to inflict their rondos and sonatas upon me as adroitly as possible. Their brothers will actually leave the billiard-tables and racket-courts to master the German flute or key bugle with the same kind purpose. And then I am obliged to listen to the parents and aunts commending the execution-how happily does that word execution express the true character of a musical performance! of these amiable young people; and what is still more galling, speaking of singing and playing as-as what do you suppose?-as elegant accomplishments-elegant accomplishments-bless the mark!

6

I will tell you my sentiments, sir, on the subject of accomplishments; I have no objection to French and Italian; German is no harm, provided the pupil confines himself to the language, and contracts no liking for the flute; the skipping-rope is not to be spoken against, nor do impugn the respectability of battle-door and shuttle-cock. Then there is drawing in all its branches-a quiet, inoffensive amusement as any I know of it hurts nobody's nerves; it disturbs nobody's nap after dinner; it neither prevents the lawyer from studying his brief, nor the poor dog of a contributor-the canus impransus' of your Literary Zoological Garden-from composing his article. I respect extremely those ladies and gentlemen who wield the pencil or the brush. Their work goes on as smoothly as their own oils; and there is no more noise in the studio than if the artist were asleep on his own pallet. But the pastime of the musician is selfish and cruel; he gratifies his ruffianly taste at the cost of incalculable suffering to five-sixths of the miserable beings within the range of his instrument of torture; for such every musical instrument is !!!

Like Cassius, I do not know what you or other men think, but for myself I never see a lady at a harp or a harpsichord, or a gentleman (gentle, forsooth!) at a violin or guitar, but I fancy the instrument some

species of a rack, and the performer some bloody-minded executioner, a Trois Echelles, or an Abhorson. Seven years in Botany Bay! What punishment is that? Sentence a rogue to a year of the piano-forte, and take my word for it, crime will diminish at the rate of a fox-hunt. Music appears to me to be convertible to no possible use but this, and I really wonder the plan has not been hit upon before this by the Utilitarians, or the speculators on a new system of secondary punishments. A scale of musical inflictions might easily be graduated according to the varying enormity of offences. The newspaper wits would call them sound corrections; but never mind the newspaper wits; the thing would answer, depend upon it. For inurder I would have a concert for life, or a perpetual oratorio; for homicide ten years perhaps of the Italian Opera; for highway robbery a musical festival, or two, if there should be aggravating circumstances; shop-lifting and picking of pockets might be punished with a certain number of tunes on a barrel-organ or dulcimer, at the discretion of the court; usury might appropriately be restrained by the Jew's harp; housebreakers by the dread of being sent to the house robbed, and kept chained to the leg of the pianoforte until the musical education of the young ladies of the family is completed; treason and blasphemy-what should we have for these?-I have it-the traitor, if a male, I would marry to a Prima Donna; if a female, I would give her such a husband as Paganini: the blasphemer should suffer a torture which would satisfy even Captain Gordon.-I would inflict on him Mozart's Creation.-Pray, Miss, why do you stare at one in that way?

Really, Mr. Editor, it is quite shocking in you to allow a person to contribute to your Magazine, so barbarously ignorant as to say it was Mozart composed the Creation.

Now shall I be even with the young lady:-rub for rub is fair play. Might I make so bold with you, fair mistress! as to ask you who it was that invented the tread-mill?

There it is-I know it-she has not a word to say. Now, sir, if a young lady is not obliged to remember the author of one device for torturing mankind, why should I be flouted for being equally oblivious of the author of another?

It is certainly for my sins-I have scarcely a friend or acquaintance who is not either a vocal or instrumental executioner-performer, I meanexecutioner is not the word, it is only the thing: I grant you, therefore, it was wrong to use it. Nothing can be more impolite than to call things by their proper names; it is quite unaristocratic-the infallible characteristic of a plebeian. But as I said, I move for my sins in the most musical circle in no matter where.-Madame, I hate nothing so much as curiosity-what have you to do with my latitude and longitude?

Well, you shall have a sample of my sufferings. Ex uno disce omnes,' as Machiavelli remarks.

I call upon a friend-a young barrister rising in his profession. You would suppose he was to be found drawing a declaration, searching Peere William's reports, or immersed up to the eyes in Fearne or the Touchstone; if not professionally occupied, why then you would expect to find him at some such work as Ricardo's Political Economy, Hallam's Middle Ages, or at least a new novel: no such thing-nothing in the world like it. I find him at the tip-top of a pair of sonorous lungspractising a speech for a trial at Nisi Prius?-No,-practising an ora

tion for a Political Union? No-no-practising what, think you?
'There she lay
All the day,

In the Bay of Biscay, oh!'

I ask a question-'tis about a matter in which I am much interested. Instead, however, of stemming the tide of song, I make matters fifty times worse. The only answer I get is,

'A sail, a sail !—

My vocal friend at the same time throwing his muscular frame, which is at least six feet in altitude, into the position of Braham, and looking as if he actually saw a tall frigate on the opposite shelf, amongst the Reports and Statutes. I try politics; it is the same thing

'A sail, a sail !

A sail, a sail appears!'

I try literature, shooting, the weather, my new coat, which being a rarity, I expect will command prompt attention. All in vain: that infernal chaunt is the only reply I can extract, and this continues until the executioner's-that is the performer's-lungs are exhausted, or I am forced by business to leave him, the object of my call unattained, and without a single syllable of rational, christian-like conversation. Frequently when I am more than a hundred yards from the house, muttering deep curses on songs and songsters, I still hear, 'mellowed by distance,' the same horid sounds

'A sail, a sail !'

I then clap my fingers into my ears, and run as if for my life, determining, with an awful imprecation, to pay no more visits to a practising

barrister.

Another, and I have done. I took a second floor in John-street, Adelphi. The first time I slept there I was disturbed in the morning by what seemed to my horrified imagination the screaming of ten thousand charity children. Upon inquiry, I found that I had pitched my tent exactly opposite that of Mr. Hawes, the master of the singing boys at the Chapel Royal, who gave his neighbors a similar treat every morning before breakfast! Well, I had scarcely recovered from that, and was seated comfortably at my morning meal, when my ears were regaled with the vibration of an accursed piano-forte, accompanied by a screaming that might have set the last trump at defiance. I inquired again and found the first floor was occupied by Mr. John Barnett, the musical director at Madame Vestris' theatre, who practised his professional pupils every day, from eleven till three.

This is not all. Four o'clock had scarcely arrived, when I verily believe all the vagabond bands in London began to congregate in the street, to regale the country visitors at Osborn's Hotel with their most sweet harmony. Bagpipes, panspipes, and pipes of all descriptions were there. Every instrument of name, sound, and torture, from a German flute to a penny whistle, choked the highway!

Wrought into a frenzy, I rushed from the house, and have taken lodgings at the top of the shot tower, across Waterloo Bridge. I shall have no music there, or the devil's in it.

« 前へ次へ »