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NATIONAL MUSIC 
 
LOSDOS : PEINTSD BY 
 
 SMTTiaWOODB ASD CO., KKW-SXMET 8(JDAKB 
 
 AKD PABLIAMEST STBBET 
 
THE 
 
 NATIONAL MUSIC OF 
 THE WORLD 
 
 BY THE LATE 
 
 HENRY FOTHEEGILL CHORLEY 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 HENRY G. HEWLETT 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 LONDON 
 
 WILLIAM REEVES, 185 FLEET STREET 
 
 fttHisfeer of Pnsital ®orks 
 
 1882 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 The four Lectures upon which the following Essays 
 are based were read by the Author at the Eoyal 
 Institution in 1862, and subsequently dehvered at 
 Manchester and Birmingham. Encouraged by the 
 popular success which they, achieved, and the 
 eulogies passed upon their merits by some of his 
 most distinguished musical contemporaries, Chorley 
 resolved to publish them, and had partially prepared 
 them for the press not long before his death. In 
 the Memoir which I appended to his Autobiography 
 and Letters* (vol. ii. p. 210), I ventured to express 
 an opinion that they were marked in a high degree 
 by the critic's acumen and learning, and that the 
 
 ♦ Henry Fothergill Chorley: Autobiography, Memoir, and 
 Letters. CompUed by Henry G. Hewlett. 2 vols. E. Bentley & 
 Son, 1873. 
 
vi Preface. 
 
 research, and speculation for which the theme 
 afforded ample scope were supported by a profusion 
 of illustration, attesting the wide range of Chorley's 
 experience as a student of the art. My regret that a 
 work so characteristic of him should remain in 
 manuscript being shared by his legal representative, 
 that gentleman has kindly placed it in my hands for 
 publication. 
 
 The knowledge that in offering these essays to the 
 world I am giving effect to the wish of my deceased 
 friend, removes the uneasiness which one who is 
 responsible for the publication of a posthumous work 
 may naturally feel, lest the established reputation of 
 its author should thereby suffer. During the eight 
 years which, have elapsed since Chorley's death I 
 have seen no reason to believe that he has lost aught 
 of his legitimate authority as a musical critic. By 
 the circle which his living influence swayed, his 
 judgment is still cited and approved. If the public 
 taste has declared itself in favour of certain canons 
 of art which he rejected, and one or two composers 
 with whom he had imperfect sympathy, it has 
 adhered in the main to the principles which he 
 advocated, and endorsed the verdicts which he pro- 
 
Preface. vii 
 
 nounced. The antagonism whicli his convictions and 
 prejudices aroused is well-nigh forgotten, and full 
 testimony has been borne by some who do not share 
 them to his sincerity and courage. A gratifying 
 tribute to this effect was recently rendered by the 
 writer of a biographical sketch in Mr. Grove's 
 ' Dictionary of Music' The present work is happily 
 excluded by its subject from the arena of personal 
 controversies, and wiU, I trust, be equally welcomed 
 by those who liked and disliked Chorley, as a contri- 
 bution of real value to musical literature by one 
 eminently qualified to discuss the interesting and 
 curious points with which it deals. 
 
 The modifications which the original form of the 
 work underwent at its author's hand have been 
 strictly preserved, so far as it has been possible to 
 ascertain them. These will be found in the two 
 first essays only. The third and fourth are 
 substantially identical with the lectures as they -were 
 delivered. Wherever the score of the selected 
 musical illustrations was forthcoming, they have been 
 inserted. The manuscript is occasionally obscure, 
 but the notation has been checked by a competent 
 musician in order to secure correctness. In a few 
 
viii Preface. 
 
 instances the illustrations which accompanied the 
 lectures were played either from memory or from 
 scores that have not been retained, and these alone 
 are perforce omitted. 
 
 S. G. n.. 
 Decembeb I879. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PREFACE V 
 
 PRELUDE 1 
 
 MUSIC FROM THE EAST . . ... 12 
 
 MUSIC FROM THE SOUTH 6T 
 
 MUSIC FROM THE NORTH 125 
 
 MUSIC FROM THE WEST ...... 174 
 
THE 
 
 NATIOML MUSIC OF THE WORLD. 
 
 PRELUDE. 
 
 It may be asserted that National Music, with its 
 origin, its features, its uses, has been too much 
 neglected as a subject by scientific teachers and 
 historians, who have seemingly agreed to consider 
 it in the light of raw material, the examination of 
 which could only interest minute analysts or else 
 practical manufacturers. This is a mistake. National 
 music is not raw material, inasmuch as every natural 
 production, from the moment when man has tended 
 and shaped it, however rudely, has been thenceforth, 
 once for all, separated from the condition of the 
 brute ore in the mountain ; or of the tree, the seeds 
 whereof were sown by the wind, and its body 
 dwarfed by drought or bent by storm, but from 
 which no human hand has pruned a branch, and 
 
 B 
 
2 National Music of the World. 
 
 round the roots of which the earth has never been 
 stirred by labour. 
 
 The subject, again, has been handled ingeniously 
 and earnestly by antiquaries who have not been 
 professional musicians. But antiquarianism is apt, 
 as a pursuit, to seduce the keenest and calmest of 
 observers ; and in no respect more largely than in 
 making them partisans. I am neither -scientific nor 
 antiquarian ; but the characteristics and beauties of 
 national music have long and deeply engaged me, 
 and its charm has found its place in my every enjoy- 
 ment of the complete art ; has run like a thread 
 through my every experience of home delight and 
 foreign travel. Thus, what I have to offer are not a 
 few impressions, scrambled together in the haste of 
 the moment, but are the result of many years of 
 comparison and experience. 
 
 I conceive that the best and most profound 
 students of the subject can offer little beyond im- 
 pressions ; that national music is a product to which 
 precise test can be applied only within very restricted 
 limits ; that observation, guess, and coincidence must 
 often be allowed to overrule tradition. Because, 
 first, we have to take into account the uncertainty 
 of memory, which can in no case be more largely 
 
Prelude. 
 
 admitted than in that of records taken down from a 
 language varying with every untutored speaker. 
 Every one is familiar with the game in which an 
 anecdote, whispered along a rank of ten persons — 
 each noting down the same as it passes — is proved 
 to arrive at the end of its journey marvellously 
 transformed, sometimes almost past recognition. 
 How much more must this be the chance of melodies 
 carried over sea and land by travellers to dwellers in 
 lonely places ; handed down by those having high, 
 or low, or no voices, from spinning-wheel to 
 spinning-wheel, from 'knitter in the sun to 
 knitter in the sun,' during the ages preceding 
 those when the manuscript recorder (supposing him 
 competent to record) began his task. The memory 
 has not merely to provide for tune, but for tms also, 
 and without any certain appeal to musical diapason. 
 There ax-e memories which are organically incorrect ; 
 of this I am a living example. I have met no one 
 with quicker and more exact retentive power than 
 myself, and it has been in incessant exercise during 
 thirty years ; but not a few of these had elapsed 
 before I discovered that I habitually heard every 
 musical sound half a note too sharp j and this with- 
 out respect to the pitch to which the instrument or 
 
 B 2 
 
4 National Music of the World. 
 
 the Toice was tuned. It took me no small time and 
 pains to verify this fact ; and, but that it has been 
 tested and attested again and again by others who 
 could have no interest in maintaining a delusion, I 
 should hesitate in offering it as testimony. I need 
 not add, that now everything I hear passes through 
 the process of translation. 
 
 To continue, as akin to the above speculations : 
 the entire diapason question, in spite of the many 
 recent attempts made to settle it, remains, and I 
 venture to believe must long, if not for ever remain, 
 in a most unsatisfactory state. Even if an ancient 
 instrument is at hand to appeal to — whether it be 
 organ pipe, or tuning fork, or bell — with the view of 
 proving this or that fact, as regards the intonation 
 of a musical note, it has never been established that 
 time and climate have nothing to do with the 
 register ; that the vibrations of metal and wood are 
 the same, after a century of wear and tear has passed, 
 as they were at its beginning. So far from this, 
 when, in imitation of the Trench commission to 
 report on and decide the question, a similar body of 
 men of science and skilled musicians was convened 
 in this country, a plain truth or two came out 
 showing how carefully dealt with every question of 
 
Prelude. 
 
 the kind should be. A couple of new tuning forks 
 had been prepared under precisely identical con- 
 ditions, and .with perfect agreement as to result. 
 One was subjected to heat, and on being withdrawn 
 from the oven was found to have changed its pitch 
 beyond mistake. It was cooled, but it never returned 
 to the old identity with its comrade. Thus, to be 
 unimpeachably accurate in recollecting the tones of 
 ill-cultivated and variable voices, or to be dogmatic 
 in maintaining that the relic of to-day is identical 
 with the complete instrument of by-gone ages, seem 
 to me two impossibilities; or at least, presumptions, 
 not warranted by reason and experience. 
 
 Another question arises, in respect to national 
 music considered traditionally — the testimony on 
 which we accept our knowledge of ancient instru- 
 ments. This is mainly derived from monumental 
 drawings and sculptures ; which I cannot but think 
 have been too largely accepted as literal, seeing that 
 into every record of the kind so much of what is 
 decorative and emblematical enters. It is true that 
 in a certain class of objects Gothic structure may be 
 relied on as documentary; seeing that the vine, the 
 hawthorn, the rose, the oak leaf, the li&rha benedida 
 are, in its best examples, displayed with remarkable. 
 
National Music of the World. 
 
 if formal accuracy. When we get back to the art of 
 an elder world, we must allow for ideality, mysticism, 
 and other conventions, as modifying precise represen- 
 tation. If the truth to nature of the honeysuckle 
 in the well-known Greek border, of the Mosaic olive- 
 tree selected by Mr. Euskin in his ' Stones of Venice ' 
 (vol. iii. p. 178), as a touching example of earnestness 
 and generalisation combined, be considered, we 
 surely find in the result a warning for more caution 
 than appears to have been exercised. Who could 
 reason on the genera or habits of those flowers from 
 the presentments specified above ? If we must 
 translate (so to say) the motionless attenuated figures 
 arranged in flat procession on the walls of Egyptian 
 tombs and temples, before we can accept them as 
 portraits, an analogous process may fairly be applied 
 to harp, pipe, and sistrum, as depicted by the primitive 
 sculptors and painters of old. To the harp in 
 particular, as the instrument to which, beyond all 
 others, legendary fancy has attached itself, this 
 remark belongs; nor can any speculations on its 
 compass and capacities, as derived from the number 
 of strings depicted under such circumstances, be 
 accepted without great hesitation. 
 
 Such are some of the few uncertainties through 
 
Prelude. 
 
 which tunes and traditions pass, before we arrive at 
 another, never to be forgotten — the possible and 
 frequent inexactness of notation. Many of the 
 specimens of national melody we possess have been 
 set down by persons of the slenderest possible tech- 
 nical acquirement, totally unable to perceive what is 
 accidental or what is essential in this or the other 
 chain of sounds and phrases. And who is there that 
 will venture to vouch for the accuracy of manuscript 
 when the same has passed into print, let the care 
 taken to ensure correctness have been ever so exqui- 
 site ? Think of the disputed readings of the Shak- 
 speare text — think of Hayley deliberately printing 
 Lord Bacon for Kobert Cecil, Earl of Salisbury — of a 
 modem historian setting down Sir Peregrine Pickle 
 instead of Sir Peregrine Maitland as one of the pall- 
 bearers at the Duke of Wellington's funeral ! The 
 character in which music is noted is obviously one 
 more tempting to inaccuracy than any verbal 
 alphabet. We have seen in a work so modern as 
 Beethoven's C Minor Symphony, two bars in the 
 acherzo cancelled by the master's own hand, while 
 correcting the proofs, overlooked by the printer and 
 the public, till the fact was incontestably proved by 
 Mendelssohn: the error in the meantime having 
 
8 National Mtmc of the World. 
 
 given rise to columns of controversy, and the blunder 
 having been pounced on as a rare beauty by the 
 transcendentalists, among them one no less ingenious 
 than M. Berlioz. It is only a year or two since the 
 journals of Paris recorded the correction of a false F 
 in a work no less recent and hackneyed than the 
 overture to ' Guillaume Tell.' With instances, which 
 could be multiplied by the thousand, such as these 
 — oversights arising not so much from neglect as 
 from imaginative quickness — few, save the wilfully 
 credulous, will put implicit trust in musical notation, 
 above all, when it is the vehicle of such crude irre- 
 gularities as abound in national music. 
 
 Further, we have to allow for something more 
 indirect in everything that concerns report of national 
 music. So long as humanity shall last, the influence 
 of feeling no less than of fact, the circumstances of 
 time and place, must be taken into account, however 
 advanced be the state of intelligence, in all records 
 dealing with representative art. Think of. the rap- 
 tures which have filled the pages of modern tourists, 
 describing as realities matters which are virtually 
 only so many sensations. Two may be instanced : 
 the first of these being the Sistine ' Miserere ' in the 
 Holy Week at Eome. The music of this far-famed 
 
Prelude. 
 
 rite, whicli has enclianted so many tourists, and 
 encouraged the birth of so many outbursts of hazy 
 enthusiasm, if transferred from the scene of action 
 and from under the spell of execution — as when it 
 was surreptitiously noted down by Mozart — proves 
 to be plain, almost to the point of prosaic simplicity, 
 and in small degree to justify the raptures which 
 belong either to curiosity or to the real faith and 
 expectation attendant on the ceremony. Often as it 
 has been described, it was not till the other day, 
 when the letters of one partly poet, partly artist, 
 thoroughly musician — Mendelssohn — were published, 
 that the untravelled world had much chance of com- 
 prehending to what extent the impression made on 
 religions and cultivated men and women was one of 
 art, or one of scene and sympathy. 
 
 Another musical performance nearer home was, 
 in its time, much talked of — the vesper service in 
 the Biguinage at Ghent. That was still more an 
 affair of mere framework than the' Sistine 'Miserere.' 
 The music was utterly mediocre — the voices of the 
 sisterhood were stale or sour, and ill trained to boot. 
 The organ, when I heard it, wheezed with decrepi- 
 tude, and its keys rattled audibly. Nevertheless, the 
 evening scene, when the demure female figures 
 
lo National Music of the World. 
 
 entered silently, one by one, and each, having folded 
 her white kerchief on her head, dropped on her 
 knees, the prayer accompanied by some pretext of 
 musical accompaniment — was picturesque enough to 
 hold the recollection of those who witnessed it, and 
 with the majority, it appears, to confuse clear artistic 
 perception. 
 
 Almost the strongest impression I recollect to 
 have received from a tune, belongs to a Methodist 
 funeral, which wound its way up a hollow north- 
 country -lane, on a grey October afternoon. The 
 coffin was not caparisoned ; the people who walked 
 before and behind it joined in a plain dry burial 
 psalm — sung as provincial psalm-singers used to do 
 forty years ago in England. It was not merely the 
 presence of death, which is felt so potently by the 
 young ; but it was the unexpected, sincere intrusion 
 of that droning music into a still landscape, which 
 has printed that melody on my memory. 
 
 What has been said will apply to any part-song 
 of German students or vineyard girls, heard in the 
 stony lanes of a Ehine or Moselle or Danube village 
 by moonlight, after a happy day's pleasure — to any 
 miserable Italian opera, drunk in as so much nectar 
 by tourists, resolute on finding opera in Italy (espe- 
 
Prelude. 1 1 
 
 cially if the same be cheap) something delicious. 
 
 Crabbe says — 
 
 It is the soul that sees. 
 
 This might be fairly matched by another phrase : 
 ' It is the sympathy that hears.' 
 
 At all events, the speculations which these outlines 
 represent have been clearly and consistently before me, 
 at every stage of such collection and comment as are 
 set forth in the following essays. They approach 
 the subject from the four points of the compass, not, 
 however, in their established order ; but from East, 
 South, North, and West. 
 
1 2 National Music of the World. 
 
 MUSIC FROM TEE EAST. 
 
 liOOEiNG to the East as to the cradle of civilisation, 
 we naturally accept every relic and record coming 
 thence as of the very highest importance. The 
 national music of no other countries has been so care- 
 fully studied by competent and erudite writers as 
 this; and, if it be considered in the antiquarian and 
 scientific point of view, the able work of Herr 
 EngeP may be said in some measure to have 
 exhausted the subject. 
 
 Viewed, however, on its picturesque side, a remark 
 is to be offered to which, it seems to me, attention 
 has not been sufficiently drawn. Instrumental re- 
 source was developed earlier, and with greater cer- 
 tainty, than any cultivation of the voice such as 
 comes home to modern sympathies. However con- 
 ventional they be, the pictures of harp and lyre (the 
 latter the descendant of the old fabled tortoise-shell, 
 cast on the strand, and strung with a sinew or 
 
 ' Muiic of the Ancient Nations. 
 
Music from the East. 1 3 
 
 two) — otherwise of tlie instruments wMcIi are 
 played (the French, expressively say, ■pinched) by the 
 fingers, or are caressed by the plectrmn or bow — those 
 of pipes of every quality, whether they be blown by 
 the mouth, or the wind within them set in motion by 
 the elbow — painted on the walls of the temples and 
 tombs of Egypt during the times when the one were 
 reared behindtheir avenues of sphinxes, and the others 
 locked up in the heart of some mountainous pyramid — 
 have a meaning not to be misread. They, indicate a 
 state of constancy in their fabrication ; as, too, in 
 the ornamental luxury applied to their garniture. 
 Each of these must have had its own ascertained 
 . scale, to which (for better, for worse) certain reference 
 could be made. There is no proof that contemporary 
 voices were trained to utter sounds of corresponding 
 precision or approach to sweetness. 
 
 My belief has long been fixed, that National 
 melody has never, in its beginnings, been derived 
 from Song so largely as from Dance— from instru- 
 ments employed to accompany numbers moving in 
 regular figures. For in the dance, as also in the 
 march, there must be rhythm, and without rhythm 
 there can be no melody more regular than such 
 fitful breathings as the ^olian harp murmurs. 
 
14 National Music of the World. 
 
 when some breeze provokes it to reply. A chant is 
 not a melody. It is merely an accommodation of 
 the speaker's voice to the words which are to be 
 delivered by him. The words may be long or may 
 be brief: the chanter or declaimer in music must 
 make room for them ; and the intervals of tone may, 
 in many cases, be merely so many expedients of 
 support and relief to the speaking voice. Every one 
 who has frequented the exhibitions of extempore 
 preachers must have been struck by a semi-musical 
 delivery, which in cultivated persons approaches 
 tmie, which in unlettered ones is twang. When 
 Edward Irving read from the Bible that splendid 
 passage which contains the dedication anthem for 
 the opening of Solomon's Temple, it was a spoken 
 chorus. Elizabeth Ery sang her sermons. 
 
 The Chant, then, it is not chimerical to assume, 
 originated unconsciously in verbal recitation. There 
 is nothing so soon caught up, so late got rid of, as 
 a peculiar inflexion of voice : and thus the desire of 
 crier or speaker to be heard by those at a distance, 
 seconded by imitation, has gone far to breed those 
 strange barbaric sequences of sound, which have been 
 erroneously defined as melodies. 
 
 Again : sounds independent of language grow 
 
Music from the East. 1 5 
 
 out of the necessities and accidents of daily labour. 
 The English paviour solaces himself with his grunt. 
 The mule-drivers of Spain have learned their shriek 
 and snort among the quadrupeds they hurry forward. 
 Out of such primitive elements as these, national 
 chant can grow ; but whenever an instrument is made, 
 there must always be established something more of 
 certainty than belongs to such vague, wandering 
 sounds; some feeling, be it ever so imperfect, for 
 tune, or correctness of intonation ; and, insomuch as 
 instruments were used to inspirit or accompany the 
 dancer, some recognition of return or periodicity — 
 otherwise of rhythm. 
 
 The foregoing speculations have always seemed 
 to me of great importance ; almost to the point of 
 establishing a definition and a principle. Their 
 plausibility, at all events, can be largely proved from 
 such specimens of Eastern music, ancient and 
 modern, as have been collected by Villoteau, Laborde, 
 Jomard, Sir Gore Ouseley, and that later traveller to 
 whom art owes so much — Mr. Layard. The chants 
 of the East, as noted by them, have one and all the 
 same character — a certain arid melancholy — a wail 
 which fancy cannot dissociate from the idea of coarse 
 and languid voices, exhausted under the influence of 
 
1 6 National Music of the World. 
 
 a fierce climate, and flung abroad into desolate space. 
 So long ago as the time when Kepler wrote, the close 
 of the sixteenth century — a time at which melody 
 (as we understand the word) was hardly formed, 
 the writer complained of the manner of singing 
 ' which the Turks and Hungarians are accustomed 
 to,' as ' resembling the voices of brute animals, 
 rather than the sounds of the human voice.' If the 
 tones have become sweeter since Kepler's day (which 
 may be doubted), the vocal tunes, as distinguished 
 from dancing rhythms, have made little advance. 
 They are still wayward to disorderliness. Their 
 closes are habitually imperfect and drawn out. 
 These, however, are peculiarities belonging to other 
 wild music than that of the East. Here is a 
 specimen of a Priest's song, noted by Mr. Layard, ^ 
 which in structure, if such a word can be employed, 
 and in division of notes, resembles, and not distantly, 
 the ' Eanz des Yaches ' of the Swiss. 
 
 " It may be as well to state, that since this specimen was 
 selected from among a mass of similar tunes, it has appeared in 
 Herr Engel's valuable volume, having probably been suggested to 
 him also by the extreme strength with which its characteristics are 
 marked. I would have withdrawn it and substituted another (to 
 avoid the smallest semblance of collision) were it not particularly 
 necessary to me in the comparison I desired to illustrate ; and did 
 not coincidence in selection add force to my argument. 
 
Music from the East. 
 
 17 
 
 m. 
 
 B B H 
 
 ^2— 9-t tt-ri — — Hrf-^ — bS^ 
 
 
 -R^ 
 
 :pg:p: ^r^^ — ^^=^^^=»= 
 
 -LL i I a 
 
 ^ 
 
 Let us now turn to tlie Swiss pastoral chant. 
 Vvecbce. 
 
 '^^r-w -^rz^^=^p^^ff 
 
1 8 National Music of the World. 
 
 ^,— s->- 
 
 The above are chants, not melodies : both of 
 xthem obviously calls, intended to be heard at a 
 distance, executed by defective voices — probably in- 
 correctly noted — calculated to lay hold of the ear 
 by iteration as much as by variety ; but whereas in 
 the first chant there may be implied something of 
 the apathy of oriental existence, in the latter fancy 
 may hear a tone of the echo from the mountain peak 
 ringing freshly down the valley. 
 
 When the transforming power of the apathy of 
 the East is adverted to, one of the most curious 
 illustrations which has turned up in these later days 
 must not be lost sight of. This is thd controversy 
 set on foot in regard to the parentage of the tune 
 'Malbrouk' — a tune so insipid as not to be worth 
 quarrelling about— a tune which may have got into 
 the East by the agency of recent French armies : 
 which may have come from the East in the days of 
 the Crusaders — as persons of the time being have 
 been bold enough to assert— but which, as the world 
 has agreed to accept it, has such an air of Paris and 
 of the singers belonging to Paris as no one can mis- 
 
Music from the East. 19 
 
 take,' that has ever been conversant with that delec- 
 table city, ancient or modern. Here is the tune as 
 noted by Eastern travellers, which it will be seen is 
 as tame, when compared with the ' Malbrouk' we are 
 accustomed to, as if some lotos or opium eater, having 
 got hold of a clear and easy melody, was half con- 
 sciously drawling it out before dying away in his 
 trance. 
 
 fe 
 
 ^^^^^^^3Si 
 
 Those who paid attention to the performances of 
 the band of the Pacha of Egypt which visited Lon- 
 don in 1862 might, I think, detect in the midst of 
 the strange barbaric ' jargoning,' which passed with 
 them for harmony, fragments of Western melody 
 imperfectly caught, and to which the impure note, 
 
 s It may be noted, however, among the coincidences which 
 crowd on the collector at every step taken by him, that a curious 
 similarity exists between the first four bars of ' Malbrouk ' and 
 those of ' Callino Casturame ' arranged by William Byrd. (Chappell's 
 Popular Music of the Olden Time, p. 793.) This, then, may have 
 been one of the melodies which have grown into t^heir present 
 shape gradually. 
 
 c2 
 
20 National Music of the World. 
 
 once having entered, gave a semblance of character 
 and savagery. But I can only speak of this with 
 caution, since an attempt to examine the noted 
 music from which they played was resisted with an 
 unwillingness, almost amounting to such aversion as 
 the natives of certain countries have shown to the 
 magic arts of the portrait-maker. 
 
 Be the amount of vitiation what it may, be it 
 conceded that the tunes of certain districts of the 
 East may have been imported from other lands 
 instead of being begotten on the soil (both facts 
 which it is next to impossible to determine by the 
 most patient investigation) ; ^ it is certain that there 
 is a difference in the tunes of the East. Among 
 those the best noted and known, possibly because 
 they are the most regular, are the Hindostanee 
 melodies, some of which offer examples of vocal 
 
 '' The other day, when a series of hints and instructions was 
 drawn out at the request of the Anthropological Society for the 
 guidance of collectors of national music, I ventured to suggest an 
 experiment which could hardly fail to be attended by some results 
 of interest, and might, in these, advance us a step further in our 
 knowledge of characteristics and their causes. Wherever the native 
 musicians show anything like intelligence or culture, I would have 
 'a test tune ' (one, for instance, as universally known and easy as 
 ' God save the King ') propounded to them, with a view to their 
 adoption of it. From the collection of variorum versions which 
 would be gathered, certain conclusions could hardly fail to be sha- 
 dowed out though it would be rash to rely on them dogmatically. 
 
Music from the East. 
 
 21 
 
 cantilena more symmetrical and civilised than those 
 occurring in either Egypt or Arabia. Such is the 
 air so familiar to every one, that to quote its opening 
 phrase will suffice : 
 
 bis 
 
 ^^^^ 
 
 S 
 
 =J=J= 
 
 &c. 
 
 I have always conjectured that this air may have 
 been helped by some such process as was employed 
 by Moore to bring into form his well-known ' Cana- 
 dian Boat Song,' and which converted, ' The Groves 
 of Blarney ' into the elegant melody, ' The Last Rose 
 of Summer ' — a tune which, simple as it is, consist- 
 ing of two strains, one thrice repeated, has become 
 one of European celebrity, and made the fortune of 
 M. von Elotow's feeble opera, ' Martha.' Here is 
 what may be the original tune, noted down at Ban- 
 galore by a competent musician, in 1854 : 
 
 I M 
 
 teefegE^^M ^m^ r c i TrrP^ 
 
22 
 
 National Music of the World. 
 
 If the relationship between the two last speci- 
 mens be admitted, their coincidence and variation 
 furnish another example of that transformation of 
 musical phrases, among untutored singers and in- 
 expert players, which is never to be lost sight of by 
 the student of national music. 
 
 The almost universal monotony and coarseness of 
 the singing voices, if so they may be called, of the 
 Orientals, seems accompanied by inability on their 
 part to appreciate beauty of vocal tone in others. 
 This has been again and again curiously manifested 
 during the visits which Eastern personages of opu- 
 lence and cultivation have paid to Europe. When 
 the Persian princes were in England, some quarter 
 of a century since, they took small pleasure in the 
 opera and its singers (howbeit enchanted with the 
 
Music from the East. 23 
 
 (lancing) ; preferring a home performance on a 
 wretclied little dulcimer by one of their own suite 
 — as Mr. Fraser commemorated in his liTely narra- 
 tiTe — and only really captivated by the lights and 
 the tinsel of Vauxhall, where, they said, ' true joys 
 abounded.' I shall never forget the stolid, turmeric- 
 coloured countenances, without a glimmer of curio- 
 sity or intelligence to light them up, with which 
 the Japanese ambassadors witnessed one of the 
 performances of the Sacred Harmonic Society. It 
 might have been thought that the mass of violent 
 sounds in the forte passages must have impressed 
 them with wonderment, at least ; but no, they en- 
 dured the infliction in the fulness of stolidity. That 
 was all. This insensibility to vocal charms is not 
 necessarily a case of inexperience. It has been 
 proved, past doubt, that a people ranking far lower 
 in the scale of civilisation and culture than any 
 Orientals,^ — the North American Indians — have re- 
 peatedly expressed a passionate, ignorant delight 
 
 * While tracing out this incoherence, which must so perplex 
 every one who desires to force a theory as to the connection of the 
 fine arts, the admirable instinct (if so it be) of the Hindoos in the 
 harmony of colours must not be overlooked. Then, apart from 
 their mechanical perfection as specimens of inlaid metal work, the 
 Japanese bronze vases have often a grace of form not to be exceeded 
 by the most exquisite examples of Etruscan earthenware. 
 
24 N'ational Music of the World. 
 
 in the trained vocal music wliicli they have found in 
 the theatres of the great Transatlantic cities. There 
 is something, after all, in organisation ; and though 
 it may appear presumptuous and paradoxical to ven- 
 ture so sweeping a definition, I must say that some 
 research and experience have brought me to a firm 
 belief that there are races and nations in whom certain 
 of the finest artistic senses (capriciously enough dis- 
 tributed) have no existence. I dare to believe that 
 the music of the Greeks was so much foolishness, 
 if it be measured against their colossal drama, their 
 divine sculpture ; and nurture a secret and deep 
 irreverence against the harpers, pipers, and sympho- 
 nists, whose strange forms in the monumental 
 sculptures of Egypt have set speculation so eagerly 
 to work, and have beguiled so many ingenious 
 people into conceiving that the art of music was 
 with them something rich, complete, and attractive ; 
 the key to the cipher being untowardly lost. 
 
 The musical humour of the East seems to undergo 
 a marked change at the points where instruments 
 come in. At that juncture (wherever it may arrive), 
 something distinct and precise, indicating the en- 
 joyments of the dance or the discipline of the march, 
 enters likewise. Here— to give an example of a 
 
Music from the East. 
 
 25 
 
 dance noted down at the ' French Eocks ' in 1851, 
 by a competent musician- -is a tune as regular as 
 any devised by a Frencli ballet composer, and, it 
 may be added, beariug a curious and not remote 
 resemblance to a style which has always been popular 
 in French music, and which has been carried to per- 
 fection by M. Gounod, in certain movements of his 
 music to ' Sappho,' * Ulysse,' and •' PhUemon and 
 Baucis.' 
 
 Something bolder and more vigorous is the next 
 specimen — a never-ending, still-beginning tune — in 
 great request at festivals, and which, if not helped, 
 as may be suspected, by notation, must rank high in 
 any collection of Hindoo music : — 
 
26 National Music of the World. 
 
 i 
 
 s 
 
 ^E33E5s^ 
 
 ^^a^ ^E^ 
 
 s 
 
 iF^^W^ 
 
 i 
 
 i^ 
 
 S 
 
 3^=^-3^ 
 
 i^=^ 
 
 
 ^^^^^=^^^^^: 
 
 #^-S=« 
 
 ^g^gteg^ ^^^g 
 
 ^ 
 
 zs:^ir_i=^ri; 
 
 
 The effect to be gained by interminable repeti- 
 tion can hardly be better studied than in these Bast 
 Indian melodies. There is little analogous in the 
 national music of the North, even taking in the 
 bagpipe tunes. One more illustration of a clearly- 
 marked characteristic may be found in the following 
 handful of notes, which at once accompanied and 
 incited the dancing-girls — obviously, practitioners of 
 an inferior class — who some years ago exhibited in 
 London: 
 
 Something not unlike this aggravating dance till 
 
Music from the East. 27 
 
 very recently walked about our London streets in 
 the shape of the tabret, or small drum, diligently 
 patted in time by a pair of ginger-bread coloured 
 hands, the beat of which supported and carried off 
 the dreary voice of the chanter. It is observable, 
 however, that this effect, which is rhythm in its 
 crudest form, has offered suggestion to composers in 
 search of local colour. I may instance, as a sin- 
 gularly felicitous example, the Temple Eevel in Sir 
 M. Costa's 'Eli,' where the effect depends largely 
 on the repetition of a dull rhythmical sound, sus- 
 taining a dance throughout a scene of strong and 
 varied emotion. 
 
 In any event, this East Indian music is of homely 
 quality, especially considered in regard to its execu- 
 tion. ' The natives,' writes the friend to whom I am 
 indebted for three of the above specimens, ' have no 
 ' knowledge of harmony. Their ideas go no further 
 ' than the nasmum and tom-tom, and their souls revel 
 ' in the delightful sounds produced by them, which are 
 ' the horror of Europeans. At all their public festivals 
 ' the tom-tom plays a principal part, these drums being 
 ' made of hollow trees, some of the size of a good- 
 * sized wine-cask. I have seen them so large as to be 
 'placed on a waggon and drawn by oxen. The 
 
28 National Music of the World. 
 
 ' nasnum is an instrument resembling our oboe, but 
 
 'it is louder, shriller, coarser. The bands which 
 
 ' saunter about the bazaars and perform at weddings 
 
 * generally consist of two musicians, hoth playing the 
 
 ' nasnum, the second a protracted pedal note. The 
 
 ' tom-tom is indispensable to all Indian music. The 
 
 'second oboe player has often amused me by his 
 
 ' power of holding out the note without any interrup- 
 
 'tion. I have never been able to understand how. 
 
 ' The first nasnum seems every now and then to rest 
 
 ' for a few bars, whilst the second goes on fortissimo 
 
 'without interruption, and apparently without any 
 
 ' effort. I once observed such a player very closely, 
 
 ' and found, by my watch, that he held out his note fully 
 
 ' five-and-twenty minutes. He seemed, however, to 
 
 ' move his nostrils slightly and regularly, and the whole 
 
 ' process did not appear to give him more trouble than 
 
 'the player has who touches the key of an organ.^ 
 
 ' Such an accomplishment would be something lite a 
 
 ' miracle to English players, since every one of them 
 
 'knows how difficult it is to hold out a note for 
 
 ' three-quarters, or even one-half a minute.' 
 
 A large portion of that which has passed, and still 
 
 ' This is not a surprising feat. A chemist keeps up his blow- 
 pipe without intermission by his mouth, breathing meanwhile regu- 
 larly through his nose. — Ed. 
 
Music from the East. 29 
 
 passes, ■witli the Chinese for music to be enjoyed, 
 distances barbarian sympathies and defies barbarian 
 analysis. The specimens noted by Barrow, Amiot, Du 
 Halde, Irving, and byHerr Engel(with the one remark- 
 able exception, of which mention has been made), are so 
 hideously at variance with every one of our feelings, 
 fancies, practices in art, or ideas of beauty, that one 
 can only look at them and wonder, Tor wonderful 
 it is, that a people so rich and ancient as the Chinese 
 — one so advanced in the knowledge of secrets of 
 colour, refinement of texture, peculiarity of form 
 (though in beauty of the same they are obviously 
 surpassed by the Japanese) — so skilled in exquisite 
 caligraphy — a people, to boot, who possess a philo- 
 sophy, a fiction, and a drama of their own, all 
 indicating a separate, not an undeveloped civilisa- 
 tion — should appear to us, who can allow for and 
 admire their excellences, so utterly savage and 
 repulsive in their musical tendencies. It will not 
 altogether fit the case, to appeal to the total absence 
 of perspective, conventionality of outline, and fla- 
 grancy of form (often amounting to deformity), which 
 distinguish the pictures and tissues of the country, 
 when most refined in texture, gorgeous in material, 
 or rich in colour. What we know of Chinese melody 
 
30 National Music of the World. 
 
 and music, with very small exception, is in every 
 respect more rude and more shapeless than that of 
 far more savage peoples. Perhaps the solution of 
 such an inconsistency may be found in a fact diflBcult 
 to be admitted by those who, because all the arts are 
 kindred, expect them to be contemporary in their 
 development. May we not have here a signal proof that 
 music has been always a vagrant Muse, with an inde- 
 pendent and arbitrary life of her own, and that her 
 prosperity or the reverse can be no more predicated 
 from the signs and tokens of any given epoch than 
 can be the moods of the Wind, ' which bloweth where 
 it listeth.' Yet even this Chinese barbarism — (to 
 retort upon the Celestials with their own epithet) — is 
 proved by exceptions which, supposing them to be 
 authentic and not fabricated, are of astonishing 
 regularity. In the section of Herr Engel's valuable 
 work on ' The Music of the Ancient Nations,' which 
 deals with China, is cited (p. 145), 'The Ancient 
 Hymn in honour of the Ancestors ' : a tune in the 
 midst of most chaotic handfuls of notes, as stately, 
 well ordered, and susceptible of musical treatment 
 as any Lutheran psalm, or any of those Eomish 
 hymns which replaced the crude and over-prized 
 Ambrosian and Gregorian chants. 
 
Music from the East. 
 
 The solitary use of the national music of China 
 bj' a trained writer which I can call to mind, is that 
 made by Weber — of all composers, foremost and 
 most felicitous in availing himself of , what may be 
 called wild music — in his overture to Schiller's trans- 
 lation of Carlo Gozzi's Chinese Fiaba — ' Turandot.' 
 
 The music of the East, which I have dwelt on, 
 is obviously too primitive and too uncouth to have 
 been largely, if at all, recurred to as material by the 
 trained composers of modern times, when they have 
 been in search of what is called ' local colour.' An 
 exception is now to be spoken of: a province (so to 
 say), which has suggested a style, and given an 
 . inspiration to many modern artists. ' Turkish music,' 
 — or, as they call it in Germany, Janissary music — has 
 grown into an established musical term ; as much as 
 'the stringed band,* and 'the wind band,' as 
 definitions of the group of instruments which make 
 up that m.agnificent machine — a modern orchestra. 
 Yet no Oriental music seems to be so limited, and 
 so monotonous, as the tunes which the bells, cymbals, 
 and duller ' Turkish ' instruments of percussion 
 support, and which possibly owe their simplicity and 
 timidity to the restricted powers of the instruments 
 to which the melody is entrusted. A few notes of 
 
32 National Music of the World. 
 
 the diatonic scale have been turned to effective 
 account, — perhaps, because their orderliness of 
 interval and rhythm, setting them entirely apart 
 from anything which may be called or approaches a 
 chant, renders them amenable and available to 
 devices of science and the desires of fancy. Here, 
 for example, is the phrase noted by Laborde, and 
 used twice by Weber in his ' Oberon,' first as a march 
 on which a brilliant vocal solo could be embroidered : 
 
 i 
 
 --S& 
 
 w=m'- 
 
 w^^- 
 
 1=t 
 
 ^ 
 
 -IH" 
 
 "±^^0 
 
 ^ 
 
 5 
 
 The same phrase, with a happy touch of inversion 
 and change of rhythm, was employed by Weber at a 
 later period of ' Oberon ' as the dance tune breathed 
 from the horn of the Fairy King : 
 
 i 
 
 s 
 
 5^P: 
 
 '-W—^ 
 
 F^g 
 
 e£ 
 
 W«— I*- 
 
 =t=t 
 
 &C. 
 
 That such closeness of interval is a frequent, if not 
 a constant characteristic of Turkish music, maybe seen 
 by half a score of other examples. Observe how, 
 with the alchemy of true genius, by the use of 
 syncopation, and of the minor mode, Mozart could 
 turn the forms adverted to, to tolally original account 
 in the Turkish chorus of ' Die Entfiihrung.' 
 
Music from the East. 
 
 33 
 
 i 
 
 IS 
 
 itn 
 
 ^s 
 
 £ 
 
 9 
 
 EeeoUect again, how a later, less scrupulous, less 
 correct, but more brilliantly gifted writer, Signer 
 Rossini, could combine the bald vocal phrases of 
 Turkish music and the imperious clang and thump 
 of its instruments in the vigorous chorus from his 
 ' Siege de Corinthe.' 
 
 
 SES^i 
 
 t-JLiz^* 
 
 Let me digress for a moment. I have not used 
 the epithets applied to Signor Rossini, as ' a madman 
 flings about fire,' but from a feeling which has 
 ' grown with my growth, and strengthened with my 
 strength ' — formerly an instinct, now a deliberate 
 conviction. I hold that since Handel, there has 
 been no musician deserving the epithet so completely 
 as the composer of 'II Barbiere,' 'La Donna del 
 Lago,' the third act of ' Otello,' the tomb-scene of 
 ' Semiramide,' the greater portion of ' Moise,' and 
 ' Guillaume Tell.' One might say without strain or 
 conceit, and with express reference to this subject of 
 mine, that there is as much of heather in his Scottish 
 
 D 
 
34 National Music of the World. 
 
 opera as there is of lagoon in his treatment of 
 Shatspeare's noble Venetian tragedy — of Alp and 
 glacier and hill echoes ringing through the air, in 
 the scenes, now fresh, now sublime, of the Swiss 
 legend — as there is of the cruel, ceaseless, monotonous 
 Turkish tone in the chorus of which the opening 
 phrase has just been cited. Here is no question of 
 science, but, to repeat, of brilliant natural gifts. 
 
 To return. The illustrations of 'Turfeish Music,' 
 and its style and capabilities, within very narrow 
 bounds, as improved and employed by scientific 
 musicians, could be multiplied ad infinitum ; during 
 as wide a range of dates as separates Andreas 
 Romberg's 'Turkish Symphony,' written for Con- 
 stantinople, from M. Felicien David's ' Desert,' which 
 may be said to represent the quintessence of all the 
 forms of Eastern melody with which we have been 
 made acquainted. 
 
 Ere I have done with this sketch, I must recall 
 another, and the most marvellous, employment of 
 the rude and monotonous Eastern cries or tunes, in 
 conjunction with a busy and inexorable rhythm, made 
 by a master of his art, which stands by itself, because 
 of its wondrous force and felicity. This is in 
 Beethoven's chorus of the Whirling Dervishes in 
 
Music from tlie East. 35 , 
 
 his ' Euins of Athens.' The persistence in diatonic 
 interval, which has been represented in divers forms 
 by Mozart, Weber, Romberg, Gluck (as the airs 
 from his ' Pilgrims of Mecca,' ' Unser dummer Pobel 
 meinte',' reminds us), and Sigr. Rossini, is by 
 Beethoven thrown into the vocal part, while the 
 delirious triplet accompaniment describes (if there 
 be such a thing as description in music) the whirl of 
 frantic feet swarming on the floor ; fierce vigour and 
 uncouth, not illicit, modulation being so wrought up 
 as to produce the most unique, resistless specimen 
 of mad climax which the library of music has to 
 show. But Beethoven probably regarded the thing 
 as a mere trifle. 
 
 I have spoken first about what may be called 
 the ruder music of the East designedly, yet without 
 reference to chronology. For had dates guided me, 
 it would have been needful to begin with the music 
 of that strange and noble people who, now having a 
 country of their own no more, are still the earliest 
 of those owning an oriental origin of whom distinct 
 and consecutive record is made ; — a people impossible 
 to regard without as much fixed wonder and close 
 
 ' Varied by Mozart (No. 455 of D. von Kochel's ThemaUe 
 )■ 
 
 D 2 
 
36 National Music of the World. 
 
 study as imperfect sympathy — the three, by a some- 
 what ungenerous, yet not unnatural process, having 
 too largely taken the form of antipathy which is 
 unhappily historical. The remarkable attitude 
 which the homeless Hebrews have maintained and 
 retained since the birth, progress, and enlargement 
 of Christianity even unto these days ; — the supre- 
 macy they have asserted in the face of persecution, 
 bigotry, scandal (not without some warrant to be 
 found among the national characteristics of these 
 people without a nation), could not fail to be accom- 
 panied by a certain injustice which, as it is the 
 habit of injustice to do, has only fixed attention 
 more permanently upon those who have been its 
 object. Their place in the world of music has, from 
 the days when, as Holy Writ informs us. Tubal Cain 
 invented harp and organ, down to our own time, been 
 peculiar and commanding. 
 
 From whichever side they be considered, the 
 music of the Hebrews, and the aptitude and glory of 
 that race for and in the art, are matters of the 
 highest interest. Their tunes, considering the re- 
 mote antiquity to which they pretend, are amazing. 
 Though the fashions of organ, harp, lute, sackbut 
 psaltery, 'trumpet also, and shawm' have been 
 
Music from the East. 37 
 
 modernised, a claim attaches to some of the melodies 
 habitually used in the synagogues, which almost 
 bewilders the mind by the vast sweep which it takes 
 back to the early days of that peculiar people, whom 
 the Most High deigned to guide and protect in 
 their wanderings with ' a pillar of cloud by day, and 
 a pillar of fire by night.' Compared, I say, with 
 other distant echoes which have reached us from the 
 ancient world, the symmetry and grandeur of some 
 of the portions of the Hebrew Temple service — and 
 these reputed the oldest — are almost as remarkable 
 after their kind as are the Psalms of the Eoyal 
 Poet, for dignity of language and beauty of sugges- 
 tion to the ' chief musicians ' and ' singers.' I 
 must beg, however, those who bear me company to 
 bear in mind also my habitual caution in dealing 
 with tradition— not to say, mistrust of it — even when 
 it is handed down to us by conscientious and learned 
 men. 
 
 To the work of two of these every student of 
 Hebrew music must be largely indebted : the un- 
 ambitious but carefully executed collection of ancient 
 melodies of the Spanish and Portuguese Hebrews, by 
 Mr. Edward Aguilar, with an instructive preface 
 by M. de Sola, the priest of the Spanish and Portu- 
 
38 National Mtisic of the World. 
 
 guese congregations in London. This furnislies 
 illustrations of great value, whetlier tliey be con- 
 sidered collaterally witli reference to the music of 
 other countries, or singly, as standing on their own 
 merits. They may be divided into two sections : 
 the first containing those chants of a wayward 
 rudeness, so constant to oriental cries, and so per- 
 plexing to the ear be they ever so explicable, as 
 having originated in the speaker's desire to help his 
 voice. The following fragment,^ though not among 
 the specimens reputed by M. de Sola as oldest, is 
 not one of the least characteristic : 
 
 Lento senza tempo. ,^ 
 
 — J-S 1 — It i i i i i i i i i 1 1 ^^ ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 l=F^=qv=KFq= ^ J J 1 l^~- =g:l=q= &c. 
 
 :^-iti. 
 
 ' The specimen given when my lectures were delivered, was 
 No. 44 of M. de Sola's collection : a ' Melody of the Blessing of the 
 Priests,' regarding which we are assured that tradition exists that 
 it is identical with that sung in the Temple, where, as it was known, 
 the priestly choirs were daily wont to bless the people, agreeably 
 to the command to them in Numbers vi. 22-26. I find, however. 
 
Music from the East. 
 
 39 
 
 The manner in which this chant shifts about, 
 opening in one tone and closing in another, is worthy 
 of observation, I cannot but suggest, that the 
 irregularity may be referable to imperfect trans- 
 mission, caused by uncertain intonation on the part 
 of the singer. 
 
 Many of what may be called Hebrew melodies 
 (as distinguished from chants) bear no trace of time 
 or place. The one I shall give has something like 
 a universal currency, and is to be found in every 
 collection of Hebrew music which I have been able 
 to examine. 
 
 f=£ 
 
 Fine. 
 
 m^ 
 
 w^^. 
 
 --f^-- 
 
 T^ 
 
 =i=?^ 
 
 :i5t= 
 
 :«t:* 
 
 -f^j^-t: 
 
 :1st 
 
 i 
 
 Mz^ 
 
 t=rt?^^ 
 
 - I ! ! 
 
 :^=t 
 
 :^ 
 
 B.C. 
 
 This is, surely, a grander and more tractable 
 
 that its peculiarity of character, and great reputed antiquity, have 
 also attracted Herr Engel, who has published it in his work ; and as 
 choice was not wanting, have therefore selected an example which 
 will be less familiar to his readers ; while its preference in no 
 respect weakens my case. 
 
40 National Music of the World. 
 
 melody than Luther's well-known psalm time, ' Ein' 
 feste Burg,' which incited Meyerbeer — an Israelite 
 indeed in whom there was much guile — to create 
 that imperishable opera betwixt the two warring 
 Christian faiths. And j^et, what is the date of 
 Luther's psalm tune, as compared with the age of 
 this melody? Tradition, M. de Sola assures us, 
 refers it to the days and deeds recorded in Exodus, 
 when Miriam the Prophetess, the sister of Aaron, 
 answered those who bore her company with timbrels 
 and with dances — by her victorious chant of triumph 
 over the destruction of Pharaoh's chariots, and all 
 his host that pursued the children of Israel — while 
 she sang how ' the horse and his rider were thrown 
 into the sea.' 
 
 It must not be overlooked, that in the carefully 
 executed preface to this excellent collection of tunes, 
 M. de Sola, as all honest observers must do, takes 
 his part in weakening our belief in tradition, which 
 is strained to the utmost bj- the legend attached to 
 this noble tune ; for he informs us that at an early 
 period — even as happened in other countries, where 
 Eoman Catholic masses were built upon such secular 
 ditties as 'L'homme arme' — ^the custom was adopted 
 iamong the Spanish and Portuguese Hebrews of 
 
Music from the East. 41 
 
 singing the ancient unchanged words to popular 
 songs of the time, such as ' Amaryllis,' ' Three 
 colours in one,' ' The cowherds on the mountain.' 
 This justifies us in conceiving that some fragments 
 of wild chants may have been brought into modern 
 shape and ordinance by those who allured the 
 faithful to praise and prayer by recourse to mun- 
 dane devices ; such admission being easier to enter- 
 tain than the idea that 'Az yashir Moshe' (The 
 song of Moses) is the veritable intact hymn of ' the 
 Red Sea,' as sung by the ancient Hebrews. 
 
 What curious, capricious gleams of twilight are 
 let in, so often as we pry into the mysteries of old 
 time ! The Christians, no doubt, were largely in- 
 debted for their melodies to the Hebrews ; and they 
 were willing, says Clement of Alexandria,^ to give 
 the harp and lyre a part in their social festivities, 
 ' because David played on them,' but prohibited the 
 flute, because that instrument ' had been used in the 
 service of idolatry.' Yet Christians did not refuse 
 to avail themselves of the services of the organ — an 
 instrument no less pagan, which, resolved into its 
 primitive elements, is merely a box of flutes — an 
 improved application of the pipes of Pan. 
 » Cited by M. de Sola. 
 
42 National Mtcsic of the World. 
 
 Certain, again, it is that the Church, which 
 pressed into its service so many of the forms of 
 Ancient Mythology (and some of these not of 
 the purest), which allowed superstitions connected 
 with Venus to glide into the worship of the Ma- 
 donna, made far ampler and more open use of the 
 Greek modes— Lydian, Doric, and Phrygian.^by 
 adopting them as chants, than of these Hebrew 
 melodies, so far as can be traced. The only ex- 
 ample which I can call to mind is No. 35 in M. de 
 Sola's Collection, ' Yar Shemang,' in which may be 
 traced the- germ of the Latin Christmas hymn, 
 'Adestefideles,' known familiarly as the 'Portuguese 
 hymn.' 
 
 The use of ancient Hebrew music made by modern 
 composers may be described as small and unim- 
 portant, its capabilities and temptations considered. 
 It is less known, indeed, than what may be called 
 the civilised ritual music belonging to any other 
 religion, and, unlike that of the Roman Catholic, 
 Lutheran, and even Greek churches, has never passed 
 into our concert-rooms. It is true that ' an enter- 
 tainment,' with a view of presenting the treasures 
 of the Synagogue to Christian consideration, was 
 attempted here some years since by Mr. Henry 
 
Music from the East. 
 
 Phillips, but it was too empirically prepared and 
 imperfectly carried out, to do any justice to a subject- 
 so wide and peculiar, or to engage the attention of a 
 public so averse to novelty as the public of England. 
 The silence, at first view, seems stranger to those 
 who bear in mind how valuable have been the contri- 
 butions both to creative and executive art which we 
 owe to the children of Israel. Without hyperbole, 
 they may be said to have inherited the garment of 
 praise and the spirit of melody ; but it is, perhaps, a 
 necessary consequence of their position in the world, 
 that while they have been the bondsmen of others, 
 they have timidly, or from jealousy, hidden away 
 their own treasures, and clinging close to their 
 faith in private, have been compelled to lend them- 
 selves to the works of the Philistines before the 
 world. Splendidly as Braham delivered the final 
 recitatives in Handel's ' Israel,' his greater triumphs 
 were in 'The Messiah' and 'Luther's Hymn.' I 
 cannot call to mind that Pasta, the greatest singer of 
 Hebrew origin who ever drew breath, in any moment 
 of her career, sacred or profane, asserted the in- 
 dividuality of the faith of her ancestors, superbly 
 as she delivered the music of the Eomish Church. 
 So, again, possibly the most powerful and sudden 
 
44 National Music of the World.. 
 
 burst of Eachel's dramatic fire was when she 
 rushed on the stage in Corneille's ' Polyeuete,' 
 with the enthusiastic ' Je crois ! ' which proclaimed 
 her ready for the rack and flames of Christian 
 martyrdom. 
 
 It is true that certain modern German critics and 
 historians, with an ingenious suhtlety in torturing 
 speculation, have permitted themselves to use such a 
 phrase as ' tic Hebraique,' applied to the works of 
 musicians of Hebrew origin : and this they assume 
 as a national characteristic, to be discerned in the 
 music of two men, in their art as opposite as the 
 poles — Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer. The vivacity of 
 the former, as evidenced by the rapidity of certain of 
 his movements, and his frequent and happy employ- 
 ment of staccato phrases, is ascribed to a feverish, 
 uneasy restlessness, ever in search for illicit effect. 
 The only analogous manifestation I can recall in the 
 works of Meyerbeer lies in the theme of his overture 
 to ' Marguerite d'Anjou,' which I have heard con- 
 temptuously styled ' Jews' music' A more ridiculous 
 piece of prophecy after the fact, of forcing a defini- 
 tion to fit circumstances, could hardly be cited. Of 
 all the animated artists who ever lived, Mendelssohn, 
 when need was, was the most placid, the most 
 
Music from the East. 45 
 
 serene, the one who sacrificed the least of his own 
 independence to effect, as all his sacred, and much of 
 his secular, music remains to attest. That he had 
 tastes in harmony tending towards mannerism, is 
 not to be denied ; but the sole trace of Hebrew in- 
 fluence that I can think of, in all the body of music 
 he poured out, is in a few portions of his ' Athalie ' 
 music. These as well befitted a Jewish story as did 
 the faery tone his ' Midsummer Night's Dream,' — 
 as did the wild billowy heavings of the North Sea 
 his ' Hebriden ' overture — as did the ' Saltarella ' 
 finale to his symphony which we call Italian — as did 
 the perfect yet pensive beauty, thrown into no 
 modern forms, which pervades portions of his choral 
 music to ' Antigone and (Edipus.' 
 
 The disparaging criticism has a shade more of 
 pertinence if it be applied to the music of Meyerbeer ; 
 that most feverish of all seekers, that most obsequious 
 of men resolute on conciliating favour at any price, 
 who absolutely, by this time-serving want of self- 
 dependence, so frittered away and distracted the 
 musical genius born within him, that many have 
 denied its existence. The entire contrast between 
 him and the mSister with whom illiberal sarcasm has 
 tied him up, could not be better proved than by the 
 
46 National Music of the World. 
 
 first four bars of his ' Pater Noster,' in the last of 
 which the repose, yet awe, which the words convey is 
 entirely disturbed by the sudden transition or leap 
 in the melody— effective, it may be, but hardly devo- 
 tional. But let the great qualities and defects im- 
 puted to his peculiar people have been ever so strong 
 in the man, I am as unable to find any echoes from the 
 synagogue in his music, as in the music of his great 
 fellow-student under the fantastic and empirical 
 Abbe Vogler, of whom I shall have to speak more 
 than once — Carl Maria von Weber. 
 
 From the Hebrews, an opulent and refined 
 and musical people, — a people, withal, without 
 a country — it is an abrupt, yet not wholly unna- 
 tural transition, to pass to another world of 
 homeless wanderers, in diametrically opposite 
 circumstances^the world of Gipsies. By this pas- 
 sage we are transported from luxury, wealth, an 
 elaborate cultivation, into what may be called the 
 howling wilderness of Art : a wilderness, however, 
 teeming with interesting natural productions. I 
 cannot do better than avail myself of the distinction 
 traced by the Abbe Liszt, in his book on the Music 
 of the Bohemians, which, wild and exaggerated 
 though it be in style, contains much ingenious specu- 
 
Music from the East. 47 
 
 lation and more curious anecdote. He points out 
 that whereas, throughout all the circumstances of 
 their dispersion, and persecution consequent on their 
 isolation from the families of Christendom, the 
 Hebrews have retained their individuality by living 
 under the strictest subjection to antique rule and 
 law; the Gipsies have vindicated their peculiar 
 character by irreclaimable lawlessness ; and, while 
 wandering about as chartered or unchartered liber- 
 tines among civilised folk, have clung obstinately to 
 certain characteristic habits, which are merely 
 expressions of lawless disobedience. Whereas the 
 ancient people possesses a grand language and n, 
 Book which, apart from its origin, outbuys all the 
 books of the world, the ancient swarm has only a 
 jargon, and what may be without offence called a 
 slang literature, of which little if any written record 
 exists. And this separation of two noticeable 
 families of the human race — a separation as wide as 
 that of day from darkness, howbeit, in one respect 
 the two families are similarly situated — is in no 
 point more signally illustrated than in their dealings 
 with the art here treated. Whereas the Hebrews 
 have inherited or got together a body of religious 
 music distinct in its form, and excellent in its glory ; 
 
48 National Mtisic of the World. 
 
 whereas, during a century past, they have contri- 
 buted to modern art some of the most complete 
 creators and interpreters that have ever existed — 
 such as Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Pasta, Rachel, 
 Braham, Ernst, Joachim, Moscheles ; — the members 
 of the gipsy horde, though they universally show 
 aptitude and proficiency to a certain point, in the 
 devices that charm ear and eye, never seem able to 
 advance beyond indication and capricious wilfulness. 
 Gipsy music is of very limited value, if disconnected 
 from the gipsy performance of it, and from the 
 impression made by it on those who, for the sake of 
 sensation, will endure and relish anything, no matter 
 how eccentric it be. Comparatively few gipsy tunes, 
 save a Russian or Hungarian dance or two, which 
 possibly own some such parentage, have passed into 
 the world's store of melodies. I think Schubert is 
 the only great composer, and after him the Abbe 
 Liszt, in his 'Rhapsodies Hongroises,' who has 
 used them heartily; and close as is the resem- 
 blance of tribe with tribe— whether the folk are 
 to be found burrowing in the cliffs embossed with 
 wine and oleander and Indian fig, that face the 
 Alhambra at Granada, or threading their tedious 
 way across some Transylvanian waste — it is not 
 
Music from the East. 49 
 
 easy to define or specify in what the style of their 
 mtisic consists, beyond a vocal lawlessness which 
 marks its Oriental origin, and a certain wild fertility 
 of improvisation in which the instrumental players 
 are encouraged to give vent to their fancies as they 
 rise. 
 
 The voices of the gipsy singers are generally 
 detestable ; and this may not be altogether owing to 
 the coarse, feverish, comfortless lives they lead, or 
 their fondness for drink : — the natural poverty and 
 offence may belong to the race. I can call to mind 
 nothing so intolerable as the hoarse yet piercing 
 screams emitted by a troupe whose performances I 
 heard in Granada. How, with so much obvious 
 feeling for rhythm as the people possess, they can 
 endure discords so atrocious, is a matter only to be 
 explained by the separation which certainly exists 
 in music between sense of tone and sense of time. 
 I was assured that these were practitioners of the 
 lowest class. They were, however, possibly none the 
 less genuine for not being trained, tamed, and 
 sophisticated for public exhibition, as are the more 
 notorious gipsies of the Triana at Seville. And 
 indeed, with reference to this very subject, the Abbe 
 Liszt tells us that the real, pure (or rather impure) 
 
 E 
 
50 National Music of the World. 
 
 gipsy style is to be heard in greater perfection 
 among the hordes of Hungary than in Russia. 
 The far-famed gipsies of Moscow — among the most 
 deadly and dangerous sirens a corrupt society has 
 ever encouraged — are, he tells us, made up for 
 show. Of all showy things, show nationality is the 
 worst. 
 
 The race has favourite instruments of its own. 
 The violin, in some form more or less primitive, goes 
 everywhere. To this the gipsies add the cymbal ; 
 not the pair of Mambrino's basins clashed, or quietly 
 thrilled, one against the other, which we call by 
 that name, but a sort of wicked dulcimer whipped 
 by the player. The name clings to instruments of 
 its class, handled by vagrant musicians, as does the 
 name vieU,e,, viola, or gironda among those of the 
 hurdy-gurdy family. There was one, only a few 
 years past, played on by a poor old woman in the 
 London streets. Perhaps the name maybe accepted 
 as defining a harsh and stinging tone : — ' cembalo ' 
 defines a harpischord in Italian. The Hungarian 
 gipsy cymbLl, the Abbe Liszt says — on what 
 authority I cannot ascertain — dates from the fifteenth 
 century. The player on it shares, with the first 
 violin the task of bringing out and lengthening cer- 
 
Music from the East. 5 1 
 
 tain passages, in accordance with the humour of 
 the moment. The Abbe gives curious anecdotes of 
 these wild and lawless people when domesticated in 
 Transylvanian households. It was their habit to 
 accompany armies on the march as musicians so late 
 as the beginning of the last century. But I fancy 
 (save in such a ministry to illicit luxury as they 
 offer in Eussia) the palmy days of the gipsy 
 musicians are over, and that we shall hear no more 
 of such prodigal doings as those of the Hungarian 
 noble who bound up a vagrant violin-player's arm 
 in a bundle of bank-notes. Tear by year they must 
 fade out, and be absorbed into the world of more 
 civilised races. 
 
 I cannot close these paragraphs without pointing 
 out, as among many marking characteristics of the 
 kind which distinguish him, the felicitous adoption 
 of the wild style of gipsy music by Weber, in his 
 ' Preciosa ' march. Nor has Signor Verdi, whose 
 use of local material is habitually slight and thrown 
 into the most conventional of forms, been without a 
 touch of the right spirit, thrown into the beginning 
 and close of the chorus which opens the second act 
 of ' II Trovatore.' Those who recollect the audacious 
 incorrect performances of M. Eem&yi, the violinist, 
 
 b2 
 
52 National Music of the World. 
 
 who for a time sojourned in London and formed 
 part of Her Majesty's private band, may recall, as 
 the sole merit which they possessed, some traces of 
 the wild humour and fire with which the music 
 of this vagabond race may be credited. Gripsy 
 music is a weed of the strangesb form, colour, and 
 leafage ; one hardlj' to be planted in any orderly 
 garden. 
 
 Lastly, with reference to Eastern origin and in- 
 fluences, the music of Spain must be touched on : a 
 subject full of perplexity to all those persons who 
 comfort themselves with a theory of the connection of 
 the arts. Such a theory is utterly untenable as regards 
 music, supposing , connection to imply contempo- 
 raneous existence ; and its futility can be proved no- 
 where more completely than by reference to the 
 music of the Peninsula. What need is there to 
 revert to the days of Spain's pomp and power? 
 What need to recall, that after Eastern domination 
 had ceased there (how wonderfully represented by 
 its monuments !) '" there could arise and flourish in 
 
 '" The meagreness, not to say absence, of what may be called 
 representative architecture in Spain, subsequent to the departure 
 of the Moors, is one among the many anomalies with which the 
 student of art has to deal. It is true that the Gothic style in 
 church-building was modified to some degree by the introduction 
 
Music from the East. 53 
 
 the land a school of painters, of dramatists, of poets, 
 of novelists, who by their indiTiduality challenged — 
 if they did not surpass — their brethren in every 
 kingdom of Europe ; and these, not always artists 
 starved because society had no room for them — but 
 men cherished by munificent persons who de- 
 lighted to surround themselves with everything that 
 is refined, pleasure-giving, and luxurious. Yet more : 
 the Roman Catholic Church, to whose patronage, 
 as distinct from prescience, music owes so much, 
 had always one of her most august thrones in Spain, 
 and round about that throne, her cathedrals with 
 their reliquaries — her. holy houses with inmates ready 
 to lay every gift they possessed on the altar. Further, 
 that the people of Spain inherit a graceful aptiiiude 
 for receiving art, might to this day be predicated 
 irom their noble bearing, from their picturesque 
 fancies of colour in dress, from their inborn, inbred 
 courtesy of demeanour, such as the traveller finds 
 among few, if any, continental folk. 
 
 of the Platereteohxaoaxa ; but that applies to fashion in decoration, 
 not to form of structure ; and the wonderful piled-up shrines and 
 altars to be seen in the great and gorgeous Spanish cathedrals 
 hardly outdo similar specimens which might have been cited so far 
 north as the Lower Ehineland, say from the churches of Xanten 
 and Neuss. The question, I repeat, is full of perplexing incoa* 
 jsistency. 
 
54 National Music of the World. 
 
 Nevertheless, Spain, with its Alhambra,- and its 
 wondrous clnirch (once mosque) at Cordova, its Al- 
 cazar of Seville, its later cathedrals, its splendid 
 school of painters — headed by Velasquez — and its 
 affluent and gorgeous world of drama (one which has 
 only of late been fully displayed to us), has not 
 yielded a single universal name to the annals of 
 written music, whether the same be ecclesiastical or 
 theatrical, save the one of Morales ; and his to all 
 intents and purposes is a name, and nothing more. 
 That during the past half-century Spain has given 
 to Europe a family of representative artists — the 
 Garcia family — whose power, genius, and originality 
 have printed a permanent trace in the record of 
 methods of vocal execution and ornament, may be in 
 some sort the exception which proves the rule. 
 
 And yet so early as the fifteenth century, Spain 
 possessed an accomplished theoretical historian in 
 Eamis or Eames de Pareja : a man of such mark and 
 repute, that he was sent for from Salamanca to Italy, 
 by Pope Nicholas the Fifth, to take the direction of 
 a music-school at Bologna la dotta, in which learned 
 town he died. A century later, Salinas, the blind 
 musician, probably the greatest among blind musi- 
 cians on record, was invited by the Cardinal Arch- 
 
Music from the East. 
 
 55 
 
 bishop of Compostella to Eome, and there cultivated, 
 honoured, and made an Abate of Saint Pancrazius, of 
 Rocca Scalegna, by His Holiness Paul the Fourth, 
 The work by Salinas, written in Latin and published in 
 1577, appears to be in advance of its time, especially 
 in its treatment and recognition of our subject — 
 national melody. Some of the Spanish and Moorish 
 specimens cited therefrom by Mr. Graham," noted (of 
 course, from ear) by Salinas, are curious, as not 
 indicating any of those peculiarities of interval and 
 rhythm which we have come to consider as character- 
 istic of Spanish music. Here is a tune on six notes 
 of the octave, as formal as if Moore had fitted it to 
 his song. 
 
 Let Erin ebmbmbee the Days of Old. 
 
 I 
 
 ^ r-\ 
 
 E 
 
 q=t 
 
 :i=^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 igiat 
 
 -^^^5--_i: 
 
 -J ^ 
 
 ■T==T=^ 
 
 :H 
 
 isit 
 
 ^=^==^ — J-J - 
 
 w. 
 
 =^ 
 
 -iz>~ 
 
 This, in its simplicity and absolute orderliness of 
 interval, is akin to the phrases of Turkish melody 
 given in a former page of this essay. 
 
 Now, seeing that the Peninsula is by nature sa. 
 
 " 4.rt. ' Music,' Enoyelopcedia Britannica, ed. 7. 
 
56 National Music of the World. 
 
 riclily endowed, and is manned by a population so 
 courteous, so different in matters of truth and un- 
 truth from other southern folk; and seeing that 
 music has been there so largely called on to take 
 part in its festivals, whether they be priestly or 
 lay, public or private, and that dramatic art has 
 been there exhibited in a fertility and fluency un- 
 exampled and unparagoned in any country of 
 Europe — one may well speculate why such a land 
 should have never yielded a single European com- 
 poser. And this fact is all the more singular, T 
 repeat, since we know their drama not only to be 
 full of varied character, but lyrical also, beyond the 
 drama of any other country. The luxury of its high 
 sentiments and intricate incidents, expressed in verbal 
 rhythms of admirable euphony, without that tire- 
 some sonority which must cloy, cannot be exceeded. 
 My brother, Mr. J. E. Chorley, whose researches 
 into the subject may be relied on,'^ — since, I am 
 proud to say, they have been accepted and turned to 
 account by the most ingenious and erudite scholars 
 of the country — assured me that an occasional stage- 
 song was probably supported by a guitar; that 
 
 '^ Vide his Catalogo de Comedias y Autos de .Frey Zope Felix de 
 Vega Carpio, written in Castilian and printed in Spain. 
 
Music from the East. 
 
 57 
 
 angels, supernatural personages, kings on their en- 
 trance, were solemnly announced by the sounds of a 
 sort of clarion; but that he has found no trace of 
 anything racy, original, or distinctive — reserving 
 such music as derives its origin from the dance. 
 
 This fact becomes doubly curious if the vrild 
 music (so to say) of the country is considered. 
 Some of the old vocal melodies of the Peninsula bear 
 distinct traces of their lawless oriental origin : as, 
 for instance, the following, in which the symphonic 
 burthen is perfectly easy to detaph from the words : 
 
 Symphony. 
 
 
 l±E&^^^±J±. 
 
 i 
 
 ± 
 
 Voice. 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 ^E^£^ 
 
 ^e:^^ 
 
 ■■hK ^I— ti»-V|- 
 
 » -^9- 
 
 Symphony. 
 
 i 
 
 ^^^^^m 
 
 Voice, 
 
 t^=S=^^»pq 
 
 H l^-4-H 
 
 / 
 
58 National Music of the World. 
 
 t^-jj^^r^g^j^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 t7 
 
 Symphony. 
 
 5? 
 
 ■^-W- 
 
 g 
 
 =k=kl 
 
 L^t: 
 
 r' 
 
 f^' 
 
 i 
 
 E^ 
 
 -J- ' -J-hJ-^- 
 
 ^--T 
 
 -#*-. 
 
 ^ 
 
 1 1 
 
 
 This specimen, which I have no reason to conceive 
 impurely noted, contains a clear indication of that 
 syncopation or suspense or pause which charac- 
 terises Spanish national music : which may be said, 
 in some degree to enforce a spasmodic manner on 
 the artist who is to deliver it. This effect I take to 
 have been the ' Socket,^ which term so puzzled Sir 
 John Hawkins when he encountered it in one of the 
 Cotton manuscripts, that he devoted half a page to 
 dull guesses as to its meaning,'^ whereas the least 
 
 " There has been of late years a fashion to decry Burney as flip- 
 pant and courtly — a flimsy musical historian — as compared with 
 Hawkins. I can but say, that whereas the judgments and the facts 
 of the former writer hold good, I have rarely consulted the latter 
 with reference to any matter beyond the pale of his limited sympa- 
 thies, without finding proofs of inexactness, attested by dogmatism, 
 bearing out Johnson's definition of Sir John as a man habituallj 
 inexact. Witness his obtuse ignorance of the astounding identity 
 betwixt the fugues of Kerl, printed among his specimens, with thi 
 
Music from the East. 5V 
 
 quickness or knowledge of French might have 
 assured him that the word was merely a mis-spelling 
 of ' Hocqiiet ' or ' Hiccwp,' which in homely phrase 
 represents musical syncopation. 
 
 A collection of hybrid tunes before me, gathered 
 in Cuba — a little book of the songs to this day sung 
 by the children going round, who make so joyous 
 and pretty a feature in the summer evening life at 
 Madrid — illustrate the definitions I have ventured to 
 lay down. They are either lawless, to the very verge 
 of barbarity, or vapid, stale, and inexpressive. Such 
 
 chorus ' Egypt was glad,' in Handel's ' Israel : ' — Sir John professing 
 himself to be a weighty Handelian. Witness his assertion that 
 Dryden had destined his superb 'Alexander's Feast ' to be set by 
 Henry Purcell ; whereas the ode was not written till Puxoell had 
 been dead two years ! There will always be a public with whom 
 surliness passes for earnestness, — ponderosity of manner for depth 
 of thought — and dogmatic assertion for research. Save as regards 
 English cathedral music, I conceive Sir John Hawkins' History one 
 in no respect to be relied on. There is another signal instance of 
 his incorrectness in this very matter of Spanish music, in his 
 notation of the familiar Fandango (to which I shall return) used 
 by Gluck in his ballet, 'Dom Juan,' and by Mozart in his ' Nozze,' 
 as under. 
 
 By the above preposterous transcription everything like stateliness 
 of character is tamed out of the measure. 
 
6o National Music of the World. 
 
 are the Seguidillas and Modinhas wliicti in my young 
 
 days the rising gentlewomen of England, whose 
 
 Spanish was 
 
 Of the school of Stratford-atte-Bowe, 
 
 used to drawl out on an ill-conducted guitar ; be- 
 lieving the same national, patriotic, and picturesque. 
 
 In continuation, attention may be called to some 
 modern specimens of composition in the national 
 style, where the antique semi-barbarous Spanish 
 wildness is turned to account by a distinguished 
 child of the soil — one thoroughly versed in the 
 science of 'high composition' (as the French 
 phrase it), Madame Viardot. But in her Spanish 
 melodies, the intervals and phrases will be found more 
 arresting by their strangeness, than charming by 
 any beauty. They speak of the vocal usages of a 
 land, with which those not pervaded by Oriental 
 predilections can only be brought to sympathise, 
 inasmuch as the palate may come to accept and enjoy 
 peculiar meats by the persuasion of habit and the 
 force of residence. 
 
 Capital, quaint, and altogether peculiar, is the 
 rhythmical, or dance music of Spain ; its charac- 
 teristics owing, if not their origin, their suggestion 
 to the national instrument, by aid of which the 
 
Music from the East. 6 1 
 
 queer, harsh cries of the singing voice are somehow 
 rudely methodised and brought into some order. One 
 must go to the Peninsula to know the uses and 
 privileges of the guitar. The pungency and adroit- 
 ness of the performers on it are hard to overpraise, 
 and no less hard to define — including as they do, 
 tricks, preludings, modulations crude enough to make 
 a master of harmony's hair stand on end — instinct 
 the while with an irresistible spirit and vivacity to be 
 paralleled, it may be, but not to be exceeded under 
 any other sun. Some few of those who read these 
 paragraphs may recollect the guitar vagaries of 
 Senhor Huerta, who many years ago came into 
 England. But his guitar (so to say) had been tamed, 
 washed, and combed, as compared with the 'un- 
 feigned' guitar to be heard in Spanish cities, even in 
 these later days, and no doubt existing in nooks 
 and comers far more obscure, for the delectation and 
 the incitement of people of the soil. I shall never 
 forget an old blind creature whom I followed about 
 for several evenings in Madrid : a man who would 
 plant himself on the causeway, sitting with his feet 
 in the kennel, scrupulously clean in his linen, 
 totally engrossed with his guitar ; and who hardly 
 seemed to care if coppers were flung to him or not ; 
 
62 National Music of the World. 
 
 and to whom the casual ready-to-hand audience of 
 common folk gathered round him (some arranging 
 themselves comfortably on the causeway and kennel 
 side, to listen, as folk do on a quay at Venice 
 or Chiozza to follow the tale of a story-teller), 
 sufl&ced for the contentment of the modest wants of 
 his vanity. In his preluding or fancy-work, a sort 
 of wild gloss and comment on some simple group of 
 notes, there rarely failed to be odd, unexpected 
 touches of harmonic modulation ; but when he struck 
 off into a more regular melody, such as the one here 
 noted— 
 
 i 
 
 pi^^^^^g^^^ 
 
 d=^ 
 
 or when he engaged in a dance tune, not only was 
 his feeling for accent in itself excellent and pro- 
 vocative (and a feeling for accent is a thing which 
 great artists have laboured to acquire, and have died 
 without acquiring), but it seemed incited, and fed, 
 and sharpened, by the pungent sound of the strings, 
 and the thrum of the hand on the sounding-board, 
 
Music from the East. 6 
 
 o 
 
 till at last the excitement produced by that weak 
 old mendicant from his miserable chattel of an 
 instrument, amounted to an experience as peculiar as 
 it is pleasant to recall. 
 
 As another element in Spanish dance music, the 
 Castanet is not to be overlooked, as working in magic 
 combination with those queer, poignant guitar 
 sounds ; enabling the dancer to be in part his own 
 orchestra, and to excite himself, as did the faun of 
 antique mythology, by the sound of the pipes into 
 which he breathed as he leaped among the vines. 
 But the Castanet is obviously a condiment to the 
 dance, more complete and comfortable than the 
 faun's reeds, seeing that motion must shorten the 
 breath. To the guitar and Castanet is, in some 
 districts of Spain, added a clarinet of a coarse sort 
 — not, of course, undertaken by the dancer. 
 
 The entire exhibition bears a generically different 
 
 character from those of music and dancing belonging 
 
 to any other country.'* In the Spanish measures 
 
 there is a certain dignity, never wholly thrown by, 
 
 " And yet there are coincidences not to be overlooked. The 
 dances of the north in ' tempo alia Polacoa,' of which notice will 
 appear in a later page, with the freaks and whimsies not so much 
 allowed to as expected from the leader of the band, have a certain 
 affinity in their licence to the achievements of the Madrid guitar 
 player, and in their humonr to that which he called up. 
 
64 National Mzmc of the World. 
 
 be the movement ever so brisk. Coarse, no doubt, 
 they become, when adopted by performers of an 
 inferior class — as all dances in which any Oriental 
 prompting lingers are apt to do — but in themselves, 
 the Saraband (the ' Moorish ' Saraband, a feature not 
 formerly to be dispensed with at any English fair) 
 the Fandango, the Bolero, and a score of modified 
 varieties of these dances, the existence of which it is 
 sufficient to indicate, have a ' state ' as well as an 
 ' ancientry,' the like of which is to be found only in 
 the Minuet and the Polonaise : which two, be it noted, 
 have never been popular so much as courtly measures. 
 What can be more stately and pompous than the 
 well-known theme, transmogrified as we have seen 
 by Sir John Hawkins ; employed first by Gluck in 
 his ballet of ' Dom Juan,' and subsequently by 
 Mozart in ' Le Nozze '? 
 
 There would seem to be something more than 
 usually attractive in this chain of notes : since it 
 recurred to Mendelssohn, as the theme of the Finale 
 to his second Pianoforte Trio, and more recently 
 still to M. Telicien David, in his ' Lalla Eookh' — 
 
Music from the East. 
 
 65 
 
 who has therefore been bitterly assailed as a pla- 
 giarist from Mendelssohn. 
 
 In another respect, the Spanish dances are pecu- 
 liar : proving themselves akin to the spasmodic vocal 
 music characterised awhile since, and gaining cha- 
 racter from pauses, syncopations, interruptions of 
 rhythm ; such as the great school of South German 
 waltz composers — Lanner, Strauss, Labitzky, and 
 others — have turned to such admirable account. 
 
 i^^^ 
 
 3Ei=^ 
 
 To close this section of the inquiry in hand, a 
 definition may be ventured — to wit, that in the 
 National Music of Spain, whether vocal or instru- 
 mental. Eastern forms and influences are to be traced ; 
 and that singularly little progress has been made in 
 the employment of these by the free musicians of the 
 Peninsula, as distinguished from the 'strict' ones 
 who have wrought daily and ineffectively under 
 ecclesiastical thraldom. Betwixt Oriental traditions 
 and Papistical necessities, music in Spain has fallen 
 
66 National Music of the World. 
 
 into a state of atrophy and apathy : these, however, 
 be it remarked, amounting to no such recoil after a 
 period of glorious production, such as is to be lamented 
 by those who follow the story of Italian music. 
 
67 
 
 MUSIC FROM THE SOUTH. 
 
 While dealing •with the subject of National Music, 
 it seems to me that the diversities of handling 
 which, with every change of the points of the 
 compass, it requires, have hardly been sufficiently 
 taken into account by the generality of those who 
 have considered it. On passing from the east to the 
 south, and thence to France, the amount of notice- 
 able material which presents itself defies any attain- 
 able completeness in statement or classification. It 
 is only possible to select a few leading characteristics, 
 and those which have been the least dwelt on by 
 previous historians and students. 
 
 Every child, from his cradle-days upwards, has 
 heard of Italy as the- land of music. The world is 
 indebted to it for all that makes the beauty of the 
 art, and for much of its science. The last reservation 
 is made in recognition of the claims which have been 
 put forward for Low-country musicians of science ; 
 claims not to be dismissed superficially, and thus 
 not to be examined here. But, however the same 
 
 t2 
 
68 National Music of the World. 
 
 may be rated, the restrictions and inconsistencies 
 to be noted in the being and in the doings of Italian 
 art are as numerous as they are singular. 
 
 Overflowing with natural beauty, rich in his- 
 torical associations, and in relics which set these 
 forth ; peopled by those who are brimful of natural 
 aptitude and that quick nervous sensibility which 
 is so important an element of genius, — Italy, 
 compared with the North, has very little national 
 music that does not come within the circle of 
 regular art. Let us inquire, for a moment, whether 
 some explanation of the fact is not to be found. 
 
 The authorities of the country early possessed 
 themselves of all the relics of Paganism ; these 
 to be converted to the ecclesiastical purpose of, sub- 
 duing the spirits of men. When that most remark- 
 able building, the cathedral of Torcello — now desolate 
 and lonely, by the side of its accessory church, that 
 of Santa Fosca — was built in the weed-grown island 
 far among the Venetian lagoons, transparent slabs 
 of alabaster were brought from afar to fill the 
 windows, without obscuring daylight — glass then 
 having no existence — and with them beautifully 
 carved borders and patterns of Greek marble broken 
 up to encrust the pulpit. The art of mosaic, too. 
 
Music from the South. 69 
 
 had already made some rude progress ; though 
 orthodoxy had not so far settled the uses of the new 
 decoration, as to proscribe the intrusion of Charon 
 and his boat, transferred from the ancient mythology , 
 into the Christian artist's vision, of 'the Last 
 Judgment.' There were — if there be not still — 
 stranger ensigns of a more sensual Pagan legend 
 than this to be seen in the churches of Southern 
 Italy. Thus, too, the barbaric chants — (that it would 
 be strange to find occurring among the Greeks, had 
 we not cause to deny the contemporaneous perfection 
 of the arts) — the 'modes of the lyre' which had 
 figured in the hymns to Jupiter or to Venus — which 
 had helped, as the people of Athens and Corinth 
 thought, to set off the odes of Pindar and the 
 choruses of the great dramatists — were appropriatedj 
 arranged, and methodised, so as to serve in the form 
 of music's offerings to the rites of the Christian 
 temples, earliest established in Italy. It may be 
 that the land, harassed and heterogeneously peopled, 
 had nothing indigenous to offer. 
 
 Meanwhile, in Italy, from a remote period, there 
 may be traced, whether among churchmen or nobles, 
 indications of a gracious, liberal, and sympathising 
 spirit as regards art, to which love and honour are 
 
yo National Music of the World. 
 
 due. And this did not take the form of patronage 
 so much as of participation ; so that music acquired 
 there a life, an aspect, and a position somewhat 
 different to those fought for or won by it during its 
 childish years in other countries. Very limited, it 
 may be suspected, was the amount of stiggestion 
 furnished by the untutored people of Italy to their 
 churchmen and nobles. They, T repeat — as men n 
 authority, of a genial and artistic temperament, 
 which is for ever in search for culture and enrich- 
 ment, should do — laid hold of the ' modes ' of Greece, 
 improved on the instruments of the East, and accepted 
 aid from the Low Countries, and even, it has been said, 
 from England, for the perfecting of counterpoint : 
 jast as they had laid hold of the marbles of Greece 
 and appropriated^ its mythologies in Christianised 
 forms. 
 
 Yet, with all this aid and protection, such music 
 as Italy possessed, during a long series of years, 
 may be asserted to have been as grim and ungracious 
 to the ear, as are the pictures of Cimabue and 
 Margharitone to the eye : valuable though both are 
 to the archaeologist, drearily barbarous to such 
 moderns as have not been trained into the habits 
 of retrospective comparison belonging to antiquarian 
 
Music from the South. ji 
 
 pursuits. It may be remarked (as bearing on the 
 connection of the fine arts), that architecture in 
 Italy had got past the plight of the savage's 
 wigwam, or the natural grotto in which the people 
 of a persecuted sect might assemble covertly for 
 worship — had raised august buildings, which the 
 taste of our time appreciates and its workers 
 imitate — long ere the painter was, in his world, 
 superior to the wigwam artists : longer still, ere the 
 musician had ceased in his gloomy psalmody to 
 correspond with the rude and awful catacomb. 
 Further, whereas architect and painter, once having 
 found their use and level, established principles and 
 canons of art, and thenceforward each, in his own 
 great period, walked steadily forward from skill to 
 skill, from beauty to beauty ; it is noticeable that in 
 music the progress of inborn genius, as regulated 
 and quickened by acquired science, was slack and 
 timid in its adjustment. 
 
 But it may be divined by something more than 
 random guess-work. The history of our art would 
 reveal the fact that the nobles of Italy^ whether 
 ecclesiastic or lay, did far more to leaven the people 
 with musical traditions — to quicken them with 
 musical impulses — than the people themselves could 
 
72 National Music of the World. 
 
 do, while paying tribute to the nobles, to suggest 
 the riches of the soil on and out of which the 
 palaces of the country, whether priestly or lay, were 
 built and flourished. 
 
 Such a speculation leads into another one — ^the 
 limits and value of the union of patronage with 
 participation, including practical amateurship, in 
 art. Great, no doubt, was the impetus given to 
 music by such rulers as the Medici at Florence ; by 
 such a prince as the Prince of Venosa, who wrote 
 madrigals in advance of his time ; by such a pontiff 
 as Palestrina's master, the Pope Marcellus (Pius the 
 Fourth) ; by such a cardinal as Monsignore Ottoboni, 
 to whom Corelli, long his household friend, be- 
 queathed his treasures ; by such a patrician as 
 Marcello of Venice, whose setting of the first fifty 
 Psalms of David is a work of permanent value ; by 
 such a group of dilettcmti, belonging to our own 
 days, as the Belgiojoso family, so influential in 
 Lombardy. And yet it may be predicated that this 
 patronage and participation of cultivated and noble 
 persons, who naturally preferred to deal with such 
 works of art as were complete, and in some 
 accordance with the fashions of the hour, tended 
 towards the transformation, if not the effacement 
 
Music from the South. 73 
 
 of such natural material as may have existed among 
 the suhject folk of Italy. 
 
 Because, to continue, there is danger, with this 
 patronage of art, of insincerity, if not decay, entering 
 into the artist's thoughts, and consequent seeming 
 and conventionality into the works which are their 
 product. I think this may he perceived throughout 
 the whole story of Italian art. Michael Angelo's 
 plan of St. Peter's, after having been altered again 
 and again by thwarting influences, could be conclu- 
 sively spoiled in what should have been its main 
 feature, by the mean and heavy frontispiece of 
 Carlo Mademo : his sculptures, the only ones in 
 which the Titans of antique sculpture were matched 
 by a Titan as strong in his own modern world as 
 they were in their mythologies, could be displaced 
 in favour by the fluttering, meretricious sentimental- 
 ities of Bernini. And so, from this illustration to 
 come into our own peculiar world, in the dealings of 
 Italian patronage vrith music, I have detected no 
 settled recognition of a dawn as of an awakening ; 
 nor of a mom as a beginning ; nor of a noon as of 
 a fulfilment ; nor of an afternoon as an enrichment ; 
 nor of the more tranquil glories of evening leading 
 on to the solemn splendours of night : no fixed 
 
74 National Music of the World. 
 
 principle of that reverence for the past which 
 makes the inevitable work of Time's progress pro- 
 gressive, not destructive, so much as one of obsequious 
 and licentious conformity to the impulses of the 
 moment. Surely, there is no need that change in 
 creative efforts should imply disdain or forgetfulness 
 of what has been. But, partly from the driftings of 
 fashion, partly from political circumstance, partly 
 from an unreasoning impatience of temperament, 
 the art of music in Italy has fallen into a singular 
 state of dilapidation. There is hardly one solitary 
 masterpiece of ancient date — I except not the perfect 
 works of Palestrina, in their style unapproached — 
 which is cherished or known beyond the musty 
 circle of antiquaries. This, it is to be considered, 
 may be no unimportant cause, why in Italy all 
 music has virtually merged in the theatre, as the 
 place where the tempers and emotions of the hour 
 are provided for and mirrored. Instrumental composi- 
 tion may be said to have only a nominal existence 
 in one or two towns. The Church, after having by 
 her mysteries and miracle-plays set opera a-going, 
 found her a far too potent Dalilah not to be pressed 
 into her service, and turned to good account, as 
 maintaining a close hold on the weak and the 
 
Music, from the South. 75 
 
 sensual. Whether the scene be St. Mark's at 
 Yenice, or Michael Angelo's noble church built 
 above the baths of Diocletian at Eome, or the 
 gorgeous and complete cathedral of Mohreale above 
 Palermo, or the strange temple in the little town, 
 which loads the island in the lovely lake of Orta ; 
 one and the same tale is to be heard everywhere : 
 organ-playing, with the ambling four-in-a-bar bass 
 which so affronted Mendelssohn, ridiculous enough 
 to make Frescobaldi turn in his grave — vocal 
 melodies repugnantly frivolous enough to call up 
 the solemn Pope Marcellus, once more to drive the 
 doves and the money-changers from the house of 
 worship. 
 
 And it may be observed that the vitiation of one 
 branch of any given art, connived at on the poor 
 excuse of creating a momentary sensation, is surely 
 attended by retributive decay in every other one. It is 
 a striking warning, in a land which may be to-day 
 as rich in genius as it ever was, to consider to what 
 a pass the headlong pursuit of sensation; no matter 
 how false, s6 it be only sufficiently exciting, has 
 brought Italian music's last stronghold, the theatre. 
 Ignorance and Eant now reign, where Skill and 
 Beauty were formerly King and Queen. It is not 
 
76 National Music of the World. 
 
 possible to conceive false ■ exaggeration carried fur- 
 ther by fickleness. Cimarosa is hardly known by 
 name. Paisiello is totally defunct as a celebrity : 
 his charming 'Nina Pazza,' in which Pasta 
 was as charmingly pathetic as she was awful 
 in ' Medea/ having been reset by the inefficient 
 Signer Coppola, whose setting is already deservedly 
 forgotten ; Signor Rossini tolerated as rococo, or else 
 miserably misrepresented by a crew of the incom- 
 petent bawlers, who have replaced the splendid 
 vocalists of past times; Bellini the graceful, and 
 Donizetti the fertile (and more than fertile, as his 
 operas 'La Pille du Eegiment,' 'Don Pasquale,' 
 and the final act of ' La Favorite,' show) shelved ; be- 
 cause fashion, or dilettantism, or Italian sympathy, 
 or call it whatever the world pleases, has run riot 
 to bray from trumpets or to thump on drums, that 
 Signor Verdi is the one prophet of Italian opera. 
 And since this paragraph was penned, the waning 
 of the coarse light of his star is pretty distinctly to 
 be observed. It is hardly possible to imagine his 
 violence outdone by any successor ; yet this would 
 seem to be the law of Italian movement in such 
 shows of art as are to be popular. 
 
 I have now to advert to a potent influence of 
 
Music from the South. yy 
 
 diametrically opposite quality to the one descanted 
 on; an influence wliicli figures as a permanent 
 feature in Italian taste and manners, unchanged by 
 any passing rage f9r a Michael Angelo, or a Ber- 
 nini — for a Cimarosa, a Paisiello, a Rossini, a Bellini, 
 a Verdi. This is the curious indifference which the 
 people of that lovely land display for the beauty of 
 nature ; — and again, their poverty in such descrip- 
 tive faculty, and quaint fantasy, as impart so much 
 racy variety to the forms taken by Northern national 
 art. This can hardly be a case of climate, so much 
 as the weakness, if not altogether the want of an 
 especial sense. The absence or presence of this 
 has, I hold, much to do with the character of national 
 melody, as generating national music. How strange 
 does this seem to us Northerns, who, allowing their 
 utmost inspiration to mist and snow, have nothing 
 in scenery to emulate the splendour and variety of 
 the South. Think of Titian's birth-land, the ' Pays 
 de Cadore ; ' some of whose features, it is true, he 
 reproduced in certain of his pictures — as for in- 
 stance the St. Peter Martyr. Think of the northern 
 lakes, the upper part of the Lago d' Iseo, round and 
 above Lovere, to be expressly commemorated ; — think 
 of the entire line of Italian coast, so fascinating in 
 
78 National Music of the World. 
 
 its mixture of cliff, headland, and ocean ; — think of 
 those towns of central Italy, not a few of which are 
 hung on shaggy and steep hill-sides, as Forsyth the 
 traveller said of Cortona, ' like a picture against a 
 wall ;' — think of such a district as Calabria, so bold 
 and fierce in its volcanic rifts and crevices, yet teem- 
 ing as though Bacchus and Ceres had disputed from 
 above every inch of ground on which Pluto from 
 below could plant his foot. And then think, with 
 every rich and picturesque object which could delight 
 a painter's eye, or garnish a poet's rhyme, how few 
 and far between are the allusions in the literature of 
 Italy to the characteristic glories of a land by 
 nature so gorgeously endowed. 
 
 This scantiness of imagination may be said in 
 some measure to pervade the popular literature of 
 Italy. As compared with that of the Northern people, 
 it is poor in shadows, in omens, in goblins. The 
 folk, it is true, have an implicit belief in the evil eye, 
 and in the ombra della casa of the South — otherwise 
 the ' Bella 'Mbriana/ Neapolitan corruption of 
 Ombriana — who is supposed (to quote a letter from an 
 English resident in Italy, addressed to the Athenwum) 
 ' to be the tenant of every house in many a village 
 in the bay, and to exercise a considerable influence 
 
Music from the South. 79 
 
 over the destinies of a family.' She is a distant 
 kinswoman of the Scotch Brownie and the Irish 
 Chiricaune — devoted, touchy, or troublesome, in pro- 
 portion as she is treated civilly or the reverse. She 
 is propitiated accordingly, and the peasants (says the 
 authority above referred to) make a point of bidding- 
 her good night, with, it may be, as much fear as 
 love. Nor must one forget the fairy Morgana, to 
 whose enchantments have been ascribed those 
 magical atmospheric effects, which make Sicily and 
 its skies and sea so charming ; neither the Oreo of 
 Venice, so picturesquely presented by Madame 
 Dudevant in one of her best Venetian romances. But 
 the list of the Italian beings of superstition at best 
 makes but a poor show. As for witches, those under 
 the walnut tree at Benevento, whose gambols 
 inspired Paganini the wizard with one of his 
 quaintest fantasias, are almost the only ones whose 
 reputation has crossed the Alps. The supernatural 
 terrors of ' Udolpho ' were conjured up by no native 
 romancer, but by a gentle, retired Englishwoman, 
 amid the fogs of the bad climate which the Southerns 
 hold in such effeminate disdain. 
 
 An exception to the above limitation might be 
 thought to present itself in the ' Fiabe ' or super- 
 
8o National Music of the World. 
 
 naturally grotesque plays of Carlo Grozzi, which for 
 so long a period kept so strong a hold on the play- 
 goers of Venice ; and to which may be ascribed those 
 extravaganzas, the popularity of which has not yet 
 altogether died out in the minor theatres of Vienna, 
 and to cater for which Shikaneder the buffoon tempted 
 Mozart to write his ' Zauberflote.' Tor in them wiU 
 be found that power over the marvellous which 
 becomes strange when united with command over 
 the deepest, most serious passions which thrill the 
 heart and frame of humanity. But neither ' II 
 Corvo,' the scene of which is the imaginary city of 
 Frattombrosa ; nor ' L'Amore delle Tre Melarancie ; ' 
 nor ' Turandot,' a Chinese legend, for which, on its 
 being arranged for the German stage by Schiller, 
 Weber wrote his characteristic overture; nor 'II 
 Ee Cervo,' the king of Serendib ; nor ' La Donna 
 Serpente,' the scene of whose gambols was Tiflis ; 
 nor ' Zobeide,' a story of the city of Samandal ; nor 
 ' II Mostro Turchino,' another Chinese fable ; nor 
 ' I Pitocchi Fortunati,' a tale of Samarcand ; nor 
 ' L'Augellino Belverde,' belonging to the unknown 
 capital of Monterotondo ; nor ' Zeim,' the ruler of the 
 spirits whose home was Balsora — represent native 
 forms, usages, and beliefs, more than do the 
 
Music from the South. 8i 
 
 majority of the fairy tales collected by Straparola, 
 They belong to outlying worlds of fancy, in which 
 nationality has small part. 
 
 To look at another side of the subject, it may be 
 observed that whenever Southern influences have 
 leavened the literature and art of any given country, 
 the same communicated torpor in regard to pic- 
 turesque, as distinguished from classical and aca- 
 demical imagery, is to be remarked. Wordsworth, 
 intense in his love for nature, and consummate in 
 his knowledge of the subject, pointed out how, 
 during a long period, our world of poetry suffered 
 from the domination of foreign fashions, imported 
 from among a people who, while loud in complaint 
 of the harsh glooms of our northern climate, 
 religiously bar out the summer sun, turning noon 
 into sleepy night, and shrink from exertion or 
 fatigue in search of natural beauty. But when 
 Wordsworth indicated with a discriminating hand 
 the time of awakening in English literature to the 
 minute observation of nature, he would have been 
 more correct had he described it as a time of revival ; 
 seeing that the faculty so sparingly diffused among 
 the Italians is confessed in the works of all our great 
 poets. If Chaucer, Shakspeare, Spenser, Milton, 
 
 G 
 
82 National Music of the World. 
 
 had as close an intimacy with the stately groves and 
 temples of Greek and Eoman art, as was ever 
 enjoyed by those to whom they may be said to have 
 been household words and home associations, — the 
 first could write his freshest verse concerning the 
 sweet season of Spring, with its fresh May blossoms ; 
 the second had eyes to note the habits of 
 
 The temple-haunting martlet 
 
 as well as the moonlight sleeping on the bank at 
 Portia's Belmont ; the third could paint the Den of 
 Error ; the fourth, besides commemorating in a line 
 of rare music, the 
 
 Autumnal leaves of Vallombrosa, 
 
 could produce the gallery of landscapes in 'L'AUegro,' 
 the like of which exists not in all the picture galleries 
 of Italian poetry. If these mighty men were aware of 
 Parnassus and Tempe, they knew no less lovingly 
 and well the secrets of moorland and meadow ; the 
 wonders of the deep; the visionary glories of the 
 firmament. And the case is still more strongly 
 made out, if, from the trained masters of poetry, we 
 turn to the rude, popular ballad-mongers of this 
 island. Let us look (as the first illustration which 
 comes to hand) at the songs of Scotland ; and we 
 shaU find the braes of one locality, and the shaws of 
 
Music from the South. 83 
 
 another, and the riggs of barley belonging to a third, 
 commemorated in quaint phraseology, but with 
 memory's genuine affection, by some native peasant 
 songster. There is no song of Tivoli, none of the 
 Lake of Como, so far as I have yet found. The gon- 
 doliers of Venice used to chant, but what?-r-strophes 
 by Tasso. It is true, that among the words to their 
 popular songs which so strangely resemble one 
 another, favourite localities wiU be named — most 
 frequently a church, as San Basso, Sandegola (Santo 
 Giovanni DecoUato) ; but these only sparingly, as 
 compared with the harpings on 'Love, still love,' 
 the one theme dwelt on by them with untiring 
 unction and fervour. The Stornelli of Tuscany are 
 open to the same remark; being, the while, more 
 shrewd and proverbial, and less picturesque. The 
 songs of the Lazza/roni and fishermen of Naples are 
 fuller of whimsy and impudence, perhaps, but not of 
 local colour. Of course, in the popular tunes of 
 Naples, as well as of Venice, the sound of the boat, 
 with its cadence of rowers, is ever and again to be 
 heard. And the rhymesters make great use of the 
 moon, for beneath the moon the lovers' serenades are 
 given. But the varieties, I repeat, of what may be 
 called pictorial themes, either in Italian words or 
 
 <3 2 
 
84 National Music of the World. 
 
 music, are very few and restricted in their scope. It 
 wUl be found that in opera the amount of descriptive 
 music, as compared with that of sentiment and 
 passion, is a mere nothing. Whereas Handel tried 
 to represent in opera and oratorio, birds, fountains, 
 the sun standing still, the darkness which might be 
 felt, the Eed Sea cleft by a miracle ; — the composers 
 of the South painted in sound with great timidity. 
 There may be descriptive music in Cimarosa's operas, 
 but they were rather devoted to stilted classical 
 declamation, or the threadbare buffoonery of Har- 
 lequin's book. His galloping horse in the well-known 
 air, ' Pria che spunti ' from ' H Matrimonio ' is hardly 
 in any known equestrian step. There is little de- 
 scriptive music, strictly to speak, in Signor Eossini's 
 Italian operas, save in ' La Donna del Lago,' in the 
 last act of ' Otello,' and the ponderous introduction 
 of ' Mose,' where a thick darkness broods over the 
 scene. That the greatest of modern composers had an 
 acute and real appreciation of the peculiarities of 
 national music, was proved in his French opera, 
 ' Guillaume Tell,' in which the local colour and the 
 use of the national melodies of the hiU-country are 
 perfect and unique. There is nothing in opera 
 comparable to the second act of that opera ; but it 
 
Music from the South. 85 
 
 was written for Fi-ance, not for Italy, and written to 
 a stupid book, setting forth a great transaction. In 
 Bellini's operas the dim introduction to the Druidical 
 tragedy of 'Norma' may, be cited: in Donizetti's 
 little beyond the ' Barcarole ' in ' Marino Faliero,' the 
 Savoyard's tune to his hurdy-gurdy in ' Linda,' the 
 Swiss song in ' Betly,' and the convent (or fourth) 
 act of ' La Favorita,' which having been impossible 
 in Italy, under censorship, was written, as was 
 'Guillaume Tell,' for France. In Signor Verdi's 
 works, I can but call to mind a barcarole in ' I due 
 Foscari,' another in ' Les Vepres Siciliennes,' a 
 sunrise attempted in ' Attila,' and some use of the 
 genuine gipsy drawling closes in the anvil chorus of 
 his ' II Trovatore.' Nothing can be paler and more 
 puerile than the music given by him to the weird 
 sisters in his ' Macbeth.' 
 
 It is important that the above characteristics, 
 distinctions, and examples should be borne in mind, 
 while dealing with the form and bearing of national 
 music in Italy. Let me now specify a few features 
 which are of special and marking interest. 
 
 From the Sicilies the land appears to have de- 
 rived what may be called its pastoral music ; having a 
 peculiar rhythm and humour of its own, which have 
 
86 National Music of the World. 
 
 been accepted and employed throughout Europe. 
 The rhythm, it is true, is indicated as Moorish 
 among the specimens cited by Salinas, the Spanish 
 writer : 
 
 -1—4- 
 
 i 
 
 ■^=m--^-- 
 
 ■^^ 
 
 ;^^^g 
 
 ESE 
 
 ^ 
 
 :t=ti 
 
 m 
 
 -^=F 
 
 fffif-rfr^ 
 
 The dance which closes Monteverde's ' Orfeo,' one 
 of the oldest operas of which we have any distinct 
 cognizance — somewhat in the Siciliana style when 
 played slow — is called Moresca. What, if this tune 
 be some old relic of the East, which passed into 
 Sicily as did the Pan's reeds of the Greeks ? 
 
 In any event, the instrument by aid of which 
 the Siciliana style and form of national melody 
 was imported into the world of trained music, was 
 nothing more or less than the offspring of the 
 primitive and mythological reeds of Pan, improved 
 and assisted by mechanical discoveries. To dance 
 and to blow a melody in one and the same operation, is 
 a hard task ; and thus, the idea of filling Pan's pipes 
 with winds from another agency than that of the 
 breath, was carried out by the bag added to the 
 
Music from the South. 87 
 
 reeds, and inflated by the elbow of the player : and 
 thus I think the bagpipe, which some wiU object 
 to hear called ' the shepherd's pipe,' took the form 
 which it has since then worn as the shepherd's 
 companion throughout a large portion of Europe. 
 
 I confess to a small kindness for the bagpipe, 
 harsh, crude, and illicit as all its concords and discords 
 are. The drone, otherwise ground bass, disconcerts 
 the melody it supports ; but, in its wild way, and in 
 the open air, produces the effect of combination. 
 
 It is to sounds drawn from this bagpipe, some- 
 times in accompaniment to tuneless voices, by, the 
 bright-eyed, dark-skinned, dirty, shaggy, rural folk 
 of Calabria, and of the Eoman Campagna, that 
 may be ascribed the perpetuation of that peculiar 
 melody, the name of which has become a musical 
 term. When the amiable and gracious Corelli 
 wrote his ' Nativity concerto,' he reproduced, ' with 
 a difference,' the tunes which these primitive 
 herdsmen have been long used to play before the 
 street-shrines of the Madonna at Christmas time. 
 Handel, that most acute and royal of appropriators, 
 whose plagiarisms and pilferings were as shameless 
 as his genius was glorious, laid hands on one of the 
 most popular of these Pifferari tunes, printed in old 
 
88 National Music of the World. 
 
 English collections as a dance, to serve the turn of 
 his ' Pastoral symphony ' in the ' Messiah ' ; nausic 
 in which (to quote from the Goethe and Zelter 
 correspondence), ' one feels the star-light.' The 
 same character of melody, with disregard of the 
 drone hass, was exquisitely called out for the same 
 situation by John Sebastian Bach in his Christmas 
 oratorio. Beethoven, again, though he broke away 
 from the traditional triple tem'po, used the Sicilian 
 shepherds' drone in his ' Pastoral symphony.' 
 It has often occurred to me that the theme of 
 Signor Eossini's delightful 'Di tanti palpiti' in 
 ' Tancredi,' notoriously derived from a national 
 tune, bears not indistinct traces of Pifferari origin ; 
 though the theme, of course, has been 'rhymed 
 and twisted ' so as to alter its character. Thus, it 
 may be proved that from an instrument and a 
 dancing measure, was planted in Italy one of the 
 first types of rhythmical measure, as distinguished 
 from harmonised chant ; since, if the above specula- 
 tions be tenable, the Siciliana bore an earlier date 
 than the lauds or sacred canticles or than the 
 madrigals accompanied by less savage instruments, 
 which kept alive the Italian towns on festival days. 
 The pastoral alia Siciliana may well be called the 
 tune of Eome. 
 
Music from the South. 89 
 
 The memory of these lauds and canticles, sung 
 on holidays by confraternities in procession — some- 
 times by nobles, sometimes by artisans — unlike that 
 of the Siciliana, has thoroughly passed away. Yet, 
 at the beginning of the last century, according to 
 Crescembini, they figured bravely at the Eoman 
 •jubilee; and the morning after Burney arrived in 
 Florence, so late as 1770, he had the treat of hearing 
 them singing a cheerful matin hymn in three parts, 
 as they passed his lodgings in grand procession, 
 ' dressed in a whitish uniform, with burning tapers 
 in their hands.' How far this cheerful hymn was 
 ancient or modem, there is no discovering. It is 
 obvious, however, that — apart from music which was 
 to be danced to — harmony predominated in the art 
 long before melody took anything like that form 
 and order of symmetrical beauty which so many 
 absurd pedants, fancying themselves innovators, are 
 at the time present trying to destroy, as something 
 puerile and obsolete. The sacred lauds and secular 
 madrigals were largely accompanied by instruments, 
 and pretty much alike in character — bearing 
 traces of the old influences and tones of Paganism : 
 dry and shapeless, whether music was called in to 
 enhance the solemnity of a rite of worship, or to grace 
 
90 National Music of the World. 
 
 such revels as the beauties of the ' Decameron ' held, 
 when by aid of lute and pipe and tiorba, Fiordelisa 
 and Pampinea and their gay company beguiled the 
 time of pestilence. Such life as existed was not to 
 be found in the Carol — to admit that word as a cor- 
 ruption of corale or church chant — so much as in 
 the Ballad, which again is derived from ballata — a 
 song with dance. Among the first specimens in 
 which traces of form occur are the /aZ-ZaZ-Za burdens, 
 danced as well as sung. In this specimen, the well- 
 known one by Gastoldi, which Buraey printed 
 (observe, in triple time), something of the flow of 
 modern Italian melody is prophesied. 
 
 a=:e^ 
 
 :^= 
 
 t^-W- 
 
 ^=^te 
 
 J3 
 
 :ti= 
 
 ^ 
 
 titt: 
 
 fct 
 
 Pifpi 
 
 =?r-f 
 
 ■P2: 
 
 Wi-f:, 
 
 Wl 
 
 :s:±: 
 
 =t± 
 
 Use^^^ 
 
 :S^: 
 
 ^-^ 
 
 t*:ziz* 
 
 •^= 
 
 That was a great day for national Italian music, 
 when the church and the stage parted company; 
 when the people ceased to be contented with Biblical 
 histories and mysteries acted in places of public 
 
Music from the South. 91 
 
 worship; when the improvisatori and drolls who 
 rode in the Thespian cart, with their mother-wit and 
 mother poetry, struck out a new entertainment and 
 gave to the common folk a festival of their own, as 
 some equivalent for the costly spectacles which the 
 liberal and opulent bespoke for their palaces. Since 
 that time, however, the street-songs of Italy, with 
 some few exceptions, have always more or less 
 partaken of the theatrical style ; have always been, 
 more or less, an exhibition of trained art. The in- 
 struments have remained comparatively uncouth and 
 simple, bxit the vocalists have been in the greatest 
 request who could reproduce the favourite stage-tune 
 of the hour and the favourite style of stage execution. 
 What may be called, then, characteristic or irregular 
 music, such as to this day flourishes pure and simple 
 in other districts, has in Italy faded into a mono- 
 tonous and characterless tepidness — with some ex- 
 ceptions, I repeat, now to be specified. 
 
 The most remarkable of these, as to form, may be 
 referred to the Bay of Naples and the lagoons of 
 Venice, where the humour of the people has kept 
 alive something distinct and suggestive, owing 
 nothing to church or palace. The first of these to 
 be mentioned brings us once again to the dance. 
 
92 National Music of the World. 
 
 within the spell of the tarantella, and the sound 
 of what may be called a gipsy instrument — that 
 small provocative drum with bells, the tambourine. 
 Among all mortal measures, the tarantella is as- 
 suredly the most delirious one, the most instinct 
 with motion and spirit, accumulating with a sort of 
 frantic and fierce earnestness that one might fancy 
 to be at variance with the light-heartedness of 
 mirth, did one not see it pervade every Italian 
 pursuit and pastime. There is no playing or 
 dancing a tarantella sluggishly. There may be 
 such things as a flaccid waltz and a heavy galoppe, 
 but the southern dance constrains all concerned in 
 its execution to a vivacity of animation to which no 
 parallel can be found, unless it be in the reel of 
 Scotland. 
 
 It is interesting to recollect how almost every 
 learned or fanciful musician has, at some time or 
 other, been enthralled by this whirling melody. 
 The grave Bach, the melancholy Chopin, the 
 sensuous Rossini, and half a hundred composers of 
 every mood and every colour, have all tried their 
 hands at tarantella making — almost all with great 
 success. One of the most admirable examples of its 
 adoption is that made by Mendelssohn in the last 
 
Music froTU the South. 93 
 
 movement of his Symphony in A major, by some 
 called the Italian Symphony. 
 
 The Russian dance employed with such vigour 
 and brilliancy by Beethoven in the finale to his 
 Symphony in A major, does not offer a more felici- 
 tous example of a composer seizing a national 
 humour and turning it to account. Observe — for it 
 is worth noting — that like the Siciliana and other 
 dances, the Coranto and PassacagUa, which have 
 tempted composers, this is in triple time. I think 
 then, that this may be taken as a rule, with Italian 
 popular melody : the newest example of it, perhaps, 
 being the sickly Santa Lucia, which was but yester- 
 day the favourite ditty of Naples — ^not to be escaped 
 from by the travellers on their arrival in the bay, while 
 wearily waiting until paternal government should 
 have counted their numbers and called their names, 
 and set them free to go ashore — or by the pilgrim 
 when issuing from the City of the Dead, Pompeii. 
 
 I have a collection of the commonest street ditties, 
 which I picked off the wall of a church in Naples, 
 where they hung in fifties — ^purchased for an English 
 shilling or thereabouts ; and one and aU of these are 
 in the Barcarole or Brindisi measure : to make an 
 arbitrary use of familiar words. Here, however, is one 
 
94 National Music of the World. 
 
 whicli is somewhat odd, from an episodical phase of 
 three bars which disturbs the symmetry of the 
 rhythm. 
 
 tempo. 
 
 t 
 
 ^^^^^^i^^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 I^ESE 
 
 iSv^^jtJ^ii. 
 
 =M=^M 
 
 z=r^ 
 
 S^E£P 
 
 1^5= 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^i 
 
 i 
 
 EE 
 
 g-r-^g*g ff-, 
 
 ^^^s^ 
 
 '^^ 
 
Music from the South. 
 
 95 
 
 I have offered this specimen because of its ir- 
 regularity ; observing nevertheless, that though the 
 same is duly printed, the odd bar may be a case 
 of intentional caprice, which has perverted a com- 
 monplace melody. 
 
 Some years ago, when I was in Padua, while 
 resting my mind on the steps of Giotto's chapel, 
 after having looked at his noble frescoes there, I 
 was amused by listening to a girl who was ar- 
 ranging linen to dry under the mulberry trees, and 
 who sang a song of many verses to a ditty regular 
 and commonplace in every respect, save that the 
 third line was a five-bar phrase, which necessitated 
 the repetition of a word. 
 
96 National Music of the World. 
 
 The oddity of the effect made me note the tiine 
 down : when I had done so, I called the singer 
 to me, and asked her to sing the tune. This 
 she did once, twice, thrice — always omitting the 
 superfluous bar. I then sang it to h&r, as I had 
 noted it, and as she had sung it to herself, and 
 asked her which of the two versions was right. 
 ' Why, the second one,' she said ; ' but it amuses me 
 to sing it thus [with the five bars] when I am by 
 myself.' 
 
 And if we go to Venice, we shall find the same 
 predilection for a triple rhythm : as for instance, in 
 the well-worn OarnavaL 
 
 I think I hear now a poor little grizzled creature, 
 old enough to have seen something of better and 
 gayer days in Venice, who, when I was there some 
 twelve years ago, used to solace himself by piping 
 out as he sculled along, or sat waiting on his steps 
 for the passengers who rarely patronised him, a 
 legend of the Virgin, which seemed to have no 
 beginning or end, to a slow version of the waltz 
 movement closing the lovely concerted piece, '0 
 guardate,' from Signor Eossini's ' Turco in Italia.' 
 
 There were a good many accidental flats and 
 sharps added to this, probably resulting from the 
 
Music from the Sotitk. 97 
 
 singer's extreme age and hunger ; but the perpetual 
 murmuring of the same travestied and trivial 
 melody seemed to comfort him. 
 
 I may assume, then, that the triple rhythm is 
 predominant throughout such national music of 
 Italy, north or south, as is not scenic. For look 
 among the chamber music of its best national com- 
 posers. When the thing is uot to be an opera scene, 
 they seem by some unexplained instinct to fall into 
 the form of three notes or bars, as the French do 
 into the more active tramp of a four-in-a-bar or 
 two-in-a-bar rhythm. 
 
 In Signer Eossini's exquisite chamber compo- 
 sitions, the same undulating movement prevails ; and 
 so again, it predominates in the canzonets of Signer 
 Gordigiani, the last Italian composer who may 
 be said to have produced something original. 
 
 For marked prediJections like these there is no 
 accounting. As little can it be explained why, seeing 
 that the Italians were foremost in the manufacture 
 of instruments, and are admirably skilled as players, 
 instrumental composition, save in the most showy 
 form of solitary display, should have fallen into 
 such disesteem. In the concert-room, whether the 
 arena be a theatre, or the Place of St. Mark's, or- 
 
 H 
 
98 National Music of the World. 
 
 a street in G-enoa, or a riverside in Florence, while 
 the traveller is struck again and again with taught 
 and untaught proficiency on the part of the players, 
 he will hear nothing but some eternal song, or some 
 paltry dance, in nine cases out of ten from the 
 favourite opera. 
 
 For men of grave musical tendencies, such as 
 dementi, and Chembini, and Spontini, there has 
 been no home, no field for action in their own 
 country, for years and years past. 
 
 Such are a very few among the characteristics 
 of national music in Italy. Perhaps, if follo\yed 
 out, they might in some degree explain its reserves, 
 its past strength, its present weakness. 
 
 We have now to exchange the world of senti- 
 ment for that of intellectual vivacity, and to enter 
 a region of art originally colonised from the South, 
 no doubt, and of late time drawing tribute from every 
 country of the earth, with a self-consistency and 
 self-possession in which are involved nothing short 
 of absolute egotism and absolute metamorphosis. 
 
 For there is nothing more constant and tyran- 
 nical than certain characteristics of French art. I 
 have outlined two, in reference to my subject : a 
 strangely assorted couple, but which arise and recur, 
 
Music from the South. 99 
 
 whatever field of inventive or imaginative enterprise 
 be explored — monotony and piquancy. 
 
 Let me illustrate for a moment from French art 
 in other forms than that of music. 
 
 To begin with drama : there is nothing so mono- 
 tonous as all the rules of serious French tragedy — 
 nothing so piquant, so provocative of intellectual 
 curiosity, as the working-out of the same, by those 
 who have to 3)resent it. Consider the tirades of 
 CorneLUe and his successors, which, grand as they 
 are, are rhymed — in a rhyme neither to be broken 
 nor bent. 
 
 Yet tradition tells us in what measure Clairon, — 
 and memory reminds my predecessors how Talma, 
 — and personal experience has acquainted me by 
 what siaister insinuations Rachel, pointed such 
 monotony by a lacerating finesse of accent sufScient 
 to carry off the platitude of the verse, and its de- 
 ficiency in idea, and to support the situation of the 
 scene. 
 
 I have found the same union of the same two 
 separate elements in French painting. While the 
 artists have shrunk from no subject, the similarity 
 of expression in their elder pictures has always 
 struck me. Till such romanticists as Gericault 
 
 H 2 
 
lOO National Music of the World. 
 
 ■with his ' Medusa Eaft,' and Delaroche with his 
 ' Murder of the Duke de G-uise,' and Ary Scheffer 
 (who, by the way, was not "French) appeared, there 
 was a curious repetition of the same set face to be 
 seen in their pictures ; the same composed, man- 
 nered mouth, in the grand conventual compositions 
 of Philippe de Champagne, and in the Court por- 
 traits of Mignard, Eigaud, down even to Boucher. 
 
 In the architecture of the French the same 
 humour is to be traced. There is a peak (or towrelle) 
 on nine out of ten flat-bodied chatea,ux. Even in 
 such specimens as the Palace of the Tuileries, the 
 old portion of Pontainebleau, the chateau ofVallery, 
 near Sens, where the Great Conde lies buried (de- 
 signed by Philibert de L'Orme), the monotony of the 
 line is relieved by piquancies in roof and chimney, 
 one setting off the other. I am persuaded that this 
 fancy, as pervading French art, will bear any amount 
 of illustration. But, to come to my own subject, the 
 peculiarity takes in music the form of a dry, limited 
 melody as applied to the setting of words, accom- 
 panied by a determination on the part of the execu- 
 tants in time, tone, and accent, to hold fast atten- 
 tion with both, or if not, then to snatch the ear 
 by disappointment and suspense. This definition 
 
Music from the South. loi 
 
 applies to their serious as well as to their comic 
 music; to the psalmodic recitations, relieved by 
 sharply cut dancing airs, in their grand or serious 
 operas, to the sprightly tunes of their YamdemiUes, 
 so often and again set off by a drone or pedal bass. 
 In brief, though the espWf of French music, old or 
 new, cannot /fltscmafe any one, except he be a French- 
 man bom, it gives most active occupation to the 
 intellect that would appreciate, to the curiosity that 
 is in quest of individuality. It has by this power of 
 attraction drawn within its circle, and imposed laws 
 on artists belonging to all countries renowned in 
 connection with our art. From the days when opera 
 formed itself; when Lulli (to whom, by the way, 
 the well-knovm melody ' Au clair de la lune ' is at- 
 tributed) was writing for Louis the Fourteenth ; when 
 Mouret was making diversions for the country palace 
 of the Duchess of Maine ; when Campra was sur- 
 reptitiously creeping away from his church organ in 
 order to try his fortune on the stage ; and when the 
 comic opera, the 'Theatre de la Foire,' took its 
 shape, precursor of the YoMd&mlle, — the dismal 
 regularity of what stood in stead of melody re- 
 mained long a constant quality. Even Mendelssohn, 
 the last of the great Germans, put himself into 
 
I02 National Music of the World. 
 
 Frencli dress when composing the choruses for 
 Racine's 'Athalie.' 
 
 Further, as consistent with the above theory, 
 there has never been such a nation of song- singers 
 as the French, beginning with the troubadour days 
 of romance, and going on to the later times, when the 
 lay of ' The Armed Man ' went through Europe as a 
 ditty, in such favour that fifty Italian masses were 
 based on it — I presume, on Eowland Hill's well- 
 known principle. Dreary must have been the notions 
 of melody that could accept such a theme. The charm 
 must have lain in the tale of chivalry or adventure 
 recited ; in the warlike feats of Eoland, or in the pica- 
 roon exploits of ' Count Ory.' Nevertheless, it cannot 
 have been altogether the import of the words which 
 contented the listeners. That they must have taken a 
 real pleasure in monotonous and prosy tunes is evi- 
 dent, since the Geneva hymns to the Psalms of David, 
 translated by Clement Marot, were popular among 
 the ladies and gentlemen of not the most devout 
 court in Europe. 
 
 But, however persevering as singers of words 
 the French have been, their natural endowments 
 as vocalists appear to have been always singular and 
 restricted. 
 
Music from the South. 103 
 
 The men of France are largely to be distin- 
 guished by a mixed voice, neither conscientiously- 
 tenor nor honestly bass. This will be seen by their 
 operas : those of Gluck, for instance, are so written 
 as to be very difficult of execution to the bass 
 singers of other countries. 
 
 Such men in comic opera were Galliot, whom 
 Burney describes ; Martin ; — in our own day, Chollet, 
 for whom Herold's ' Zampa ' was written. 
 
 Then, again, in France will largely be found 
 the high male counter-tenor organ, which justified 
 the sarcasm, ' Thai or the, other nose has a good voice,' 
 whereas the low female or contralto voice has been 
 always rare ; I cannot recollect a solitary French 
 example. So much for peculiarities of register: 
 generally, the quality of vocal tone, take it in what 
 scale you will, is inferior, harsh, poor, not winning ; 
 nor can this wholly lie on the difficulties of the 
 language. The close vowels of France are not so 
 directly opposed to amenity of sound as the gut- 
 tural consonants of Germany and the sibilants of 
 England. 
 
 The French appreciation of suavity of tone, 
 moreover, may be described as having kept pace 
 with the supply. The lady who, as a stage widotv 
 
104 National Music of the World. 
 
 in a wreath of black flowers, screamed so at the 
 grand opera as to shock Horace Walpole, — the 
 Madame Lais, whom Moore, I think, signalised in 
 his ' Fudge Family' for like ear-piercing qualities, 
 were long the types of French singers who entirely 
 contented their public, and were commemorated by 
 the wits and epigram writers — not as so many muses, 
 but as so many nightingales. In old Italian scores, 
 when the singer was to force out one of those 
 violences to which Signor Verdi has hardened 
 southern ears, the direction was ' un nolo Francese,' 
 a French scream. Times have changed with the 
 singers of France. 
 
 These peculiarities cannot but have imparted 
 a certain tone and cast to French melody on 
 the one hand, while on the other the esprit rather 
 than the fancy of the poets has encouraged in it 
 turns, surprises, in which quaint and modish 
 cleverness is more remarkable than natural beauty. 
 And this not without grace, inasmuch as Watteau 
 is graceful. There must be a corner kept for the 
 world of revels at the Trianon, as well as for those 
 in the Corto, by all who are not bowed, and braced 
 and barred by their own narrowness into one form 
 of Art. 
 
Music from the South. 105 
 
 The excellent manner in wliicli these national 
 peculiarities have been turned to account by the 
 composers of France, must strike every one familiar 
 with their music. 
 
 Successively such remarkable men as Eameau, 
 Boieldieu, Herold, Auber, and Halevy, while avail- 
 ing themselves of every contemporary discovery 
 with great readiness, have, either from instinct or 
 predilection, kept close to the style of their country. 
 
 You will rarely meet with a slow movement by 
 them which possesses that relishing or sweet fresh- 
 ness that belongs to similar German or Italian 
 specimens by men of merit. 
 
 You will as rarely come on a sprightly measure 
 in which some unforeseen turn of interval or rhythm 
 does not redeem the tune from commonplace, if even 
 at the price of added affectation. 
 
 This fact will repay the most minute exami- 
 nation by the student of melody — a branch of mu- 
 sical education, let me say, which is far too largely 
 neglected. It is far too much forgotten, that a 
 touch judiciously applied, a note withdrawn or 
 changed, may transform that which is valueless into 
 that which is attractive — a barren phrase into a 
 suggestive idea. 
 
io6 National Music of the World. 
 
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 ten. 
 
 ip=r 
 
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 PP e stacc. 
 
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 ten. 
 
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Music from the South. 
 
 107 
 
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 ^ 
 
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 The above, which is from M. Auber's ' Lac des 
 Fees,' is a veritable type of French taste in melody, 
 and affords a peep into such French fairyland as 
 Watteau might have painted. It is worth com- 
 paring with the fairy music written by Mendelssohn 
 for our ' Midsummer Night's Dream.' 
 
 Once more — to be monotonous, in reverting to 
 French monotony — this characteristic may have been 
 to some degree as much encouraged by the instru- 
 mental predilections of the French, as by the 
 peculiarity of their voices. The national instrument 
 has a drone, whether it be the mdle, or hurdy-gurdy, 
 or the bagpipe — that primitive walking-organ, for 
 which I have confessed a secret affection, utterly 
 heterodox though it be. Madame George Sand, who 
 has a keen musical sense and some understanding, 
 assures us that in the central provinces of France 
 many brave pipers are to be found, taught by ear and 
 
io8 National Music of the World. 
 
 imitation, who can name neither clef nor note, bnt 
 who catch up, who vary and invent tunes with 
 great adroitness ; and it is certain that throughout 
 the music of no country is so much of the musette 
 or drone bass to be heard, as in the music of France. 
 The first specimen I shall oflPer is an old ' Brw- 
 neite' or love ditty; the dark complexion, it has 
 been said, (in explanation of the term) being in such 
 favour, as to represent the every- day Cynthia whom 
 the every-day Gymon of the regulated pastoral was 
 to court, or else to complain of. There are hun- 
 dreds of tunes of this kind, belonging to the same 
 period, the seventeenth century. 
 
 Allegro Moderato. 
 
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 j=jfej 
 
 mE^ 
 
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 p 
 
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Music from the South. 
 
 109 
 
 55 ^ ^ , -# 
 
 In the following — which is the beginning of 
 an arietta with chorus and dance, from ' Hyppolite 
 et Aricie,' the first opera of Eanieau, who was the 
 first national composer of genius that could be 
 named — the same drone is applied to a different 
 rhythm, with more art and science. I know 
 nothing contemporaneous,, either in Italian or 
 
no National Music of the World. 
 
 German music, at once so monotonous and piquant 
 as this. 
 
 AUegro. 
 
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Music from the South. 
 
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 As we draw towards our own time, examples 
 niultiply by the thousand : to be found, for instance, 
 in Boieldieu's overture to ' The Caliph of Bagdad,' 
 or Berton's to 'Aline,' by scores in the operas of 
 M. Auber. To conclude this train of speculation, 
 I cannot do better than cite an example of monotony 
 and piquancy, in their most graceful and exquisite 
 union, from ' L'Ambassadrice,' by M. Auber, the 
 patriarch of modern French composers. 
 
112 National Music of the World. 
 
 AUegretto con grazia. 
 
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Music from the South. 
 
 113 
 
 The newest French composer to whom, in 
 default of more real genius, Europe is begin- 
 ning to look for its operas — I mean M. Gounod 
 — is employing the same device with a felicity, but 
 also with a pertinacity, which proves how deeply the 
 spirit thereof is ingrained into the body of French 
 music. 
 
 Enough has been said of the pipers and their 
 drone ; but, from the two, we are naturally led on to 
 the dancers ; and these have formed always an im- 
 portant part of the people of France. Indeed, I believe 
 there might be some fossil men and women quarried 
 
 I 
 
114 National Music of the World. 
 
 out of remote places in England, who stiU think of 
 the French as mainly a nation of dancing-masters. 
 
 In the dances of the French there will be found 
 vivacities of measure as curious as the solemnity of 
 Cantilena in their serious song. 
 
 The melodies of Auvergne, arranged by Ons- 
 low, our countryman, naturalised there, are doleful 
 enough.; but from Auvergne we get that dance, the 
 Bowre : a brisk rustic measure which has prompted 
 great composers, and established a tempo in music. 
 Many of Handel's songs are written in Tempo 
 de Bowre. I may instance the charming one in 
 ' Joshua,' ' Heroes when with glory burning,' and in 
 'Jephtha,' the delicious first song of Jephtha's 
 daughter, 'The smiling dawn of happier days.' 
 Bach, again, who had a hankering after every 
 foreign style, though he was a man who lived and 
 died among his own people^the most German of 
 Germans — employed the measure bravely. 
 
 Other dances may be named as characteristic of 
 France — the Braule, or ' Brawl ' — ^which, it may- be 
 recollected, Marie Stuart is said to have led at the 
 wedding of her servant Sebastian, on the night of 
 Darnley's murder — a stately tune in three-four time, 
 resembling the PassacaAlle and the Pavane — and the 
 
Music from the South. 115 
 
 EoTOtie, whicli is again in common metre. This 
 rhythm, I think, may be described as the one most 
 congenial to rrench sympathies. 
 
 Their Gavotte is close to the minuet, of such elegant 
 gaiety as to deserve expressly complimentary mention. 
 And where in the world is there anything like 
 the mad sweep of the Galoppe ! — a dance which it is 
 almost hopeless to attempt anywhere out of France — 
 with all its stream of smooth yet rapid craziness ; as 
 unapproachable in its character by the natives of 
 other coTintries as were the charming floating graces 
 of the three-bar waltz of Germany — ere the modern, 
 and, I think, senseless dislocation of it was invented 
 by Folly, spoiling a good and genuine thing as com- 
 pletely as if (to use a quaint phrase of Dr. Franklin's) 
 you put ' salt to strawberries.' 
 
 To the rich wit of the French (who neverthe- 
 less are poor in the sense of the whimsical) must be 
 ascribed many of the forms of their music when used 
 to mate sound with sense for stage uses, whether in 
 the Vaudeville, or in the table-song, or in the Anvphi- 
 gouri, that sort of medley which has its equivalent 
 in no other country. 
 
 For the most part, when the domain of French 
 popular art has been entered, it wUl be perceived 
 
 i2 
 
1 1 6 National Music of the World. 
 
 that, provided the tune has a certain piquancy, 
 let it he 'common as a barber's chair' — to quote 
 the author of ' Philip von Artevelde ' — so that it 
 only has a burden, no matter with what jargon, to 
 which people can march, or make a noise in time, 
 it is satisfying and delightful. 
 
 The pungency which the vocalist can sUng into his 
 words, the crispness of rhythm, are of greater conse- 
 quence than beauty of voice or originality of melody. 
 
 I need only touch very slightly upon the admirable 
 piquancy of the Comic Opera music of France, 
 because the fact is as well confessed as was the 
 supremacy of their cookery in the days before that 
 great and serious art began to wane ; and because 
 I wish to dwell on the section of French tunes to 
 which my characteristics apply m thew faintest mam- 
 festation : I mean certain modern frank ditties of 
 wine and war, of political satire or popular tumult. 
 
 Here, however, though the frankness is largely to 
 be noted, the words are allowed to get the better of 
 the music, and to impose on it certain peculiarities 
 of rhythm. 
 
 I could fiU a chapter, and perhaps not without 
 bringing out some forgotten points, were I to attempt 
 to enter on the tunes which spited Madame du Barri 
 
Music from the South. 117 
 
 in the pride of lier shaineless ascendancy : ' La Belle 
 Bourbonnaise ' being one of the most ferocious airs 
 which later taunted and tormented Marie Antoinette. 
 Though these political and patriotic songs hate 
 small musical value, the recurrence of one character 
 in them is remarkable — a character more frank, more 
 distinct, more vulgar (if you please), than in the case 
 of any other French music. 
 
 To illustrate this, I will dwell for a moment on 
 the best known one, 'La Marseillaise,' because of 
 the controversy lately raised in respect to its 
 parentage. A claim has been put forward from the 
 Lake of Constance by inhabitants of that small vil- 
 lage, Meersburg — with its palace on an insulated frag- 
 uaent of rock, not so very unlike a drum, and oddly 
 jammed in between the hill and the lake. 
 
 Meersburg was, even so late as the close of the 
 last century, an episcopal see, where state was held 
 and music was encouraged ; and on the strength of 
 a manuscript that is existing there, we are instructe4 
 that ' La Marseillaise ' was not made, but borrowed, 
 from a mass at Meersburg. 
 
 This might pass, so far as any belief in the 
 integrity of its reputed author is concerned. For 
 the author was Eouget de Lille : in talent, if 
 
1 1 8 National Music of the World. 
 
 not in fortune, a sort of French Dibdin, who wrote 
 songs and composed music to them in an irregular 
 way of his own, but in which there was something 
 of art as well as of poetry : a man who was pitied 
 and assisted by Beranger, and who died in misery 
 and want. His collection of fifty ' Songs of France ' 
 is a rather sad comment on the elastic nature of his 
 patriotism, ranging as it does betwixt the years 1776 
 and 1821, and comprising all manner of hymns got 
 up for all manner of triumphant occasions — Repub- 
 lican, Imperial, and Legitimist. 
 
 'La Marseillaise,' purported to have been written, 
 words and music, at Strasbourg in the year 1792, 
 called originally the song of ' The Rhine Army ' by 
 the author, who seems to have been wandering in 
 want of bread, and re-christened after its appearance 
 in a journal of Marseilles — ^was by no means De Lille's 
 firstessay. Now it iapossible that the Meersburg mass 
 referred to may have been heard by him at Stras- 
 bourg, though hardly probable — seeing that then the 
 places were two days' journey apart : seeing that every 
 Catholic town had its affluence of small composers ; 
 and it is possible that he may have pillaged it of the 
 ' Credo ' and twisted that hymn literally tp his own 
 patriotic uses. ' 
 
Music from the South. 
 
 119 
 
 But it is more probable that the hymn may have 
 got to Meersburg, since on the authentication of the 
 manuscript I lay small stress, and for the following 
 reasons : — 
 
 The style of the ' Marseillaise ' was clearly anti- 
 cipated in other earlier songs by De Lille, unless 
 these were misdated, or forgeries. The song of 
 'Eoland' by him, dated 1776 — and if this be cor- 
 rect, composed when Rouget de LiUe was sixteen, 
 his birth year being 1760 — has clearly the very pre- 
 cise form of sharp, keen, animated measure, marked 
 by dotted notes and trumpet calls, to which people 
 can tramp in time — and the French love to tramp, 
 as any one acquainted with theatrical audiences must 
 ]£iiow — which was later made out with greater 
 power in the ' Marseillaise.' Traces of this peculiar 
 movement are constantly to be found in French 
 music of a certain quality, even of late days. Every- 
 one knows the melody ' Brulant d' Amour : " 
 
 as one among twenties— shall I not say, hundreds ? — 
 
1 20 National Music of the World. 
 
 analogous to which, I can only recall few from beyond 
 the frontier — such, for example, as Lindpaintner's 
 ' Standard Bearer,' which Herr Pischek brought to 
 England. 
 
 :i:i= 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^J^-^ 
 
 / :S::-3 
 
 ^= 
 
 -g- -g -m - -|»- 
 
 -^-1 r-r- 
 
 ri«-f*- 
 
 ■lT 
 
 Now, I repeat, this matter of style is a stubborn 
 stumbling-block to those who have studied it. What 
 availed the denials of Scott, when he was taxed with 
 his novels ? Simply to make the ' dropping of the 
 mask ' a not very graceful proceeding. 
 
 A James Smith can manage a page of mimicry 
 in his ' Eejected Addresses ' which shall seem reality, 
 but cannot keep it up for a lifetime. If this 
 * Credo ' of the Meersburg Mass was the inspiration 
 of Eouget de Lille, it must been so by a sort of 
 prevision which tinctured many of his earlier com- 
 positions ; and the rhythm of the tune, in which lies 
 its character, the few modulations being of the com- 
 monest quality, must have struck a deeper root in 
 France than a form derived from a composition born 
 in so obscure a quarter was likely to do. The case 
 
Music from the South. 
 
 121 
 
 is one in which I cannot fancy evidence standing 
 against inference. 
 
 In retaliation on our German cousins, it may be 
 pointed out that they have listened to the 'Mar- 
 seillaise' to good purpose, since this phrase per- 
 petually occurs in their student and wine songs : 
 
 -I — I- 
 
 ■A- 
 
 1 H ^ -j ^ -\ — 
 
 — a^ — -* — « — « — w — « — 
 
 :3i|-a^=»^*iiS 
 
 =& 
 
 ^ S 4—^- 
 
 I 1 
 
 .^- H*- !«_ 
 
 SH 
 
 m 
 
 3e=^: 
 
 'X=X 
 
 m 
 
 EEi 
 
 i=r^ 
 
 W- F W- p 1" 
 
 1 1 1 1^^ 
 
 J 1, \. 
 
 -%z=zr- 
 
 H«- ^e- ^- 
 
 P ^ , ^^ te=^: 
 
 H*- ■^- 
 
 t^=^ 
 
 i^=ri«: 
 
 Which is virtually identical with the fourth line of 
 the ' Marseillaise,' leaving out the spirit of the dotted 
 quavers : 
 
 1 — !- 
 
 5^^^: 
 
 ^±^UA^. 
 
 3it=iEi::)«z!c: 
 
 ■I F-l— 
 
 w 
 
 -^=^ 
 
 1 — \ 
 
122 National Music of the World. 
 
 If the Germans have desired to get the credit of 
 the ' Marseillaise ' from the French, our allies have 
 attempted a still more heinous usurpation, having 
 laid claim to nothing less national than our National 
 Hymn, which they have maintained was the com- 
 position of LuUi, their adopted musician. During 
 the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in England 
 and elsewhere (as Mr. William Chappell's carefully 
 executed collection attests), a pompous minuet style 
 was in fashion, some twenty specimens of which 
 bear as close a family likeness one to the other as 
 Rouget de Lille's military tunes. 
 
 Here is a specimen by LuUi : a minuet movement 
 preluding an a/riette from a ballet by him, ' La Mas- 
 carade de Versailles.' 
 
 E^ 
 
 a 
 
 iH«- 
 
 Iglip 
 
 -f^f^W 
 
 (li 
 
 8ve. 
 
 -^- . -•- ^ -»- 
 
 N J n 
 
 ^ 
 
 ?2- 
 
Music from the South. 
 
 123 
 
 . ^ r, 
 
 ^^ 
 
 r, I ^ 
 
 ^e±S^iS 
 
 ^w 
 
 .^. 
 
 j-Fr- r- & -H ^-^ ^::^E 
 
 tf*- 
 
 1 — 1- 
 
 gji^p^'^^^p 
 
 ^. 
 
 *f=^ 
 
 ,U^>' 
 
 J-J- 
 
 2^t: 
 
 J ^ — V 
 
 ^ 
 
 r- 
 
 -P— sJ- 
 
 creB. I 
 
 1^ 
 
 t=t: 
 
 :^==f 
 
 *a^: 
 
 g-M# ^ — ^-J- : 
 
 liae 
 
 •I — f 
 
 ! i ^VO- 
 
 ^ ^. — n — \ 
 
 i: 
 
 ;s 
 
 =*s:St 
 
 ^:^ 
 
 ii 
 
 
 -fi^ 
 
 i 
 
 iT-r ^ 
 
 ^E 
 
 i-r^ :=; 
 
 ^i*-i: 
 
 :^^3: 
 
 :^ 
 
 Sba 
 
 '-3 
 
 From the midst of many tunes in this form I 
 xjonceive that our National Hymn combined itself, 
 rather than was composed ; the difficulties in admis- 
 sion of the French claim lying in the fact that the 
 rhythm of the verse — two lines with a burden, fol- 
 lowed by three lines with a burden — is only, so far as I 
 
124 National Music of the World. 
 
 kno w, foTin d in our language . There is, however, a cer- 
 tain analogous irregularity in 'Cliarmant Gabrielle,' 
 where a six-bar phrase, twice repeated, is followed 
 by a fire-bar one, also reiterated. Books have been 
 published on the matter ; but on the extreme caution 
 with which I conceive tradition should be accepted, 
 when at variance with conviction resulting from 
 comparison, I have no need to dwell. 
 
 I regret to be compelled to deny myself the in- 
 dulgence of further speculations on the peculiar 
 qualities of French music ; earnestly calling atten- 
 tion to it as a subject far too much slighted, and, 
 whether it be viewed in connection with manners, 
 with other arts, or with other nationalities, a subject 
 fuU of matter, curious, interesting, and replete with 
 instruction. 
 
125 
 
 MUSIC FROM TEE NORTH. 
 
 I DEALT in the last essay with national music 
 which may have derived much of its colour, as in 
 Italy, from emotion — as in France, from the intel- 
 lectual predilections of the people. 
 
 The domain to be now entered is one largely per- 
 vaded by the fantastic element. 
 
 In lands of mists and of mountains — of long 
 winters, and summers all the more precious because 
 they are so short, days of grace snatched out of a 
 dark year — the influences of scenery are more clearly 
 to be discerned than in regions where nature is 
 more uniformly favourable. Be the national music 
 of the North natural or gay, it is for the most part 
 fresh. The sadness of it is seldom tinctured with 
 languor; the sweetness has something in it that 
 braces as well as that charms the sense. 
 
 This even may be remarked when the minor 
 key predominates so largely, as in the tunes of the 
 districts to which I shall first advert. 
 
126 National Music of the World. 
 
 On the subject of keys, it may be asked, if we 
 have not unreasonably cherished fancies arising 
 from peculiarities in executive power, rather than 
 any intrinsic gravity or gaiety of sound. Every 
 musician's ear has its own predilections, as has 
 every painter's eye for a peculiar colour. The 
 Mozart progression, the Eossini close — so cleverly 
 compared by Liszt to the signature, ' Yo%rs truly ^ 
 which finishes a letter — the Mendelssohn chords, are 
 as distinctive of their owners as Domenichino's 
 marigold yeUow, or Cenerino's ash-grey, in the pic- 
 tures of those masters. I have dared to entertain a 
 heresy, that the setting of a particular tone in its 
 place is of as much consequence as its intrinsic 
 quality ; and that the wholesale definitions of sharps 
 as brilliant, and of flats as melancholy, have been 
 traded on to an extremity. 
 
 To offer a simple illustration. 
 
 In these days of ours, every composer who at- 
 tempts a funeral march thinks it necessary to pUe flat 
 upon flat in the minor key, because Beethoven did so in 
 the march from the well-known Sonata, Opus 26, and 
 in the still more solemn example (yet less flat by four 
 flats) from his ' Eroica ' symphony. Now, somehow, 
 our great old Handel outdid these magnificent com- 
 
Music from the North. ii"] 
 
 positions, with, his crude orchestra, in his two Dead 
 Marches — those, I mean, from 'Saul' and 'Samson.' 
 The first of these is in C major (which used to be 
 called the 'wanton key'), and the second is in D 
 major. I cannot fancy the simple and noble pathos 
 of these exceeded. 
 
 I may draw another illustration from such works 
 of greater length as operas, where many keys are 
 used in succession and alternation. Now hearing, 
 as we have done so much of late, that the diapa- 
 son during the past century has been raised half 
 a tone, it would follow, that had keys much in- 
 trinsic value beyond that of the player's or singer's 
 convenience, bright must have become dark, and 
 vice versa. 
 
 In all these preferences, I repeat, personality is 
 mixed up largely. I remember hearing six ingenious 
 musicians laying their heads together to agree that no 
 grave music had been ever written in the key of G 
 major. The pleasant flow of their concord was in- 
 terrupted by a seventh speaker, who quietly cited 
 ' See the Conquering Hero comes,' and the choru« 
 from the ' Messiah,' ' For unto us a Child is born,' 
 not to speak of Haydn's 'God preserve the Em- 
 peror.' 
 
128 National Music of the World. 
 
 These crotchets, my own speculations counting 
 in the list, will always have a great attraction for 
 persons who are decided in their likes or dislikes, but 
 for the moment the matter must here be left. 
 
 It is impossible to overrate the freshness and 
 vigour of the song-melody of the north — let the key 
 be what it will. These bear company with like 
 qualities in the popular poetry. And though trained 
 art taking any form of originality is comparatively 
 modern in the North, as compared with the South, 
 the tunes themselves have a quaint sharpness of 
 interval and rhythm, which amounts to a charac- 
 teristic. 
 
 I must now enter into a detail or two. To begin, 
 with Muscovy. Russian music has singular par- 
 ticularities ; among these, the double-bass voices — 
 ranging, I believe, from about D in the bass stave 
 to D below the line — who support the chords of the 
 chants of the national worship. 
 
 I am unable to speak of the effect of this chant- 
 ing, save from the exhibition of it on a very reduced 
 scale, which is to be met with in Paris. Even 
 that, simple and monotonous as the music is, is most 
 impressive; from its sweetness of tone, surety of 
 intonation, and certainty of attack. 
 
Music from the North. 129 
 
 Witnesses to be relied on assure us that, as heard 
 in the great Churches of St. Petersburg and Moscow, 
 executed by a mass of finer voices than any per- 
 mitted to travel abroad, the impression of this 
 Russian sacred music in its sublimity exceeds even 
 that of the more accessible Easter music at Rome, 
 concerning which so much has been written. I had 
 long an idea, that the music of the Russian church 
 might be influenced by Greek traditions ; that its 
 chants might be the old chants : but, so far as I can 
 understand, the singularity of interval which dis- 
 tinguishes the old Ambrosian or Gregorian tune, 
 does not pervade the cantilena or melody — and the 
 whole music of the rite is a modernised music. 
 On this matter, which however I have taken some 
 pains to ascertain, I can only speak from hearsay, 
 not inspection of manuscripts. 
 
 Physical effects like these adverted to, from the 
 double-bass voices, can only be obtained under the 
 conditions of serfdom ; since the singers can be little 
 more than machines, comprising each a few select 
 notes, whose owners are fit for small other service. 
 
 The perfection derived from limitation or division 
 of labour such as this, when applied to art, can only 
 be obtained when society is primitive— as in India, 
 
 E. 
 
136 National Music of the World. 
 
 where there is one functionary to bridle a horse, and 
 another to put on his saddle ; where one man will sit 
 on his seat to stitch the coming baby's cap, while the 
 man whose duty is grown-up embroidery addicts 
 himself to the lady mother's robe of state. Caste, 
 in national music, is a thing which has never been 
 studied aright, so far as I am aware. Stranger than 
 these double-bass voices, but akin in their training, 
 seem to have been — or perhaps yet are — the players 
 on the horn-bands of Russia; automatons of one note, 
 referable again to the state of serfdom ; of no more 
 real value or sentiment in regard to art than so many 
 organ pipes — than so many pins which decide the A, 
 B, or C, ground out of the barrel of the hand-organ. 
 Those who care to follow the subject may 
 measure these strange machines with a home-set 
 of popular musicians, and who are somewhat me- 
 chanical also — our bell-ringers : each of whom, also, 
 has only one note to care for. But bell-ringing, 
 besides its being a hearty and voluntary exercise for 
 the athletic, has something of variety and unex- 
 pectedness in its changes — an appeal in them to 
 calculation as well as to recollection, which the 
 playing of these Russian monotones has not. 
 
 The Russian voice, however, be it free or slave. 
 
Music from _ the North. 
 
 131 
 
 is universally allowed to be most melodious. It 
 would be impossible in quality to outvie that of a 
 singer whom many living recollect — Signor Ivanoff. 
 As to the Russian melodies, I shall select thr&e. 
 The first, I cannot but conceive has been arranged, 
 but there is in it a character well worth considering. 
 
 Moderato, 
 
 P^^^E-EijE^: 
 
 
 fi 
 
 T^*- 
 
 \ 
 
 iP*B 
 
 ^«E 
 
 
 r"^^- r"*r2 r"^- r"^^ rl^v 
 
 k3 
 
1 3 2 National Mtisic of the World. 
 
 :^=i^=5t 
 
 Cj^ijt.;. 
 
 
 w. 
 
 ^F 
 
 j:^ 
 
 
 
 e 
 
 ^-5 
 
 ifc=± 
 
 P {few. 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 P-I — I — - -^ 
 
 -3B — f^"! ^ 
 
 ■tir: 
 
 r^T=ii^=^Jz 
 
 Li=^ i-^p.f q 
 
 1 
 
 =^r^ 
 
 r- 
 
 tf-1 r^ ^-"^'- i'^^ r-i^- 
 
 ilBt^ 
 
 33^ 
 
 3:zJi^= 
 
 ^^ 
 
 #*:^ 
 
 I 
 
 i 
 
 
 
 d--c^= 
 
 -r 
 
 r 
 
 ^ 
 
 |r;iJ?=|:=ti:?l:irt:i^rzj=*-:f!^riJJ-z= 
 
 P^ 
 
Music from the North. 
 
 133 
 
 :S=:*-S=p: 
 
 q^4 
 
 :i=a!=a: 
 
 I 
 
 ^t?=F^= 
 
 i | ^ I — t— hd 1 — h-d^-*-i — I — ^-^ 
 
 1 Li_. L| 1 I — 
 
 ff 
 
 K^fU^ 
 
 Pp: 
 
 :f:^ 
 
 B 
 
 :r^: 
 
 p-i' 
 
 rF 
 
 
 w. 
 
 Ei=i 
 
 -*U. 
 
 --^^r^r^^ 
 
 :3^:^!rr=: 
 
 ( 
 
 1 
 
 
 B: 
 
 
 ^^ b u '-ba 
 
 -to- 
 
 dim. 
 
 P 
 
 I 
 
 m 
 
 -S:-. 
 
 5 
 
 The second is a sort of wicked dance (if rightly 
 noted), to which no innocent person — I mean re- 
 gardful of responsibility in step and ' hands across 
 and back again' — could dance. 
 
134 National Music of the World. 
 
 Vivace. 
 
 #._,_^- 
 
 :ff-^P-*=i^= 
 
 fc* 
 
 §=i=t 
 
 itet 
 
 ■^ — ^ — h- <- 
 
 pzr-:-p=«=p= 
 
 1 
 
 rl^l^^ 
 
 iz2r 
 
 S 
 
 =^t--&=t 
 
 m^^^ 
 
 f=m-- 
 
 w 
 
 E^^E^Sfe^ifefe^ 
 
 >rt=SZr^: 
 
 ■£i.^-U^-'-Ud td- 
 
 -u^-t^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ? 
 
 =s=t 
 
 It 
 
 The third, which from the rude printing of the 
 text T conceive may be the most genuine, is 
 capital, because of the three-bar phrases. 
 
 Allegro. 
 
 It 
 
 ^fz 
 
 5^ 
 
 i 
 
 W=± 
 
 -\- 
 
 ^p-g=E 
 
 ^a=^^E^S 
 
 
 g:^^EE E=g=^ 
 
 i^ 
 
Music from the North. 
 
 135 
 
 ^^^m 
 
 
 "P" 
 I 
 
 Some of these Eussian tunes were excellently 
 wrought on by Beethoven in his variations, in his 
 Eazoumouffsky Quartetts ; other Northern tunes, by 
 his pupil Ferdinand Eies : a composer who has 
 been too much forgotten, perhaps, because he was 
 Beethoven's pupil, but whose best works do not 
 belong to Beethoven. 
 
 I must now take a glimpse at other northern 
 districts, which have proved themselves abundant 
 in materials of art ; and not merely so, but as 
 yielding products bearing a certain family likeness 
 one to other — products that suggest the idea of 
 
136 National Music of the World. 
 
 snow statues — of Aurora Borealis — of Eolian harp — 
 of Shakspeare's 'Oplielia' — of everything that is cold, 
 whimsical, quaint, and elfish, yet not inexpressive. 
 Let me name such a group of artists as Thorwaldsen, 
 Madame Taglioni, Herr Andersen, Madame Lind- 
 Goldschmidt, and Herr Gade, — all artists belonging 
 to the far land of mist and snow. 
 
 The Swedes are eminently a musical people. One 
 of their old sea-laws, I am told by a Swede, was that 
 a hymn by the man on the watch, at sea, should be 
 sung every night. Surely there is something truly 
 picturesque, as well as devout, in such an ordinance. 
 I announced at the outset, that I was not intending 
 to adduce any great beauty of illustra.tion, but I am 
 about to do so. I cannot warrant the date of the 
 following tune, but it comes from a collection which 
 appears to be conscientiously prepared, and the airs 
 in it to be exactly noted. 
 
Music from the North. 
 
 m 
 
 -zM-jt. 
 
 ^^=^r 
 
 ; ^B£ 
 
 m 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 I 
 
 ^- 
 
 ^ 
 
 =p=t 
 
 fed. # ped. j^ ;>ei." 
 
 
 :j^^1zM=j±l 
 
 W: 
 
 ^=5^ 
 
 m. 
 
 fcq 
 
 ri: 
 
 izi: 
 
 rT 
 
 i 
 
 3IZ*: 
 
 l# 
 
 3^=? 
 
 « — --«■ 
 
 ^ 
 
 p l=^z=E3E 
 
 t 
 
 --p=t 
 
 :1=t: 
 
 i 
 
 ^=q^ 
 
 5E^^ 
 
 :i-.=iiir:=STJ*=^ 
 
 g^.=t 
 
 S^±^ 
 
 5 
 
 "^ 
 
 "^r 
 
 1 ^^-1 ^^ 1 ^^ 1 •*- 
 
 ^ 
 
 i¥^ 
 
 ^=^ 
 
1 38 National Music of the World. 
 
 U.U 
 
 T ^ 
 
 ^1 ^— g 
 
 3^^^ 
 
 --3- 
 
 In the above wild air there is a suggestion of the 
 wandering sweetness which is to be found in the 
 songs of Lindblad, the individuality of which is 
 equalled only by their charm. Though they bear the 
 form of the German lied, they have not the least of 
 the German character, such as will be found ex- 
 pressed in the lieder of Schubert, Mendelssohn, and 
 Schumann. 
 
 Then, the far Northern folk have brave dancing 
 measures of their own. 
 
 Their Polslca — not the weed from which the 
 Polka has grown (because that dance was invented 
 by a servant girl not very long ago), so much as 
 a corruption, it may be fancied, of Polonoise — is 
 a brisk marked time, with humours of its own. 
 What follows has been glossed, obviously, by some 
 country fiddler : one of those players whose magical 
 power in inspiriting their dancers is so picturesquely 
 described in ' Strife and Peace,' that pleasant 
 
Music from the North. 
 
 139 
 
 northern novel by Miss Bremer. She tells us, by 
 the way, that the fiddle played on is not a common 
 one, but, so far as can be made out from her de- 
 scription, has four metallic strings under the sound- 
 ing-board, as well as the usual catgut four, the 
 vibration of which under strings produces a most 
 peculiar effect. 
 
I40' National Music of the World. 
 
 i 
 
 m 
 
 f^^ 
 
 W-W- 
 
 ^=1= 
 
 
 :it:i=i=^ 
 
 / 
 
 V%^=^% 
 
 & 
 
 -^ _n 
 
 -Mt- 
 
 :^ 
 
Music from the North. 
 
 141 
 
 =p=r 
 
 ^^^^^^ 
 
 :PL_^^^. 
 
 _i=_«ri«_ 
 
 / 
 
 ^+f-»- 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^S^^§3^^?i^^ 
 
 / 
 
 P%^^ -^( 
 
 mz=^:±^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ■«-*^« 
 
 ?»:r--?^ 
 
 g^::^^^^ ^ 
 
 */ 
 
 Sl^ 
 
 his 
 
 ^^ 
 
 S^ 
 
 i:^3s^^s?l^^^^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 S 
 
 :s±^=± 
 
 
 ^. -i:. 
 
 J ^- 
 
 g- 
 
142 National Music of the World. 
 
 ^^^^^ii^^l 
 
 / 
 
 "m^ 
 
 ^. 
 
 -^ — ' — ' — . 
 
 It is curious to observe the similarity of style 
 in decoration among the national players of every 
 country; How perpetually they attempt to disguise 
 imperfect execution by little conventional turns, 
 and trUls, and tricks, and by an odd employment 
 of the appoggiatura. The graces of the guitar 
 
Music from the North. 143 
 
 players of Spain, of the harpers of Ireland, of the 
 gipsy-folk from Bohemia, and of those who in the 
 far North set the young people dancing, bear a strange 
 family likeness one to the other. The same charac- 
 teristics are apparent in the Danish airs, combined 
 into a march by Mr. Arthur Sullivan, which were 
 played before a Danish lady, our Princess, on the 
 day when by storm — no, by charm — she entered our 
 city, and conquered London. 
 
 And next — since, in a subject so wide, grouping 
 becomes indispensable — let me call attention to the 
 fact that all mountain pastoral music has a cha- 
 racter of its own, as clearly defined as the Sicilian 
 style lately considered. In the herdsmen's songs of 
 Norway, in the foresters' tunes of the Tyrol, in 
 the melodies of Switzerland, the hill echo and the 
 simple mountain horn are to be heard without fail. 
 How charmingly these fall on the ear, need not 
 be told ; whether they be met in their primitive 
 simplicity in some delicious summer evening scene, 
 of pass or lake, or quaint wooden village, or in- 
 spiring some joUy German part-song, or when 
 wrought into such an exquisite tissue as Signor 
 Eossini's ' Guillaume Tell.' 
 
 These mountain tunes have been more largely 
 
144 National Music of the World. 
 
 used in what may be called civilised music than 
 any other wild vocal melodies : not merely from 
 their intrinsic freshness, but because they are 
 minutely susceptible of harmonic treatment. In 
 fact, among the Tyrolese especially, they largely 
 take the form of part-songs : the peasantry, without 
 having learned counterpoint, instinctively putting 
 together those few and simple chords which, though 
 sometimes incorrect, are always effective. The cha- 
 racter of this hill music is too marked, however, in 
 the recurrence of certain intervals — 
 
 i 
 
 22= 
 
 S 
 
 for it to bear any harmonic intricacy or torture. 
 
 Here is one which has been treated by Beethoven, 
 among his easy variations, for piano and violin, of 
 popular tunes. I fancy it little known. 
 
Mttsic from the North. 
 
 145 
 
 
 m 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^w 
 
 rp^F = » P-^ 
 
 =t=t 
 
 =tt 
 
 ^f^ 
 
 --ii^ 
 
 3=ti^±* 
 
 f 
 
 -w^— ■ 
 
 r^£=t 
 
 -t=t= 
 
 •^■P=^*: 
 
 ^s-n- 
 
 
 =F- ^ 
 
 <r. 
 
 / 
 
 ^=P= 
 
 ^S= 
 
 =^^^ 
 
 •^ 1! 
 
 :tit=^ 
 
 S^ 
 
 :_ ^ .^££ 
 
 4^1 
 
146 National Music of the World. 
 
 s% 
 
 ^^ n 
 
 L 
 
 ^^^m 
 
 ■^eb^-:e^. 
 
 
 =!et= 
 
 ^ 
 
 «:«: 
 
 -^ -^- 
 
 ^=^ 
 
 :a= 
 
 ^ 
 
 ::S=:q: 
 
 ^:&rt=zt4 
 
 ±::fc=t 
 
 s 
 
 p 
 
 ^35 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 35^^*^^^"**^ 
 
 0"^ 
 
 -4* 
 
 m ^-rn^-^m ^i 
 
 as 
 
 1 ^ — I — hj- 
 
 4— J — ^-^-*- 
 
 ?Sf^ 
 
 i^^^Jl^Z^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 3t;J:i^: 
 
 ' ■^ ' '^ ' # ^ 
 
 \ 
 
 m 
 
 ^i 
 
 m 
 
 - r n 
 
 ^^=e^ 
 
 p 
 
 t=t 
 
 fTf^ .:^^ ^ 
 
Music from the North. 
 
 147 
 
 The zWfier, something betwixt a dulcimer and 
 guitar, plays an animated part in the Tyrolese 
 music. The sounds whipped out of its metallic 
 chords are stinging and brilliant, and especially 
 in the open air, where all catgut strings lose re- 
 sonance, prove most effective as supporting the 
 voices. 
 
 The national music of Polcmd, matured into 
 complete art at a period far earlier than any cor- 
 responding transformation in Russia, would famish 
 full matter for a chapter by itself. 
 
 The organisation of the people^ — the same which 
 makes them so remarkable as linguists — more pic- 
 turesque, subtle, and flexible, perhaps, than genial, 
 singularly lent itself to the cultivation of music. 
 
 The courts of Poland were liberal and pompous 
 in its encouragement from an early period; the 
 nobles munificent in patronage; the Church, as 
 everywhere else, eager to appropriate its services. 
 
 I. 2 
 
148 National Music of the World. 
 
 The Pope of Eome was without his hymn till 
 the other day: the guardian saints, Casimir and 
 Adalbert, were centuries before him ; the former in 
 particular having been fitted with a tune by Dio- 
 medes the composer, a naturalised Venetian attached 
 to the court of Sigismund III., of which the regu- 
 larity and stateliness are remarkable, considering, 
 its date, 1607, 
 Maestoso. 
 
 w 
 
 fc£J3I?T?T^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 jTZZ 
 
 (2 -^- 
 
 -r:r 
 
 ^ 
 
 =P2= 
 
 ^ 
 
 i 
 
 g 
 
 r 
 
 -2^ -^ -^ 
 
 =2^=ci= 
 
 I I 
 
 E^ 
 
 
 =r 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 i^± 
 
 i<=^i 
 
 
 :2i: 
 
 ^ 
 
 321 
 
 ■^1 1— 
 
 
 "fzr. 
 
 I 
 
Music from the North. 
 
 149 
 
 decres. 
 
 i 
 
 #- 
 
 ^^. 
 
 3 
 
 ^ — ^- 
 
 W'^=s'ww^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 '^^^ 
 
 ff 
 
 ^^E3 
 
 2d=± 
 
 I I 
 
 2^=^= 
 
 ^- 
 
 ggj 
 
 ^=2^ 
 
 :^=^ 
 
 :^=^- 
 
 In 1647, when the king of Poland visited the 
 convent of our lady of Czenstochowa, and was 
 received with the thunder of cannon and of beUs, an 
 ancient Polish canticle was executed, the regularity 
 of which recalls the well-known hymn, ' Alia 
 Trinita.' 
 
150 National Music of the World. 
 
 M, Sowinski, to whose biographical dictionary, 
 ill-executed as it is, I am indebted for these details, 
 cites a Christmas Carol of still earlier date, which is 
 curious. If the Italians got their sacred cradle music 
 from the Sicilian pastoral, the Poles may have got 
 their naazurka measure from the old Christmas' 
 tune. 
 
 i 
 
 ■P^ 
 
 
 T^i^r 
 
 -^^- 
 
 1^3^: 
 
 a=a: 
 
 
 -^-w- 
 
 i 
 
 r-i 
 
Music from the North. 
 
 151 
 
 ^ 
 
 5^ 
 
 ^ J'^^^ 
 
 2±: 
 
 *=»t 
 
 ^ 
 
 £ig= 
 
 1 I 
 
 '-•^■s- 
 
 ix 
 
 w- 
 
 i 
 
 :^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 :i=pi 
 
 ^ 
 
 3 
 
 I 
 
 _i— « — * 
 
 n 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^p= 
 
 It will be seen that the measure is the one im- 
 proTed by Chopin, whose mazurkas made, as did 
 Mendelssohn's 'Songs without Words,' a new 
 appearance in music. 
 
 But I must remind the reader of my mistrust of 
 tradition : and aU the more here than in any other 
 section of my subject, because the Poles, as a nation, 
 are rather exacting in their demands on belief. 
 
 I heard some years ago, in Paris, one of the most 
 distinguished amateurs of their or of any other 
 country scold himself hoarse, in his resolution to 
 maintain that the greater number of the subjects in 
 Mozart's ' Don Giovanni ' were Polish melodies. 
 
1 5 2 National Music of the World. 
 
 The Poles liad every sort of instrument, and 
 great musical schools, less largely fed by assistance 
 from Italy than any contemporaries of which 
 traces are to be found. Of late, they have sent 
 out players on certain instruments, the violin 
 and pianoforte, to every corner of the earth : 
 such as Duranowski, who is said to have sug- 
 gested his effects to Paganini, and Lipinski, 
 just dead ; and not merely men of such high 
 standing, but a host of trained executants ready 
 for subordinate occupation. M. Sowinski, in his 
 book, mentions that so lately as 1833-34 there was 
 a large and rich military band at Bourges, in Prance, 
 entirely composed of exiled Poles. If they have been 
 less eminent as vocal writers and composers, the fault 
 may have lain in their language, which, with its 
 heaps of consonants — the letter s being especially 
 prominent— outvies in every line of their verse the 
 exceptional names satirically introduced by Milton 
 into his well-known ' Tetrachordon ' sonnet. 
 
 Then there is the National Music of Bohemia, 
 with a distinct character of its own, and an original 
 power which has engraven deep traces on the works 
 of what may be called cultivated artists. The extent 
 and reality of this have been overlooked, because the 
 
Music from the North. 153 
 
 district is one sparingly visited by tourists, tliough ifc 
 would well bear being ransacked. The farmers and 
 rural folk, who live about among the hills, we are 
 assured by those who know the recesses of the 
 country, have long had a heritage of musical capacity, 
 and for a century past, at least, considerable train- 
 ing among themselves and in their village schools ; 
 by which an average instrumental proficiency more 
 than respectable has been obtained. Trom serving 
 the purposes of village festivals, sacred and secular, 
 they were drawn gradually into the sphere of outward 
 notice by the resort to watering places, which during 
 the last century began to be an indulgence, and 
 has since grown into an epidemic. 
 
 These men have long largely furnished forth the 
 military bands and the dance orchestras of southern 
 Germany, on the strength of nothing more than 
 such teaching as has been described, during the 
 long winter evening hours to be beguiled in an in- 
 hospitable climate. I shall not engage the sympathy 
 of some of my readers, by saying that what may be 
 called the off-scourings of these districts find their 
 way largely into foreign countries, and into the 
 London streets. The best have risen ; some, of them- 
 selves, separating themselves from their old haunts 
 
154 National Music of the World. 
 
 and habits, while others have embellished the one and 
 turned the other to account. I may name as a type of 
 the latter class, Labitsiy : a man of humble origin, but 
 who rose to very great proficiency as an instrumental 
 player, and whose dance-music has a European 
 reputation beside that of Strauss and Lanner. I 
 am assured by those who should know, that the 
 themes of many of the waltzes so effectively arranged 
 and combined by him are national tunes. It is to be 
 observed that the harp plays an important part in 
 the Bohemian music touched on, one of Tubal Cain's 
 two primitive instruments, the organ, being the 
 other. 
 
 My attention was drawn to this subject by a most 
 interesting monograph, by Dr. Marnel, of Carlsbad, 
 published in a local journal of the place many years 
 ago : one of the many scattered productions which, 
 because of their form, are too apt to be overlooked 
 and forgotten ; the collection of which would be of 
 important value to the historian and philosopher 
 who studies music in connection with climates, 
 customs, and forms of society. 
 
 The South German waltz is one of the most 
 characteristic musical possessions of South Germany ; 
 perhaps the only one concerning which critics and 
 
Music from the North. 155 
 
 connoisseurs of all creeds, races, and dialects, are 
 agreed: in its slow and sentimental form tempting 
 every composer, be he ever so disdainful of trifling, and 
 in this guise displaying the most exquisite melodies of 
 a land not very rich in vocal melody ; in its own rapid 
 and practical existence calling out an amount of 
 ingenuity, air, grace, and variety, which entirely 
 conceal the narrowness of the limits within which 
 they move. In no desire to misrepresent a trifle as 
 a treasure, but in consistency with my former 
 speculations on dance music, do I call attention to 
 the Austrian waltzes, as to one of the most unique 
 sections of the world of music. The flowing melody 
 is rarely vulgar ; the tunes are many of them derived 
 from other than German sources — French, Italian, 
 Scotch, and what not. But they were so trans- 
 formed, so varied, by happy accidents and suspenses 
 of rhythm — by natural yet piquant successions of 
 key to key — in the hands of such men as those who 
 have been named, that they have gained a life, a 
 reality, a pertinence of their own, which no foreigner 
 can reach. The tunes worked on by Strauss were 
 other people's tunes, but he made them new, as gold 
 can be made new, whether it be worked into a 
 bar, or a trifle for a lady's chamber. 
 
156 National Music of the World. 
 
 I do not recollect one respectable Italian waltz. 
 The two which Signor Verdi has attempted in his 
 operas are the most paltry of the paltry ; and Signor 
 Rossini's ' Guillaume Tell/ which contains a capital 
 specimen of a waltz as sequel to a quick step, can- 
 not be considered as an Italian opera. There is 
 one excellent French specimen, by M. Gounod, but 
 this is in the ' Fair-scene ' from his ' Faust' — a proof 
 how admirably he has caught up the character 
 and colour of his subject; a tune for which I 
 would give libraries of ' concealed melody,' (we 
 have absohitely lived to hear of such a curiosity,) 
 and of the doleful settings of dreamy words 
 which have come to pass with our neighbours for 
 songs. But this is the only essay in the waltz style 
 by a Frenchman, which I remember as sufferable. 
 Adam, a composer who had a taste for colour; 
 Musard, who as managing a galoppe was as national 
 as Strauss, and as inimitable, could make nothing of 
 the rhythm. The South Germans are born waltzers, 
 and the Northerns, not unwilling, are bred ones. 
 
 Space permits me to go no further in the separate 
 specification of the threads (so to say), all of which, 
 however, lying apart as they do, and belonging to 
 widely different races, dialects, and sympathies-^are 
 
Music from the North. 157 
 
 still woven into the web of German, as distinguished 
 from Italian music. 
 
 Many German men of great name were cradled 
 among these primitive melodies. Every one among 
 them has been far more largely indebted to the popular 
 element than were the great men of Italy in iheiv 
 generation. Yet the music of German art, in which 
 science expressed the national spirit, had to endure a 
 hard birth-struggle ere it could be born and perfected. 
 So far beforehand was Italy in the secrets of knowledge 
 and form, so rich then in artists whom she could spare 
 to Germany, so widely have her fascinations always 
 pervaded Europe, that foreign influences and prepos- 
 sessions were in every Court and tinctured every 
 fountain of honour for many years. Some of the best 
 of the German men of genius Italianized them- 
 selves, such as Handel ; such as the Bohemian com- 
 poser, called in Italy II Boemo ; such as Hasse, from 
 Saxony, and others. 
 
 Precisely the converse of the course of art in 
 Italy has been that of German music. In the South, 
 noble and courtly patronage and parUcipation did 
 much — in the North, little ; because, although there 
 were such amateurs as a Great Frederick of 
 Prussia, and a Saxon Electress who composed operas. 
 
158 National Music of the World. 
 
 these, like other royalties, affected the foreign 
 style, and until a very recent period recognised no 
 other. True, they opened their courts to great 
 musicians, but those of home-growth often met with 
 strange entertainment — apart from the stipend, 
 which sometimes placed them in easy circumstances. 
 I need not recall the struggles of Mozart to get 
 something better than a lackey's pay and a lackey's 
 treatment out of the Prince Archbishop of Salzburg, 
 nor the total neglect which darkened Beethoven's 
 latter days in Vienna ; how Spohr, after he was a 
 European celebrity, when admitted to play at a 
 certain Court, had to work hard to get a thick carpet 
 taken up, which had been laid down expressly to 
 make the music of the household band as inoffensive 
 as possible, in order that the card-players, to whom 
 the music was an accompaniment, might not be dis- 
 turbed; how the pianoforte music of Weber (that 
 most national of German composers, as we shall pre- 
 sently see), was exhibited at the Court of Saxony to 
 the jingle of knives and forks, while the Court was at 
 dinner. The musician was decorated with orders 
 and endowed with maintenance ; but whereas in Italy 
 he was in some sort an equal, in Germany he was, 
 after all, but a vassal, and this till within a late period. 
 
Music from the North. 159 
 
 We have seen in Eussia how serfdom aided 
 music of combination in the church and in the palace. 
 Reasoning from analogy, I am compelled to admit 
 the fancy that this vassalage, or state of dependence, 
 may have had something to do in giving German 
 music one of its most distinctive features — ^that 
 orchestral perfection which depends alike on sym- 
 I)athy and on discipline. 
 
 It may not only have been such adaptability as 
 makes English sailors pre-eminent — such peculiarity 
 of organisation as makes Irish singers bad timists, 
 and French players so admirable in point of rhythm 
 and accent, to which these dispositions for executing 
 music of combination are to be ascribed; because, 
 though German speech pervades a wide country, it 
 is a country of many countries, peopled by many 
 races. I thus cannot dismiss the fancy, that to the 
 forms of a society in which despotism was not 
 unaccompanied by encouragement, may be partly 
 ascribed some of the forms of art, and partly the 
 habits of life among those who, whether Northern or 
 Southern, have too often fancied liberty to sanction 
 unpunctuality, and sentiment as modifying sense of 
 obligation. 
 
 But a germ of self-asserting nationality was in 
 
i6o National Music of the World. 
 
 the Germans, and there were simple and quiet 
 masters of their art who stayed at home while they 
 looked abroad, and matured their mighty inventions 
 in the strength of their own individuality — such as 
 Sebastian Bach, the greatest master of composition 
 for a peculiar instrument, and the greatest performer 
 on it whom the world has ever seen ; a man whose 
 invention was as untiring as his industry, but 
 whose share of melody was smaller than his experi- 
 mental ingenuity and science ; and whose works, 
 though a mass of solid and richly-finished treasure, 
 in one section of them unparagoned, and as fresh 
 to-day as on the day they were made, still indi- 
 cate the organisation of one slenderly alive to 
 vocal charm. 
 
 Almost contemporaneously with this manifesta- 
 tion of a peculiar bias towards instrumental com- 
 position in the North, that proclivity towards the 
 fantastic, the descriptive and the mystical, showed 
 itself, which has done so much to determine the 
 bent of national genius. Even Bach, the grave 
 fague-writer, could, in anticipation of Beethoven's 
 ' Adieu ' sonata, make up a fantasia on the events of 
 a journey, comprising the 'dissuasion of friends ' and 
 ' their representation of dangers to be expected,' the 
 traveller's firmness, and the like. 
 
Music from the North. i6i 
 
 An elder, a graver, and drier organist and com- 
 poser than Bacli, Buctehude of Lubect, had com- 
 posed a series of solemn pieces on the planets. All 
 these home tendencies, especially so soon as there he- 
 came any thought of marshalling them in antagonism 
 against foreign fantasies, told inevitably against that 
 ease, symmetry, and simplicity which are the life, 
 body, and soul of vocal writing. 
 
 Here, again, peculiarity of material must also be 
 taken iato account. It may be said, without any lack 
 of charity, that the German language, save it be 
 managed with no ordinary delicacy and precision, is 
 not euphonious when sung. The German women 
 have naturally beautiful voices of first-rate soprano 
 quality; the contralto voice is as generically inferior. 
 The tenors are high, throaty, and forcible ; the bass 
 voices deep, rich, and extensive. But no less cer- 
 tainly may it be averred, that the art of managing 
 the voice, so as to make it slug strenuously in 
 chorus, is misunderstood and undervalued among the 
 Germans. I remember the names of only three 
 soprani voices, largely indebted to northern training, 
 who have made an European reputation : Mara, 
 Sontag (who owed much to the influences of Madame 
 Todor and Madame Pasta), and lastly, - Madame 
 
 M 
 
i€2 National Music of the World. 
 
 Goldschmidt ; no tenor that could stand a moment's 
 competition with the Italians ; only one bass — I mean 
 Staudigl. 
 
 There is a phrase of tate current-^' nature 
 singing,' implying an insensibility, an inconsistency, 
 or an ignorance ; the negative weakness of which 
 ii(iust sap the foundations of a lovely branch of art. 
 There is a golden mean between soulless vocal dis- 
 play and the utter abnegation of accomplishment ; 
 but the national, northern-bred fancy for what is 
 vague, mysterious, and suggestive, has too often 
 invested those who affect the latter with some 
 sublimity. They wear an aureole glory of mystical 
 inspiration round their brow, which sets them apart 
 from the common frivolous folk whose art gives a 
 more artless pleasure. 
 
 I think some of the first distinct stirrings of 
 German individuality may be referred to Luther's 
 Psalm-Book. That genial man represented the 
 legend of Orpheus, in his own bold Christian fashion, 
 and besides assaulting the Evil One with his inkstand, 
 defied,instead of paralysing him, by songs. But though 
 'psalm-singing' was on high authority appointed to 
 be the pastime of the merry, sense, as well as spirit, 
 will and should have its part in every scheme of human 
 
Music from the North. 163 
 
 life. The poor scholars might 'sing chorals in the 
 streets at the doors of the merchants ; but the mer- 
 chants' sons wanted something more jolly to sing 
 over their pipes and their bottles of Ehine wine and 
 Lubeck beer. Before an Elector of Saxony rejoiced in 
 his Italian Opera company, brought from afar at a 
 vast expense ; and an Electress amused her amateur- 
 ship by composing a ' Talestri,' '* as a later Dresden 
 Princess did plays ; before a King of Prussia 
 could at once Frenchify his theatre and dragoon 
 it, as he dragooned his grenadiers, and indulge 
 his amateurship by composing marches and playing 
 three flute concertos every night ; the merchants and 
 tradesmen of Hamburgh had established an opera 
 for themselves, and set up a composer of their own. 
 
 When the guilds began to get together, and 
 the students to escape some very short steps from 
 beyond the pedantic thraldom of the old notions — 
 when the spirit of association began to possess itself 
 of the young men, whether for purposes of crafts- 
 manship or good-fellowship — then, gradually, a spirit 
 began to manifest itself in the North in the form of 
 the part-song for men. 
 
 "A 'serious drama ' thus entitled. — Ed. 
 u 2 
 
164 National Music of the World. 
 
 Then this male part-singing was somewhat urged 
 on the multitude by the position of the German 
 woman, which generally, during the days when 
 cultiTated music was taking its national form, was 
 not that of man's companion, so much as of his slave : 
 tenderly treated — honoured, it may be — but not 
 associated in all his pleasures, as woman in Italy 
 and in France and England had been from an earlier 
 period. After the period of the Minnesingers had 
 passed, and the relics of knighthood had been 
 destroyed or crumbled to dust of themselves, it was 
 long ere anything analogous to the dorma of Italy 
 or the lei esjprit of France could be found in the 
 literature and the intercourse of people who owned 
 the German tongue; especially in those middle- 
 classes who gave it its great composers, or whose 
 festivities unconsciously shaped a form of popular 
 music in accordance with their manners. The youth's 
 habit of wandering apprenticeship, unaccompanied, it 
 may be remarked, by much taste for manly exercise, 
 was followed up in married life by the man's habit 
 of enjoying his pleasures away from home. While 
 the willing wife remained beside the stove within 
 the small wholesome circle of household cares, and 
 in the less wholesome atmosphere of intercourse with 
 
Music from the North. 165 
 
 her gossips, the men clubbed together in a Salique 
 fashion, to sit, to drink, to sing. Hence the form of 
 the male part-song. It would be superfluous here to 
 recall how women have later struggled for their 
 rights in Germany, with an issue for good or for evil 
 insomuch as duty or feeling has got the upper 
 hand — or to speak of those magnificent occasional 
 amateur meetings in which the two halves of 
 creation unite to honour music in its grandest 
 vocal forms, which have flourished since a more equal 
 distribution of the lot has been admitted. 
 
 I arh merely outlining the causes which have given 
 certain forms to what may be called National Music. 
 These influences manifest themselves more largely 
 in the North than in the South of the land where 
 music was written to German words. Vienija was 
 one-third Bohemian, one-third Hungarian, one-third 
 Styrian, with a people more credulous, not less richly 
 endowed with imagination of its sensual sort, but 
 less thoughtful. Suabia and the Ehine-land pos- 
 sessed traditions of their own of Minnesingers and 
 minstrels, which disposed them to a certain tuneable 
 grace of their own, without yielding anything very 
 peculiar in quality. The indigenous tunes of these 
 charming districts are lively and good-humoured ; the 
 
1 66 National Music of the World. 
 
 words have a dash of romance in them, but they 
 are slight ; shall I say, somewhat sickly as^ compared 
 with the airs of sterner districts. 
 
 If the above affords anything like an outline of 
 the state of society throughout Germany, it may be 
 divined why the distinctive art-music of the land 
 should be cultivated among the masses, and those 
 representing our middle class, rather than be 
 genially encouraged by the grandees • and why 
 among native poets its highest manifestations should 
 rather be found among the wordless inspirations of 
 instrumental combination, than among vocal com- 
 positions. 
 
 Truth to say, the German secular part-songs for 
 men^whether they be trade songs or student 
 songs — are generally poor and inexpressive as com- 
 positions ; owing their effect to the excellent 
 discipline of the singers, and the heartiness with 
 which they are sung — the joviality of the words 
 here and there veined by some deeper meaning. 
 They are iri-esistible, when first heard, by reason of 
 their novelty : if heard at home, made all the more 
 irresistible by the boundless hospitality of the singers. 
 Those who surrender themselves to the humours of 
 the countries through which they pass, without 
 
Music from the North. 
 
 167 
 
 criticising habits which do not happen to be their 
 own, will derive impressions cordial, bright, and in 
 no common degree pleasurable, from music of the 
 class in question, heard in its own world, and judged 
 under its own conditions : this let me gratefully 
 say. When considered apart from such association, 
 the staileness, the common-place of the music, its 
 dilutions of the national tunes, which, as I have said, 
 possess no more striMng characteristics than liveli- 
 ness and geniality, forbid our assigning to it any 
 artistic value. Here, however, is one of the freshest 
 examples of the class. 
 
 The Ehein-Wein Lied. 
 Andante, qium Allegretto. Ribs' arrangement. 
 
1 68 National Music of the World. 
 
 But though the materials for national music in 
 Germany figure so incompletely in a sketch like 
 mine, it behoves me to instance those by whom the 
 wild spirit of old tunes has been comprehended, not 
 merely as animating them with a force unseen, but as 
 affording them direct types for their compositions. 
 Beethoven could be as wondrously Hungarian in his 
 ' Dance and Chorus ' from King Stephen, as he could 
 be Kussian in his jmal& to the A major sym- 
 phony, or Eastern in his dance of the Whirling 
 
Music front the North. 169 
 
 Dervishes. Schubert, again, if I mistake not, got 
 much inspiration from the world of the woods and of 
 the hills. Not only do his own lieder bespeak this, 
 but also (which is noticeable in reference to my 
 argument), his predilection for Sir Walter Scott's 
 lyrics. AU know his ' Ave Maria ' from ' The Lady 
 of the Lake ' : his ' Coronach ' from the same Scotch 
 romance, less familiar, is no less characteristic as a 
 wail for the dead in music. German as these songs 
 are, there is something English in his ' Hark, the 
 Lark ' from ' Cymbeline,' something North British 
 in his setting of those mournful lines : 
 
 He is gone to the mountain, 
 
 He is lost to the forest, 
 Like a summer-dried fountain, 
 
 When our need was the sorest. 
 
 When speaking of the National Music of 
 Germany and its influence, it would be impossible to 
 pass over the name of Weber, whom, I conceive, with 
 reference to my peculiar subject, to be the most 
 national composer of Germany. 
 
 Weber was essentially a wild composer : a man 
 who, with all his geiiius and technical power as a 
 pianist, was still imperfectly versed in the rules of 
 his art and in the precepts of its science. He was 
 fanciful and fantastic, as no composer before or since 
 
1 70 National Music of the World. 
 
 himself has been ; and, by his use of the simplest 
 material, disguised in some degree his want of 
 constructive power, and the shortness of his breath, 
 when a melody was to be made. He had been 
 imperfectly taught ; he had lived an unsettled life ; 
 a life of vicissitude and adventure. Bom in Holstein, 
 inefficiently trained, so far as the art and science 
 of music go, he had fancied more than once that he 
 could make out his career without reference to music'. 
 He had addicted himself in his early time to the 
 practice and improvement of lithography, which in 
 those days was a new discovery ; and this failing to 
 satisfy his ambition, he fell back on his first in- 
 spiration, that of music, with an instinct which did 
 not deceive its owner. ~ 
 
 He was a skilled and brilliant pianoforte player 
 who knew his instrument, though compelled to show 
 his knowledge thereof — let this not be forgotten — as 
 a court servant, while the Court of Saxony was at 
 dinner. He had a singular ability in inviting 
 attention by writing overtures of a promise as 
 regards the play, to which it is impossible to avoid 
 surrendering one's self. There are no such six 
 specimens so entirely different in character by 
 the same hand, as those by him to 'Der Frei- 
 
Music from the North. 171 
 
 schiitz,' ' Preciosa,' ' Euryanthe,' ' Oberon,' the 
 ' Jubilee Overture,' and that to ' The Euler of the 
 Spirits : ' the last I think incomparable for the 
 fire with which it moves, for the majesty with 
 which it closes. There is another overture by 
 Weber with which I am unacquainted : I mean the 
 one to Schiller's arrangement of Carlo Gozzi's 
 extravagant faney-piece, * Turandot.' The subject of 
 this is Chinese, and it is here merely adverted to as 
 an illustration of the preferences of its writer for 
 that which was sharp, peculiar in its colour, — pre- 
 ferences which entitle him to be considered as first 
 among what may be called national composers, or 
 those who have produced characteristic music as- 
 sociated with many far distant periods, characters, 
 and countries. 
 
 But Weber demands a separate and supreme 
 place among the national composers of Germany, 
 not because he gave out the scene in the ' Wolf's glen ' 
 and the Hunters' Chorus, and the demoniac glee of 
 Caspar — music which drove Europe wild when it 
 broke out, and to which it may be said the world 
 owes an intolerable list of second-hand goblin and 
 fairy operas, devoid alike of either terror or 
 enchantment— but from the part-songs produced by 
 
172 National Music of the World. 
 
 him in association with the soldier-poet of ' Lyre and 
 Sword,' Theodor Korner. 
 
 I hare no need to dwell on the heroic story of this 
 noble young man, I have no need to recall how, 
 for the service of what he deemed to be the 
 great and good cause of his country, he broke 
 away from the pleasure and" promise of a literary 
 career which was opening for him with every 
 prospect of success and glory, and embraced the life 
 of a soldier — nor how, before he feU in battle, he had 
 reconciled, so to say, his old with his new calling, 
 by producing that spirited set of songs which will 
 last as long as German poetry shall last. 
 
 By a happy accident, Korner's lyrics found a kin- 
 dred spirit in Weber. In those set by him, the union 
 of words and music amounts to inspiration. The best 
 of the kind I know belonging to other countries — 
 not forgetting the ' Marseillaise,' not forgetting our 
 own military songs, to which I may hereafter advert, 
 not forgetting the feeble yet flaring Garibaldi hymn, 
 once so terrible to Austrian ears — are comparatively 
 false, characterless, and spiritless, when matched 
 with these. 
 
 There is the blood of a true heart in them, the 
 fire of a righteous courage, the song of poetry in the 
 
Music from the North. 173 
 
 prime of its vigour. The melodies are bold, new, and 
 warlike, of a peculiarity which 1 find in those of no 
 other German part-songs ; and I conceive it im- 
 possible for any one to be ever so inured to 
 excitement, ever so remote from those sympathies 
 which breathe and burn throughout partisan nation- 
 ality, to listen to these without such emotion as 
 perhaps can be awakened neither by nature alone 
 nor by art alone, but by the intimate union of the 
 two, formed accidentally in some momentous junc- 
 ture, thenceforth perfect and indissoluble. 
 
1 74 National Music of the World. 
 
 MUSIC FROM THE WEST. 
 
 If I have less novelty to offer in l;his my last 
 essay, than in any former one, an obvious reason may 
 be given. We are at home. I shall be of necessity also 
 more fragmentary than heretofore, because I cannot 
 conceive that the connection of link with link, of 
 cause with effect, as regards manners, art, society, 
 can require so much explanation here, as in the case 
 of other lands. And yet there may be things in our 
 own streets and at our own doors, as well as in our 
 outlying districts, which are for these very reasons 
 of familiarity overlooked. 
 
 And possibly these things may be discussed 
 without my becoming polemical. It is to be noted, 
 however, as a characteristic, that when we touch upon 
 this country of ours — to wit, Great Britain, including 
 the Principality, North Britain, and Ireland — we 
 enter a region of anything rather than brotherly love 
 or concord, as regards music; a region of hot con- 
 
Music from the West. 175 
 
 trorersy over our rich treasures of national 
 melody ; treasures more vast and peculiar, considering 
 the area within which they are found, than dis- 
 tinguish any of the districts glanced at in my former 
 sketches. 
 
 The amount of research brought to bear on the 
 matter during late years is remarkable. I am not 
 aware that the same pains has been taken with the 
 national music of any other country. I may mention 
 the collections of Mr. Bunting for Ireland, of Mr. 
 Jones for Wales, certain Edinburgh publications, 
 that of the contested Skene manuscript among the 
 number, and the elaborate and earnest work of Mr. 
 William ChappeU on English music — an instance of 
 twenty years' labour employed to remodel and enrich 
 a former treatise, most honourable to the industry 
 and enthusiasm of its writer — as works offering stores 
 of anecdote, of special pleading, of challenges for 
 comparison, which tend to perplex the inquirer by 
 their number and their contradictory evidence. But 
 I go back to my starting point : in all these cases 
 there is something besides and beyond testimony, 
 whether it be the testimony of manuscript or the 
 assertion of tradition. What I remarked on the 
 ' Marseillaise ' may be applicable in this case also. 
 
176 National Music of the World. 
 
 There are family-likenesses, peculiarities of race and 
 of physiognomy, wMcli appeal to us with a force 
 such as no circumstantial fending or proving can 
 overthrow. 
 
 In my first essay I spoke of the untruthfulness of 
 Memory. I might now call attention to the insidious 
 pertinence of her suggestions, most especially in 
 this matter of music. In districts lying so closely 
 near one to the other as ours, it would not be 
 easy to separate what may have been brought by 
 pedlar, by stroller, by noble's retainer, from what 
 has grown out of the soil, save on some principle 
 of resemblance derived from observation and com- 
 parison. 
 
 In our home-world of national music I must give 
 the first place to tunes the best known— the tunes of 
 Wales. I find in them a remarkable grandeur and 
 pathos, and combined with these a regularity of 
 structure and of intervals, which set them apart from 
 every other group of national melodies with which I 
 am acquainted. It seems to me that no tunes have 
 been so little tinctured by strange influences. 
 
 The solitary condition which the Welsh have 
 preferred— their highprideof ancestry— their resolu- 
 tion to protract the existence of a separate language 
 
Music from the West. 177 
 
 — their defensive habits in point of litigation — the 
 somewhat remote beauty of their district, which has 
 features and attractions of its own — these things 
 have all conspired to retain in the music of the Prin- 
 cipality a certain primitive character. I think that 
 while Irishmen and Scotchmen have been fighting 
 for certain airs, and while, of late, Englishmen have 
 been rushing in to get as much credit for England 
 out of Ireland and Scotland as there was any chance 
 of getting, no one has laid hands on the tunes of 
 Wales ; no one has said, in regard to any particular 
 melody, ' This is a tune which may have got into 
 •^our country, but which is our tune.' 
 
 The symmetry of the Welsh tunes distinguishes 
 them from those of Scotland and Ireland. In the 
 latter there is a perversity of interval and of modula- 
 tion, which may be partly ascribed to imperfect tran- 
 scription, but not altogether. In the Welsh tunes I 
 cannot recall a single irregular sequence, or a single 
 rhythm awry. In many of them there is to be 
 remarked the old mechanical progression, 'Alia 
 Eosalia,' which it seems especially the province of 
 the harp to encourage ; in others, as in ' The Rising 
 of the Lark,' there are phrases of six against eight 
 bars ; but withal, and bearing as they do an unmis- 
 
 N 
 
178 National Music of the World. 
 
 takable family likeness one to the other, they have 
 a certain stately evenness, without insipidity, which 
 gives great pleasure. 
 
 The instrument of Wales, the harp, has lent, 
 itself largely to this symmetrical formation, because 
 it is not an incomplete instrument. With its 
 three rows of strings — the third, so far as I un- 
 derstand, anticipating the pedals of the modern 
 harp, by which accidental flats and sharps are 
 now procured — there is little temptation for those 
 caprices of interval which have been generated by 
 instruments with a drone, such as the bagpipe, or 
 by stringed ones less elaborate in facture. 
 
 The charm of the harp is not merely such as 
 belongs to the intimate correspondence betwixt master 
 and servant which it seems to encourage, but in its 
 own peculiar tones. It has, I think, been too much 
 undervalued in our day, because of its limited powers 
 in modulation. The harp, however, continues to be 
 one of the primitive sources of melody, not merely 
 because of its peculiar tone, but because of its sim- 
 plicity of scale. The following is not one of the 
 more rare tunes, but not therefore the less beautiful. 
 
Music from the West. 
 
 179 
 
 
 ZS'T 
 
 F. 
 
 ^ 
 
 :f=F=t 
 
 — I- 
 
 ?= 
 
 ^ 
 
 :jE^jggg|^ig« 
 
 rr 
 
 ^^ 
 
 1=^- 
 
 :^= 
 
 fi-fcS 
 
 s 
 
 ^ 
 
 :i=l= 
 
 ! - J ' — !- 
 
 fei^*^i^3^^iaa 
 
 lin^^^i 
 
 I 
 
 ^"r 
 
 ^ — ^1 
 
 ^3= 
 
 s^z 
 
 
 t^Efe 
 
 ■^ 
 
 16 I 
 
 I 
 
 ^Sij^^i^ 
 
 
 I 
 
 m 
 
 j- 
 
 ^--f^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
 g^ 
 
 Ii2 
 
1 80 National Music of the World. 
 
 But if the harp tunes of Wales are what may be 
 called players' tunes — melodies, that is, referable 
 to the cultivation of a peculiar instrument, with a 
 scale and a behaviour and conditions of its own — the 
 Principality has its singers' tunes likewise, and those 
 of great vocal purity and clearness. 
 
 Here is a thoroughly attractive melody, which 
 does not bear a trace of age or singularity : — 
 
 i^ 
 
 R 1 I I i> I I 
 
 S 
 
 r r 
 
 ) 
 
 Plaintive. 
 
 m 
 
 izi: 
 
 :J= 
 
 fr-fi- 
 
 W^ 
 
 =P2= 
 
 =?== 
 
 -F— P- 
 
 »! r'^:^ 
 
 
 I 
 
 ^S-h 
 
 W^- 
 
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Music from the West. 
 
 i8i 
 
 =Hr 
 
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 S=* 
 
 P 
 
 J—L-UU 
 
 5=2= 
 
 l^fc^ 
 
 
 iSfc 
 
 :pip2= 
 
 =P=ff-.f*Tl»J-|«5 
 
 t?r 
 
 i l l! 
 
 I I ' I 
 
 /, 
 
 :^1 
 
 -P^— I — I — I— 
 
 w rp~^^ 
 
 :t=t 
 
 : — =1-r 
 
 fe=^ 
 
 s?aE 
 
 s 
 
 ^^s 
 
 -P-!=!^ 
 
 =^: 
 
 fT 
 
 t 
 
 I I 
 
 --p--^- 
 
 :^- 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^fe= 
 
 ^^ 
 
 
 A remarkable collection was made some years 
 ago, by an accomplished lady belonging to the Neath 
 Valley — Miss Maria Jane Williams, of Aberpergwm, 
 whom I may farther mention as having been one of the 
 most exquisite amatetir singers of any country, aware 
 of her own powers — within her own world, perfect. 
 Being a thoroagh musician, and as tenaciously imbued 
 
1 82 National Music of the World. 
 
 with home love as a woman, and a Welshwoman, 
 can be, her notation of the tunes which were pub- 
 lished by her, I think, may be relied on. 
 
 One of these melodies, ' The Blackbird,' reputed 
 to be of great age, will remind the hearer of some 
 half-dozen well-known tunes: of the English one, 
 ' Pretty Polly Oliver,' with its namby-pamby verses, 
 ' Pair Hebe I left with a cautious design ; ' of the 
 Irish ' Last Rose of Summer,' distilled by^ Moore 
 out of ' The Groves of Blarney.' 
 
 I have purposely chosen this specimen, which has 
 hitherto not found its way into collections, as one of 
 the many examples of coincidence and comparison 
 which entirely baffle the dogmatist who pretends to 
 decide on national melody. There are certainly 
 few other Welsh tunes which bear resemblance to 
 ' The Blackbird.' It is remarkable for its three-bar 
 phrases: — 
 
 Moderato. 
 
Music from the West. 
 
 ^83 
 
 :^^i^^^^ 
 W^^^ 
 
 'W 
 
 -^^^M 
 
 ^m 
 
 rrr^ 
 
 -M-PS^: 
 
 :S:s^ 
 
 - ^^- 
 
 ^^-^ 
 
 -g-Jj-Jv 
 
 r-rr^r-rf-^i^ 
 
 I I 
 
 dE^fed 
 
 fcgai 
 
 ^=^ 
 
 3=^ 
 
 z^ 
 
 m 
 
 ' r 
 
 It may be observed that, though the Welsh will 
 dance twelve hours at a Christmas frolic to the tune 
 of 'Sweet Eichard' (I speak from experience and 
 without exaggeration), the country has no dance of 
 its own ; such as the ' Irish Jig' (performed on the 
 door taken from its hinges), such as the Scotch 
 Reel, sjich as the English Hornpipe. 
 
1 84 National Music of the World. 
 
 That a great composer could turn Welsh tunes 
 to good account, is proved in Handel's English ' Aeis 
 and Galatea ' (there was also an Italian version of 
 the storj by him), and in his 'Deborah.' The 
 choruses ' Happy we ' and ' Baal ' are cleairly 
 referable to the tune called in Wales ' The Rising 
 Sun,' ia which, as in the other tune, ' Of a noble 
 race was Shenkin,' the naked figure of bass accom- 
 paniment, or call it a ground bass, stands out. 
 
 With this melody Handel may have made 
 acquaintance, owing to his intimacy with the Gran- 
 ville family. But it is remarkable that so few have 
 got beyond the boundaries of this country, as ' Auld 
 lang syne ' and ' The Last Eose of Summer ' have 
 done from Scotland and Ireland. And yet Mr. 
 Thomson of Edinburgh, a man who seems to have 
 been far in advance of his time, committed a large col- 
 lection of the best known airs to Haydn for arrange- 
 ment, and the same were published with words by 
 song-writers no less eminent than Burns, Campbell, 
 Scott, Joanna Baillie, Professor Smyth of Cambridge, 
 Mrs. John Hunter, Mrs. Opie, Mrs. Grant. Trora 
 the masterly neatness with which the writer of the 
 * Canzonets ' handled these old melodies, it may be 
 inferred that he was fully aware of their musical 
 
Music from the West. 185 
 
 adaptability ; yet still they are unknown abroad. 
 No Boieldieu, or Niedermeyer, or Flotow has thought 
 it worth while to eke out his own tenuity of inven- 
 tion, or to give a morsel of local colour, by consulting 
 so remarkable a treasury of national melodies. 
 
 There is a modern French opera, ' Nabab,' the 
 same which assisted to bring forward the exquisitely 
 finished accomplishments of Madame Miolan Car- 
 valho, the scene of which is partly laid in Wales. 
 Here, what is called ' the local colour ' resolved itself 
 into a snuff manufactory, with a vine above the door, 
 and a young lady in a tartcm scarf, who sung as 
 a bravura in praise of tobacco, no sweet Welsh 
 melody, but a sharply-cut Parisian tune. I do not 
 remember a single Welsh air on the English stage 
 during the last five and twenty years, save the one 
 introduced by Mr. Charles Mathews into one of the 
 Olympic dramas. 
 
 One cause of such oversight may be found in 
 the persevering (why not say, obstinate ? ) insulation 
 within which our neighbour-subjects, by way of 
 asserting pedigree, have coffered up, and clamped 
 and chained their nationality. Surely, in these 
 days, when intercourse must be rapid, when the 
 world can be for no one's pleasure or pride 
 
1 86 National Music of the World. 
 
 parcelled out into separate parislies, each, of which 
 is resolute to take the law of the others, the pro- 
 ceedings of Welsh patrons of art are subject to 
 the inquiry — how far it is self-importantly made a toy? 
 — how far they are willing to fall into the great stream 
 of time which will bear onward ourselves, our pomps 
 and vanities, and our works — good only as they in- 
 struct and fertilise those who are to come after us ? 
 
 Gdwer, Chaucer's predecessor, a Welshman, our 
 first poet, wrote in English. If his countrymen do 
 not discard him as an apostate, is there not here 
 pedigree, precedent, example to every real lover of 
 national Welsh art ? 
 
 And now, to cross the Channel : and on arriving 
 in the world of Irish music, we find ourselves in a 
 wild world in every sense of the word. The anti- • 
 quaries, the claimants — authorities who profess to 
 understand Phoenician, or to date their ancestry from 
 Spain, so beset the inquirer after nationality, that 
 he has to keep a calm head, and a keen pair of eyes 
 in the same, if he looks into the matter. 
 
 A wild world, I repeat, but one as lovely as wild ; 
 full of every gracious natural product— a world 
 which knew the fairy charms of harp and pipe and 
 symphony from an early period — a world full of 
 
Music from the West. 187 
 
 tune, full of genius, full of capacity ; less full, we 
 critical English may say, of the cementing common 
 sense which brings all these charming elements 
 together in music. 
 
 I cannot pretend to form a guess whether the 
 practice and proficiency of the harp, one of the two 
 oldest instruments, dates back to an elder period 
 in Ireland or in Wales. Mr. Bunting, who gathered 
 many facts concerning it from the real old harpers, 
 surviving at the close of the last century, assures us 
 that so early as the fourteenth century the instru- 
 ment had thirty strings, in compass ranging betwixt 
 C and D in alt. This is the date given to the richly 
 ornamented instrument preserved in Trinity College, 
 Dublin, played on by O'Neill through the streets of 
 Limerick in 1760. Mr. Bunting names five different 
 species of harps — the common harp, the high-headed 
 harp, the down-bending harp, a portable harp used 
 in ecclesiastical ceremonies, and the harp of Craffcin. 
 (I think this may have been Crofton, renowned in 
 Irish legends.) This Irish harp had its imperfections 
 and inconsistencies ; no string for F sharp between 
 E and' G in the bass ; only two of the major keys 
 perfect in their diatonic intervals. It was tuned, too, 
 in an odd old traditional way. Here is what would 
 
1 88 National Music of the World. 
 
 be called in these days a study or a prelude, called 
 ' Try if it is in tune.' 
 
 Quick and Spirited. 
 
 Xif^=i^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 W^z 
 
 9 
 
 f 
 
 IP 
 
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 ti^^= 
 
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Music from the West. 
 
 189 
 
 ^^^^^ 
 
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 ^^r^i' 
 
 / > > 
 
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 Ei^ 
 
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 =P5S 
 
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 ^ ^ J J — 
 
 SUii^ 
 
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 ^ 
 
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 r^rr-mr. 
 
 W- 
 
 S 
 
 -F ^^1— fcfe-3 P: 
 
 f 
 
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 r r 
 
 
 
 
 p^ 
 
 
 
 f^-#— r — r r' «■• — ^?~ 
 
 =^- 
 
 r* 
 
 ( 
 
 !^^^=^=ti^=f=~^ 
 
 * 
 
 
 This at once suggests the seeming caprice, the 
 real deficiency of certain intervals, which mark a large 
 
1 90 National Music of the World. 
 
 section of the tunes of Ireland, probably the most 
 ancient ones ; such as the following, which professes 
 to be a ' Lamentation.' The large share, by the way, 
 which popular, not Church, music has taken and 
 ■takes in mourning for the dead in Ireland, is a 
 characteristic not to be overlooked. 
 
 i 
 
 E3: 
 
 Ps: 
 
 g^^=^ 
 
 5^S 
 
 at:i; 
 
 r^=^^?=^- 
 
 ^^g^ 
 
 f<=2:^i^=K 
 
 fc^ 
 
 
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 tr 
 
 ^:=S J rt!- h ^ 
 
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Music from the West. 
 
 191 
 
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 22 ; \rj • J rr-' ' 
 
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 This form of tunes then grew out of instrumental 
 inequality. How curiously contrasted with the tunes 
 of the East, which are only regular when instru- 
 mental! On the other hand, a vocabulary, an 
 ordinance of these, must have existed in the country 
 from a very remote period. The Irish, as well as the 
 Welsh, have a dictionary of musical terms of their 
 own. In this vdll be found such entries as these : 
 ' Lulling Music,' ' Music of cool, shade,' Wilderness,' 
 'Watery Plain,' 'Lake Music,' 'Musical Fear,' 
 ' Flowing tide strain,' ' High wailing strain,' 
 (Lamentation again). There are half a hundred 
 definitions as picturesque and fantastic as the above. 
 There is little or nothing equivalent that I know of 
 in any other language, save perhaps the phrases 
 
192 National Music of the World. 
 
 which regulate the proceedings of those who contrive 
 such mysterious matters as the music and the doings 
 of our Christmas pantomimes, because among these 
 occur such directions as 'Hurry,' 'Lively Trips,' 
 and others. 
 
 If something such as has been described was 
 the ancient harp — if such may have been the 
 traditions by which it was ruled — ^what were the 
 harpers ? A great number of them were blind men : 
 the harp has always been an instrument dear to the 
 blind, because there is an intimacy in its strings to 
 the player, and it is one among the thousand 
 admirable compensations in this unequal world of 
 ours, that the blind seem to be born musicians. And 
 many of these Irish harpers. Bunting tells us, were 
 poor relations belonging to good families, who had 
 to make out their livelihoods in a fashion more 
 independent than was the life of the ' Led Captain,' 
 who sat at the foot of the squire's table to laugh at 
 the squire's jokes, to carve the squire's haunch, and 
 to live by the squire's bounty. These Irish harpers 
 could give an equivalent for shelter, food, and 
 countenance. They could give a grace to the 
 festivities of rough queer carousal by their music. 
 They were in request everywhere, more than I 
 
Music from, the West. 193 
 
 conceive the more complete Welsh harpers to have 
 been. 
 
 One crossed into Scotland, a certain Eory Dall, 
 in regard to whose country Hibernian and Scot have 
 fought fiercely: and about whom there is some 
 terrible controversial tradition that he may have 
 played the harp to the lady of many legends, Mary 
 of Scotland ; as if she had not among her foreign 
 retainers imported an Italian harper called Eizzio. 
 Eory Dall is said to have left his harp and its tun- 
 ing key in Scotland. Echlin Kane was another of 
 these men, a blind Irish harper that wandered over 
 the world, got so far as France, Spain, and Italy, was 
 patronised by the Pretender, and complimented by 
 Lord Macdonald of Skye, by a present of Eory Ball's 
 silver tuning key; but who was such a riotous 
 personage when in Lord Macdonald's house (the 
 blind are often doubly riotous because of the loss of 
 their eyes), ' that the Highland Jacobite gentry found 
 it occasionally necessa/ry to repress his turbulence by 
 cutting his nails, and so rendering him unable to play 
 till they grew again to their proper length.' 
 
 I said that the Irish had from an early period 
 ' harp, and pipe, and symphony.' Their pipe was the 
 bagpipe again, the same pipe as belongs to Calabria, 
 
 
 
194 National Music of the World. 
 
 to the Basque provinces of France, and to Scotland ; 
 a sort of ubiquitous musical creature. But the bag- 
 pipe was the military instrument in Ireland. 
 Whereas the Welsh marches — viAe the 'March of 
 the Men of Harlech' — are harp tunes in grand 
 common time, there is a sort of queer, odd, Eapparee 
 humour in the Irish pipe marches. The following, 
 reported to be very ancient, in | time, bears as a 
 tune a close resemblance to the impassioned jig 
 danced by a wild bare-legged pair, on the cabin door 
 tak'en off its hinges, of which mention is to be found 
 in the tales of Miss Edgeworth, Lady Morgan, and 
 Griffin. 
 
 With energy and spirit, 
 
 ::t 
 
 ft 
 
 ERfeJjf^fc^ ^ 
 
 gffi 
 
 ft: 
 
 r 
 
 i 
 
 i=^ 
 
 tf—f^ 
 
 ^^ 
 
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 JiLfc 
 
 -m W~m" 
 
 M 
 
 p:=P 
 
Music from the West. 
 
 195 
 
 \^:m^^^^9^A 
 
 t 
 
 W^^lj-L 
 
 yrn. g» 
 
 Wlf "^ I * - 
 
 m 
 
 -ra — 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 H..^J )- 
 
 ^ 
 
 -t3 F— 
 
 i^ 
 
 
 ■^ f f 
 
 fcfc^5=;:n^^i^^&i^:.^=^iU 
 
 lE^ 
 
 atp: =i=i^=^E=i«: 
 
 S 
 
 rr 
 
 F-T"!*' 
 
 ^ 
 
 — ( F- ^ — «-■ F 1 b> ^ 
 
 f» rc ft £^ 
 
 -ti»-r 
 
 o 2 
 
196 AT.ational Music of the World. 
 
 
 s 
 
 ^ ii^^^ pggrpg^ pggp^Ff^ 
 
 t=± 
 
 ^£ 
 
 I 
 
 
 er^:f^ff-^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ls< 
 
 Tt=|- 
 
 £^£ 
 
 5 
 
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 fe 
 
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 ^nd 
 
 Si 
 
 =!t:^ 
 
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Music from the West 
 
 197 
 
 -P¥^. 
 
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 ^ggs^^pgg^ 
 
 I 
 
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 1^1, 
 
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 ^J«. 
 
 fp 
 
 Ull. 
 
 d= 
 
 Very soft. 
 
 m 
 
 E^^^US^^J^^ 
 
 I cannot fancy a more efficient engine of torment 
 to one's foes than this tune. 
 
 But besides these incoherent and ranting mea- 
 sures, ascribable to a strange harp and to vulgar 
 pipers, Irish music contains many delicious tunes, 
 attractive because of their regularity, delicately 
 tender, and rarely sweet : many of these are in old 
 rhythms. There is the melody, ' At the mid-hour of 
 night ' — to recall Moore's words — which consists of 
 five lines of five-bar phrases, the same containing one 
 five-bar phrase three times repeated, another twice 
 repeated. There is a tune called 'John, heir of the 
 
198 National Music of the World. 
 
 glen ; ' there is ' The pretty girl milking her cow,' 
 — both in triple rhythm. But the following, from 
 Mr. Bunting's collection, has not, I think, been set 
 to words. At all events, it is very charming. 
 
 i 
 
 
 ^^ 
 
 d=;H«P^ 
 
 i^^^^P 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 5,3^,^5=^^ 
 
 f=^ 
 
 j_j^ 
 
 f=r 
 
 r 
 
 fl J 
 
 m 
 
 ^.^ 
 
 ■^k 
 _i^> 
 
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 :t=t 
 
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 j^_ -{!^-j^. 
 
 m 
 
 p^^p^ 
 
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Music from the West. 
 
 199 
 
 ^^^^m 
 
 St**:«!i:[ 
 
 T^^=m. 
 
 
 fl. 
 
 
 3.^£g:.5:^ 
 
 Certain melodies are more regular still; and 
 among these, one on the simple notes of the scale, 
 than which no tune has been more fiercely fought 
 for by Scot and Hibernian. I mean ' Robin Adair,' 
 — the tune which Catalani varied — which Boieldieu 
 
200 National Music of the World. 
 
 introduced into his 'Les deux nuits' — to which 
 Moore bent himself to write a national and patriotic 
 melody — and which Burns fitted with some of his 
 smoothest words : 
 
 Had I a cave on some far-distant shore. 
 
 There is no need to present it, with its extreme 
 simplicity of intervals in a strain thrice repeated, and 
 with the episode which breaks this. I mention it 
 with another purpose, because, strange to say, 
 neither Moore (who failed in 'The Exile of Erin,' 
 after Campbell had written it), nor Burns — neither 
 Hibernian bard nor Scottish ploughman treated th6 
 simple tune so well in song as did an English Peer, 
 Lord Thurlow, — the Lord Thurlow oyer whose 
 Tolume of verse Moore himself and Byron are said 
 to have sat up at midnight, screaming with ridicule. 
 Be the rest of his volume ever so good, ever so bad, 
 there are few things in English better for music 
 than the two opening verses. And since mention 
 of words for music has been made, I cannot leave the 
 subject of Irish melody without calling attention to 
 the wonderful verbal productions which have been 
 written to some of the original melodies of Ireland. 
 All our world over, popular minstrels have somehow 
 harboured a distracted idea that they were becoming 
 
Music from the West. 201 
 
 courtly and poetical if they had to do with Hector 
 and Andromache. Burns was not exempt from this 
 tawdry taste : as when writing : — 
 
 O saw ye bonnie Lesley, 
 
 As she gaed o'er the border, 
 She's gone like Alexomder, 
 
 To spread her oonquestB further. 
 
 But the Hibernian rhymesters, besides being 
 magnificent, have been in so small degree confused ; 
 and have heaped together verbs, images, metaphors, 
 great names of antiquity, with a hardihood such as 
 I think has no parallel. 
 
 One of the most dismal Irish tunes in my 
 
 acquaintance — one of the few really dismal Irish 
 
 tunes that I know — ^is called the ' Dear Irish maid.' 
 
 I think the tune to be nearly as dismal as our own 
 
 English Christmas Carol, the burden of which is 
 
 tidings of 
 
 practical comfort and joy. 
 
 The native words, as sung at Cork, to this tune, 
 
 form a long ballad, describing a walk ' At the hour 
 
 of prime, when Morpheus was parting,' taken by a 
 
 minstrel in a ' vernal valley,' wherein he observes 
 
 the charming heroine, whose perfections, and the 
 
 course of his respectful wooing, he proceeds to 
 
 chronicle. I cannot resist citing a couple of verses. 
 
202 National Music of the World. 
 
 The gentleman having observed the lady, aftervyards 
 approaches her : 
 
 I guessed her not Venus, Minerva, or Helen, 
 
 Oalypso, Euoarius," or fair Eurydice. 
 Her dress appeared rural, as there she sat viewing 
 
 A meand'ring brook that most rapidly glides. 
 My spirits recruiting, I approached with confusion. 
 
 And gently saluted this seraphic fair. 
 She said, ' Sir, pass by me, and don't tantalise me, 
 
 For by love I'm destined to repine in these shades.' 
 
 He goes on, not rebuflFed : 
 
 Are you Sylvia or Pandora, sage Pallas or Flora, 
 Hibemia or Scotia ; or what is your name ? 
 
 Or are you famed Juno, or bright shining Luna, 
 Or are you a human of Adam's great race ? ' 
 
 To whom the lady, as follows : — 
 
 With mild condescension, and smiles on each feature. 
 
 She said, ' Sir, Je seated m these loneVy green homers. 
 As I omTW deity, but a plain country maiden 
 
 That sallied forth early to gather some flowers ; 
 These copious plantations and bounties of Ceres 
 
 Have so pre-engaged me at this hour of day. 
 That I roved out more careless, led on by Bame Nature, 
 
 So excuse the frailties of a dear Irish maid.' 
 
 The rhyme and the reason of this lyric (there are 
 three verses of it) are noteworthy, as illustrating the 
 characteristic national confusion which has had 
 much to do with national music. 
 
 The fact of a people so overflowing with fan and 
 humour and repartee being dead to the absurdity of 
 such bothered Arcadian minstrelsy as the above, 
 " /Sic— Ed. 
 
Music from the West. 
 
 strikes me with surprise as often as I advert to it. 
 I know of nothing so flagrant in thfe popular ballads 
 of England, Scotland, or Wales — nor even among 
 the Negro melodies. 
 
 There is another singularity which I have been 
 unable to explain; the wearj want of tune and accent 
 distinguishing Irish singers. They never seem willing 
 to come to an end of their delights and devices. 
 I have noted the same peculiarity as characterising 
 the players of a heavier people, the people of Belgium. 
 I imagine, to protract the sound and the words is con- 
 ceived to be as Arcadian and genteeSi as the use of 
 grand Greek classical names may have been fancied 
 by the rhymester without rhyme who wove the 
 wondrous piece of stuff, a shred of which I have 
 just presented. 
 
 If I speak within a smaller compass than might 
 be expected of the music of Scotland, I do so because 
 it is national music better known than that of either 
 Wales or Ireland. Even on the Continent, Scottish 
 music is the term applied to all the national airs of 
 this country. In a collection arranged by Beethoven 
 will be found ' Of a noble race was Shenkin,* 'The 
 last rose of Summer,' and absolutely, 'Sally in 
 our alley,' thus designated by one common epithet. 
 
204 National Music of the World. 
 
 This is be accounted for by tbe fact, that Scotland 
 had a civilised Court of her own till a late period ; 
 and that thus the products of the North country- 
 were naturally more largely interchanged with those 
 of other European countries, than could be the 
 products of exclusive Wales or of careless, harassed 
 Ireland. 
 
 Boieldieu twisted about their tunes largely in his 
 ' La Dame Blanche,' a comical pasticcio from ' The 
 Monastery,' and in ' Les deux nuits.' Nieder- 
 meyer set most pleasantly ' Auld Lang Syne ' as a 
 villanella in his 'Marie Stuart.' I have found as 
 a rule, that whenever our national music is men-r 
 tioned on the Continent, the tune has been approved 
 with a complacent ' Oui, c'est Ecossais ; ' and two 
 minutes after, something is sure to follow about the 
 ' Bride of Lammermoor,' although the tunes had got 
 abroad before the greatest novel of the Great Unknown 
 was written. 
 
 I must name as among the most complete ex- 
 amples of national forma turned to musical order, 
 the Scherzo of Mendelssohn's Third Symphony in A 
 minor, called from this very Scherzo ' the Scottish ' 
 Symphony, as his Second Symphony was called Italian 
 because of its final Saltarella. 
 
Music from the West. 205 
 
 But then, if foreigners have laid a wholesale 
 claim on all owr tunes as Scotch tunes, they have 
 also chosen to ascribe to some of the best pf North 
 British melodies a foreign origin. 
 
 Eizzio, say they, brought over his Italian science 
 and skill into Mary Stuart's Court, and from this 
 issued modes and habits that altered the cast of 
 the Northern melodies. A more baseless fancy, I 
 conceive, never entered mortal brain. Let us look at 
 a fact or two : 
 
 Eizzio was a harper. There is small trace of the 
 harp in the old Scottish melodies, which are wild, 
 wandering, containing all manner of illogical intervals 
 and incomplete closes ; thus serving, so far as I can 
 guess (recalling former definitions), to be a sort of 
 compound of the chant set to words of fresh and 
 real beauty, with the sounds of a rude instrument — 
 the pipe. 
 
 . And though, as has been said, the presence of 
 Irish harpers may have been occasional, if not 
 frequent, in Scotland, I do not find many traces 
 of the harp-spirit in the tunes of Scotland, be- 
 yond that similarity in the omission of certain 
 intervals which has reference to one common 
 origin, and which may have caused many of the 
 
2o6 National Music of the World. 
 
 fierce national contests, undertaken with the vague 
 hope of settling the birthplace of melodies which 
 probably belong to neither one country or the other, 
 but to both. 
 
 But I think that the Scotch may be said to have 
 trained up the bagpipe to a perfection of superiority, 
 and to keep up that perfection even unto this day. 
 And I conceive that one of those grand, stalwart 
 practitioners whom we see in that magnificent 
 costume which English folks have not disdained to 
 wear (though it is a relic belonging to a peculiar 
 district), would blow down, by the force and persis- 
 tence of his drone, any rival from Calabria, or the 
 Basque Provinces, or the centre of Prance, or the 
 Sister Island. 
 
 To this universal bagpipe may some of the lawless 
 progressions of Scottish melodies be referred. The 
 following is clearly a relation to the Irish march on 
 three legs already cited. 
 
 Vvwux,. ^, — 
 
 
 5 
 
 / 
 
 i tJs k^. 
 
Music from the West. 
 
 207 
 
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 ^ 
 
 IK^Zit 
 
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 -»i-r- 
 
 ^^ 
 
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 ^- -A - * V-- ^ 
 
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 ^ 
 
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2o8 National Music of the World. 
 
 ^^ 
 
 m 
 
 ^ 
 
 s^si 
 
 ■±==t 
 
 f 
 
 -k^i^^ 
 
 Let me now speak of a peculiarity in Scottish 
 music, which I doubt not has suggested itself to the 
 reader before I have named it : the snap, or rapid suc- 
 cession of two notes : — 
 
 i 
 
 -g .. ^— ^ 
 
 't-§=F^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 ? 
 
 ^ 
 
 and, so forth. 
 
 With regard to the origin of this, I have always 
 nourished a fancy born of my own experience. 
 
 There are singers who when they attempt to 
 recollect a melody try to reproduce a harmony also — 
 to present to themselves a duet ; and this can only be 
 done by catching at either the principal or accessory 
 note (as may be), before or after the sound has been 
 emitted. 
 
 I have never been able to represent to my solitary 
 self the tune of a two-part song without some such 
 ease to imagination, if not to conscience ; and thus, as 
 
Music from the West. 209 
 
 the figure rarely occurs with any use of an awkward 
 interval, I dare to conceive that it may have ori- 
 ginated with a player's habit, as among players who 
 spread all their chords, or with a singer's trick. 
 
 This figure is predominant in Scottish airs of a 
 certain class, but it is not exclusively Scottish. One 
 can find it in Italy, though perhaps not before Rizzio's 
 or Eicci's time. And see how oddly definitions and 
 coiacidences turn up ! The form occurs in a sort of 
 sacred song by Pergolesi, called SiciUana : — 
 
 i 
 
 ±3 
 
 ^ 
 
 mrr'T'l r i r-iH ^^r^r^t 
 
 I presume that in the above, the figure may have 
 been meant to stand for a sob. In any event, the 
 figure is rarely to be met in conjunction with a false 
 concord. Nor is it frequent in Italian, howbeit 
 perpetual in Scotch music. 
 
 Some of the least-contested Scotch tunes are 
 remarkable in the extent of their compass. I wil 
 merely remind the reader of such melodies as ' For 
 the lack of gold,' 'Whistle o'er the lave o't.' 
 
 The Scotch dances, whether the frantic reel or 
 stately strathspey, are mostly in common time ; and, 
 indeed, the triple measure figures sparingly in their 
 music as compared with the music of Ireland. It 
 
 p 
 
.2IO National Music of the World. 
 
 has some capital examples though, as in ' Tweed- 
 side,' with those amazing words :— 
 
 What beauty does Flora disclose, 
 
 How sweet are her smiles upon Tweed, 
 Btit Mary's, yet sweeter than those, 
 Both Nature and Fancy exceed. 
 
 I 
 
 a fcB : 
 
 m, 
 
 s 
 
 -4 — ^^^^ 
 
 9 
 
 I 
 
 ^ 
 
 C*: 
 
 i: 
 
 m 
 
 ^EE^. 
 
 -P5- 
 
 zi=M^ 
 
 m^ 
 
 ^=^- 
 
 ^^f 
 
 -:i=3t^ 
 
 ffi 
 
 J?. 
 
 • I 
 
 J- 
 
 ^ 
 
 J. -*--*- 
 
 I?s 
 
 ^^ 
 
 Tn the above there is the three-bar rhythm. I 
 only recollect one other example, in the song 
 ' Wooed and married and a'.' 
 
 As regards tenderness of expression and grace of 
 interval, the Irish and the Scotch may keep up the 
 old tough fight as to which is the tenderest. But 
 the tune I shall now present is surely as gracious^ 
 and quite with a colour of its own, as the Irish 
 specimen which I cited : — 
 
Music from the West. 
 
 211 
 
 I 
 
 MfSierat-o. 
 
 EE 
 
 W^ 
 
 ?ts= 
 
 f-r-r 
 
 :i^ 
 
 r^- 
 
 ? 
 
 j ^^g 
 
 ^F 
 
 J-4 ^. 
 
 ^E3= 
 
 qazzpi 
 
 (^=F 
 
 i 
 
 r^^^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 =1 — j^ »r F 
 
 ^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 =P?i: 
 
 
 Elrpr^fc 
 
 dim. 
 
 -"^=1^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 -e^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 p2 
 
212 National Music of the World, 
 
 Lastly, there are certain Scottish tunes reputed 
 Jo be Cameronian, which I. dare say may have been 
 fabricated long after the civil strife of creeds^ so 
 wondrously set forth in ' Old Mortality,' had ceased, 
 but which are still neither English, Irish, nor Welsh. 
 The tune which I offer has in some measure the 
 charactei; and the sadness, without the austerity, of 
 fiuch a Psalm as was sung at Loudon HiUs : — 
 
 i ^Tj jgh 
 
 ^ 
 
 :J=i= 
 
 iB^^i 
 
 9 
 
 ^Me 
 
 -^ J- 
 
 -£^^ 
 
 
 3 . ^-^ 
 
 r 
 
Music from the West. 213 
 
 I cannot but feel as if I were faithless to the reel 
 as a dance measure, in passing it over as I must 
 do in a subject full of what some old author calls 
 'pastime and particularity'; but I am unable to do 
 more than to touch a point here and there. 
 
 On looking over Mr. Chappell's collection of 
 English tunes, I have been struck anew, as I have been 
 again and again in former years, by the want of a 
 style which establishes a certain parentage, as that 
 by which French, Italian, and Northern melodies 
 are affiliated, or by which the Scotch and Irish, or 
 Welsh airs are recognisable. 
 
 I say this with aU respect to the sincerity of the 
 writer, but, with reference to a partisanship which is 
 natural in one who has fixed his eyes on a single 
 point. iTe conceives record in print to decide the 
 parentage of a tune. I do not. The 'Pastoral 
 Symphony ' in the * Messiah ' was printed in ' Par- 
 thenia,' as a dance, long ere Handel dreamed of 
 appropriating the tune of the Eoman or Calabrian 
 piff&rari for his 'Nativity' scene. Who prompted 
 the printer? is the questiop. And it is a question 
 which no one can answer, so far as national music is 
 concerned. 
 
 Now, so far as Mr. Chappell's diligently prepared 
 
214 National Music of the World. 
 
 and most agreeably written book represents English 
 music, it is therein represented as eminently eclectic. 
 
 I think we get from it the measure of 'Sir 
 Roger de Coyerley,' and a hornpipe tune — with that 
 shuffle on the floor which is not dancing so much as 
 getting over the ground ; but I find among the 
 English tunes nothing in the least equivalent to 
 Welsh or Irish or Scotch melodies, as regards fresh- 
 ness or strangeness, or the character which distin- 
 guishes the little woman in the red cloak and hat 
 from the Highlander in his kilt. 
 
 Let us see, if we can, if there be originating causes 
 for this. A nation of shopkeepers, as we have been 
 contemptuously called, we are still a nation of tra- 
 vellers, gentle and simple ; and travellers who, while 
 curious as to things abroad, are wondrously constant 
 to our home notions. With all our good faith, there 
 may be some pertinacity in us ; some inaptitude to 
 digest impressions alien to those of nature and edu- 
 cation. 
 
 The author of ' Tremaine ' called us ' slow to 
 move,' and this long after one Shakspeare had put 
 into the mouth of a certain Portia a character in 
 which there was more of Shakspeare's own intuition 
 than the perception of the Italian heiress of Belmont, 
 
Music from the West. 215 
 
 brilliant as she was. Speaking of the Englishman, 
 says Shakspeare's Portia : ' I say nothing to Mm, for 
 he understands not me nor I him. He hath neither 
 Latin, French, nor Italian^ I think he bought his 
 doublet in Italy, his round hose in France,, his bonnet 
 in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere.' 
 
 There are many English tunes which may belong 
 to nobody or to everybody. 
 
 If the speculations which I have presented have 
 any thread (so to say) on which, as so many entire and 
 separate yet not disparted beads they can be strung, 
 it is this : that nationality in music does not lie in 
 either boiTOwing or in adaptation, but in some inborn 
 qualities to be ascribed either to the influences of 
 Nature or of manners, or of peculiar instruments, 
 originated by rude people. There is small trace of 
 anything of the kind in English music. I belong to, 
 the North, and know the good and sweet quality of 
 our Lancashire voices, but where is the Lancashire 
 tune? and where is the Cumberland tune? 
 
 As illustrating the caprice of Music's proceeding 
 in all countries, it is observable that in England our 
 art got ahead of Painting ; since the Elizabethan 
 madrigals, in which there are many national touches, 
 came long before the establishment of a kindreds. 
 
2i6 National Music of the World. 
 
 school of art; our school of Painting dating only 
 from the last century* Whereas in Italy the painters 
 had long preceded the musicians, in England the 
 musicians had enjoyed their primrose-time, if not 
 their June or their Indian summer, long ere the 
 painter was known except by the stiff outhne on the 
 waU, howsoever well intentioned, meagre in form 
 and paltry in colour. Our travelled men, such as 
 Milton, had brought home fancies. Our abiding 
 patrons, such as Lord Guildford, George Herbert, 
 the high-toned Evelyn, the convenient, gossiping, 
 yet altogether delightful Pepys, opened their minds 
 to this player on the lute, or the other foreign 
 song, or vocal enchantments of ' the Italian gentle- 
 woman who would not be kissed, which Master 
 Killigrew, who brought her in, did acquaint us with ; ' 
 long ere painting had got beyond the stiffest of 
 stiff Gothicism. And again : that beautiful and 
 harmonious architect — I mean Wren — ^to whom we 
 owe the exquisitely harmonious outer cupola of 
 St. Paul's, and St. Stephen's, Walbrook, and a host 
 of other eclectic examples, could arise and vindicate 
 himself, and produce (to hunt the figure a few steps 
 further) a host of melodious details in stone, after the 
 Eevolution, with its Ironsides and its fanatics, had 
 
Music from the West. 2 1 7 
 
 purged out of the land the lute in the oriel window, 
 the pleasant part-song in the pleached walk, or even 
 those astounding lessons by Dr. John Bull, tabulated 
 in Queen Elizabeth's ' Virginal Book,' which I take 
 leave to believe Queen Elizabeth may have looked 
 at, but can never have played. 
 
 From the time of the Restoration Music began 
 again to raise her head in England, though checked 
 again by the sarcasms of what has been so strangely 
 called our ' Augustan age ; ' but never, whether her 
 head was high or low, has melody worn in this land 
 of ours that distinct family face of her own which 
 is to be found in Wales, Ireland, or Scotland. 
 That which we have enjoyed seems to me referable 
 to every country or district save those of pure 
 England — with some exception. 
 
 And, following out this idea, I am afraid that I 
 shall shock some of my readers by saying that all the 
 old snatches of song in Shakspeare's plays seem more 
 questionable than characteristic. Mr. ChappeU him- 
 self points out that Ophelia's snatch of song, ' And he 
 will not come again,' is identical with a tune the 
 burden of which is, 'And sAe cannot hold her tongue.' 
 I can add, it closely resembles a third melody, 'Sweet 
 NeUy, my heart's delight.' 
 
2i8 National Music of the World, 
 
 I must go an heretical step further, as we are on 
 the subject of Shakspeare music, and confess cool 
 disrespect in regard to the far-famed music for 
 'Macbeth,' said to be Locke's — more probably by 
 Eccles: in no event of parentage worth quarrelling 
 about. But, for exceptions, I must name Dr. Arne's 
 music to ' The Tempest,' and to ' As you like it : ' 
 ' Where the bee sucks,' and ' Blow, blow, thou winter 
 wind,' are English words set to English music, with 
 as much freshness and originality as beauty. 
 
 Then, as I have by chance diverged into thiS' 
 path, I must represent that Bishop's settings of 
 Shakspeare are by themselves in power and in 
 freshness. His 'Bid me discourse' is the most 
 lasting English bravura in being; his delicious 
 canzonet, ' By the simplicity of Venus' doves,' (a 
 most exquisite setting of sound to sense) and 
 his ' Orpheus ' duet owe little save to English 
 inspiration. 
 
 Bishop had a fairy land of his own. Peculiarities 
 of character only stood between him and a European 
 fame. And then he fell on evil days, when the riches 
 of the continent were streaming into England ; and 
 when those in whose service his life was passed, 
 tempted, and perhaps constrained him to make 
 
Mu^ic from the West. 219 
 
 concessions to our tlien poor popular taste : a luck- 
 less and foolisli thing, if it be done by any artist in 
 defiance of conscience ; a sad thing, if it be done with 
 acquiescence of conscience. 
 
 The very great and English beauty of Bishop's 
 music — always the best when his words were the' 
 best — makes me recall his career with sadness, as 
 though it was an imperfect career. 
 
 Among our peculiar treasures is the glee, as 
 distinguished from the madrigal; the part-song for 
 the voices of the human quartett. That this form 
 has been abused by a puerile mode of treatment, has 
 nothing to do with its intrinsic beauty. I am not 
 going to travel through the 'Couvito Armonico,' 
 but I will just remind the reader of Stevens' exquisite 
 setting of ' Ye spotted snakes,' and mention the most 
 perfect example of a glee-writer that England has 
 possessed — since of those who are happily still living 
 I should conceive it unbecoming to speak. I allude 
 to Horsley : an artist who passed away from us full of 
 years, only lately ; and who was laid iii his grave in 
 the midst of respectful friends, retained throughout 
 a patriarch's life by an uprightness which was not to 
 be shaken, and by musical endowments of pure 
 quality and high order. 
 
2 20 National Music of the World. 
 
 I revert to him for many reasons. He had the true 
 poetical appreciation now in an ailing plight among 
 our composers, who do not seem to heed ' whether 
 they waste a melody on the pence-table or a scrap 
 of advertisement from the ' Times.' 
 
 Horsley set few, if any, save choice words, 'bui 
 these he set most choicely : writing beautifully as 
 regards science, with a true national relish, which 
 neither cared to be German, nor knew how to be 
 French, nor disdained the sweetness of Italy — that 
 fountain of great vocal writing. I will name his 
 glees, ' See the chariot,' ' Nymphs of the forest,' 
 'By Celia's arbour,' as so many gems, showing a 
 modest constructive persistence' not too common 
 among our glee writers, who, to give as an instance 
 ' When winds breathe soft,' have seemed to fancy that 
 every second line must have another movement. 
 And I will name his canons, as having an ease, an 
 elegance, and a mastery, which entitle them to be 
 placed not far from the vocal canons of Cherubini, 
 and the instrumental concealments of art by art 
 which are so remarkable in the canons of Clementi. 
 
 There is yet another form of English music 
 which I think no Scotch moss-trooper can inter- 
 meddle with — no Irish reaper can deprive us of — no 
 
Music from the West. 221 
 
 Welsh antiquary carry away into the fastnesses of 
 the Principality : the catch. The odd farcical 
 humour of this form of musical composition, in 
 which words trip up words, and rhymes and phrases 
 jostle, with as desperate a disregard of common sense 
 as though Hood had wrought the web and sown it 
 thick with puns — can hardly be appreciated by any 
 one save he be an Englishman born. 
 
 It is noticeable that we have never produced a 
 great instrumental composer, neither a towerimg 
 player on any instrument. Plenty of hand work 
 there has been, plenty of industry ; but till now there 
 has been too universal an exhibition of hands without 
 head, or else of head without hands. Why this 
 should b^, others must decide. 
 
 As a people who can read at sight, we are with- 
 out superiors or equals. Our voices are beautiful, 
 and I think almost more equally distributed as 
 respects the register than the voices of any other 
 country. I will instance those of Mrs. Salmon, Mrs. 
 Alfred Shaw, Braham, Bartleman — not, for obvious 
 reasons, to speak of any singers still giving pleasure 
 to the public — as almost unparagoned, and as in 
 every case cultivated to a certain point of versatile 
 accomplishment. I have had to point out, however. 
 
222 National Music of the World. 
 
 on a former occasion, how largely this has been 
 neutralised, and has not passed a certain point, owing 
 to a want of clearness and refinement in articulation. 
 And lastly, as dealing with this portion of my 
 subject, I must speak of our English patrons of 
 music. We have had — we have to this day — muni- 
 ficent upholders of the art, great amateurs. I need 
 not recall such a man as the patron of Handel, the 
 Marquis of Chandos ; who did that utterly heterodox 
 deed of creating a Protestant Chapel-music at his 
 own cost, with evil fiddles in the orchestra ; by whom 
 Handel was cherished and promoted, and for whom 
 he wrote his noble anthems. I need not mention 
 such a series of London gentlemen as scrambled up 
 to the garret of Thomas Britton, the small-coal man, 
 to hear chamber-music. I need not mention such a 
 stocking weaver of Leicester as Mr. Gardiner, who 
 was certainly, next to Burney, among the first men in 
 England to discern the remarkable force and fire of 
 Beethoven as a composer; and who innocently pro- 
 posed to the rude hermit of Vienna that he should 
 prefix to a sort of compilation from Beethoven's 
 works, made by the said Mr. Gardiner, an original 
 overture ; to be well paid for. These facts speak for 
 England's taste, honour, knowledge, and prescience 
 
Music from the West. 2 23 
 
 as it was in the days when the practice of the art 
 h«re was limited. 
 
 Now, when the love and culture of music are 
 grown again to be something like a household word, 
 it is singular to mark how the prescience has become 
 timid, how curiosity has been dulled, how research 
 has stopped. Being virtuous, ' there are to he no more 
 cakes and ale.' And so, at the time being — with all 
 the vast mechanical resources of this country, and 
 with its prodigious wealth waiting for the lap of any 
 man, woman, or child who will hold the apron open 
 — it is singular to see combined an exclusiveness 
 which in past poorer times did not exist. We have 
 a vast public now, for four or five composers : 
 Handel, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Signor 
 Eossini (in his elect works). We may admire too 
 deeply as partisans : we may be too unwilling to 
 admire three things instead of two ; and therefore, 
 with all our honesty, our wealth, our welcome — and 
 now, our great and widely diffused musical culture — 
 we may fail for a while — not for the future, I earnestly 
 believe — betwixt eclecticism and exclusiveness, in 
 having a music of our own. 
 
 It was my intention to attempt some outline of 
 the forms of music in America ; but on looking closer 
 
2 24 National Music of the World. 
 
 I find therein such a heap of disconnected elements 
 — French, German, English-Puritan, and Negro; 
 music of times old and times new, without any 
 present individuality, that I will forbear to enter 
 into a maze of which no living person seems as yet 
 to hold the clue. 
 
 Such character as the people of the country 
 have shown in their imaginative literature seems not 
 as yet to have wrought itself out in art, or only 
 capriciously. Their Painting has as yet no Wash- 
 ington Irving — their Music is till now without its 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne. Though they are full of 
 instincts for singing, both the white and the dark 
 population- — as was shown to us most quaintly by the 
 Hutchinson family, and later to satiety by the 
 parties who have called up a host of imitators, and 
 have degraded the sentimental word 'Serenader'" 
 into something suggestive of a monlcey and a blacking 
 brush — there is as yet surprisingly little either in their 
 song-words or music that can be called their own. 
 I believe that I possess the largest collection of 
 'Little Warblers' from across the Atlantic, that 
 could be found in England ; and with the exception 
 of a slang song or two, such as I can faAcy made by 
 a machine in our parish of St. Giles', I find nothing 
 
Music from the West. 225 
 
 newer or more fresh in words or melody than 
 ' Woodman, spare that tree,' 
 
 The Americans hare shown a marvellous pro- 
 clivity, in instrumental music, towards that which is 
 occult and incomprehensible ; and, to judge from 
 what reaches the old country in the shape of 
 printed opinion, are already far in advance of us in 
 comprehending that which seems full of darkness 
 and doubt to om- eyes. Whether in this they are not 
 beginning at the end of music, may be reserved for 
 others to decide. 
 
 As a close to these essays, which are only within 
 their permitted dimensions so many mere sketches, 
 I may be allowed to point attention to the subject as 
 one the richness of which renders it almost in- 
 tractable. 
 
 To prepare them, I have looked through between 
 two and three thousand tunes, and thus can feel 
 better than most of my readers Ihow much could have 
 been said; how much I have of necessity been 
 obliged to omit. 
 
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