C?0rnEU Uttitteraitg ffiiihrarg 
 
 Htljara, New Unrk 
 
 FROM THE 
 
 BENNO LOEWY LIBRARY 
 
 COLLECTED BY 
 
 BENNO LOEWY 
 
 1854-1919 
 BEQUEATHED TO CORNELL UNIVERSITY 
 
 MUSIC 
 
Cornell University Library 
 ML 60.R61 
 
 Lyre, pen and pencil =B,^||fl](lfjt,,f!|j|||H^^ 
 
 3 1924 022 472 108 ™ 
 
The original of tiiis book is in 
 tile Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924022472108 
 
LYRE, PEN AND PENCIL 
 
 ESSAYS, STUDIES, SKETCHES. . 
 
 BY 
 
 FANNY RAYMOND RITTER. 
 / 
 
 EDITED BY 
 
 MILLIE W. CARPENTER. 
 
 'L' ART ET LA POESIE SONT LES AILES DE L' AME.' 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 Edward Schuberth & Co., 
 
 23 Union SaUARE, 
 
 1891. 
 
 M 
 
Entered accordin(3 to Act of ConcressVn the year 1891, by 
 F. L. RITTER, 
 
 IN THE OFFICE OF THE LIBRARIAN OF CONCRESS AT WASHmCTON. 
 
WOMAN AS A MUSICIAN. 
 
 AN ART-HISTORICAL STUDY. 
 
WOMAN AS A MUSICIAN. 
 
 The accompanying study was written in response to 
 a request that I should present a paper on Art before 
 the Centennial Congress, in Philadelphia, of the " Asso- 
 ciation for the Advancement of Woman," which re- 
 quest was made to me by Professor Maria Mitchell 
 (President of that Association) ; a lady who confesses, 
 with rare candor, her own unmusical nature, yet, per- 
 haps, while 
 
 Lone as a star, she marks and counts the spheres. 
 Their voiceless music in her soul she hears, 
 
 and certainly recognizes the importance of musical art 
 to her sex in general. 
 
 The essay was read at that meeting by Mrs. Churchill, 
 and published as read by her, in the " Woman's 
 Journal." ' I 
 
 As my subject, " Woman as a Musician," has never 
 been historically treated before in this manner (though 
 necessarily condensed, a style demanded by a paper in- 
 tended to be read in public), I have acceded to the re- 
 quests of many friends interested in art, and now pub- 
 lish the essay in more accessible form, with a few ad- 
 ditions to its original contents. 
 
 I trust that it may serve the purpose for which it was 
 written ; that it may suggest the future adoption of 
 
Woman as a Musician. 5 
 
 musical themes, among the subjects to be treated of 
 by the ladies of the Association (this was the first pa- 
 per on music read at their meetings) ; and that it may 
 aid in inducing a more serious study of musical art, as 
 a necessary constituent of higher artistic culture among 
 American women. 
 
 With this sincere desire, I add another plea to many 
 already existing in favor of that refined, poetical, 
 beautiful art, to which, with its kindred subjects, I 
 dedicate so much of my life ; and now offer it as an 
 addition to the art records of the centennial anniversary 
 of the American republic. 
 
 FANNY RAYMOND RITTER. 
 
 October, 1876. 
 
Woman as a Musician. 
 
 During the long and tumultuous period that followed 
 the decline of the Roman Empire, two spirits, the in- 
 ward and the outward spirits of humanity, seemed, 
 throughout Europe, to struggle for mastery ; and in 
 that struggle — itself a manifestation of the intense, 
 newly awakened vitality of the Middle Ages — these 
 spirits, approaching each other more nearly, perceived 
 that they had many traits in common, that their com- 
 bat was only a misunderstanding, that they were 
 brothers ; and, finally, embracing, they became united. 
 
 We all know that Art, while the highest possible 
 result to which human imagination, emotion, and in- 
 tellect can attain, is also, in its various forms, an ex- 
 alted and idealized reflection of every passing epoch of 
 human progress ; thus the sensuous, serene, and in one 
 sense nobly natural life of the Greeks, found its truth- 
 ful illustration in the masterpieces of antique sculp- 
 ture and architecture ; thus the art of painting reached, 
 during the picturesque epochs of the Middle Ages and 
 the renaissance, to an astonishing height of excellence ; 
 but, to express in all its depth, richness, fullness, tor- 
 ture and ecstacy, this lately awakened, inward force, 
 this spiritual result of the union of the old naturalistic 
 heathenism and the young supernatural faith, — this 
 new life, whose first heart-beat thrilled the world at 
 
Woman as a Musician. 7 
 
 that supreme moment, when, beside the haunted 
 shores, and over the classic waters of the ^gean Sea, 
 a voice was heard to murmur, " Great Pan is dead !" — 
 to embody this, another art was needed ; then, from 
 the bosom of Christianity, arose the modern art of 
 Music. 
 
 Ample evidence remains to us of the tone-system of 
 the Greeks, and several authentic fragments of their 
 music exist ; from all this we find that their instru- 
 mental music never advanced beyond the merest rudi- 
 ments, and that their singing was only a heightening 
 of the effect of their beautiful language, by means of 
 rhythmical cadences, rhetorical pauses, and varied in- 
 tonation. On account of the extreme respect and ad- 
 miration which the Greek poets and philosophers ex- 
 press for music, many modern writers, insufficiently 
 acquainted with the subject, have supposed that Greek 
 music must have reached a very .high state of perfec- 
 tion ; I regard such expressions of admiration only as 
 proofs of the intellectual discernment of those gifted 
 men, who were able to appreciate the high value, and 
 still higher possibilities of music, even in its rough 
 root, as it existed among them. What would not these 
 poets and philosophers have written of music, could 
 they have known it as it now is ? As it was, however, 
 Plato said, — that no man could be virtuous, whose Hfe 
 was not in harmony with music ; Pythagoras thought 
 that music stood so far above the senses, that only a 
 
8 Woman as a Musician. , 
 
 lofty intellect was able to judge of it; Chiron said 
 that ijiusic should be placed above morals or medicine, 
 as an element of culture ; Aristoxenes advised that 
 music should always be introduced at feasts, because 
 its inherent symmetry and order restrained mind and 
 body from excess ; Archytas, Plutarch, and others 
 agreed that the power of music extends to every part 
 of nature, that it regulates all motion, and even rules 
 the course of the spheres. 
 
 And yet in spite of the great encomiums of great 
 men, the music of those days gave scarcely even an 
 idea of the sublimity to which it has arrived in our 
 days. Music, as we understand it, scarcely had an ex- 
 istence prior to the establishment of Christianity ; its 
 feeble germ, nursed in the rocks and caves where the 
 early Christians found refuge, fanned by the sighs, and 
 watered by the tears of the persecuted, developed into 
 existence as the Ambrosian and Gregorian chants, then 
 spread, through storm and transition, into the life of 
 the people, as the troubadour, minstrel, war, folk-song, 
 and dance music, until it became, under its present 
 splendid and varied forms of artistic song, and instru- 
 mental composition, what it now is, — the reigning art 
 of to-day, the most consummate flower of modern 
 civilization, intellectual culture, and artistic refinement. 
 
 Music, though in one sense a mathematical abstrac- 
 tion, and based on exact science, like other arts, is 
 wholly original and self-existent. It is not reproduct- 
 
Woman as a Musician. 9 
 
 ive and imitative, as are the plastic arts to a certain 
 extent ; its object is higher than that of mere reflec- 
 tion ; it aims at expressing those emotions and aspira- 
 tions, which are awakened in thinking and feeling hu- 
 manity by the passions and events of life and time, or 
 by the contemplation and comprehension of the order, 
 proportion, unity, variety, power, terror, beauty, sym- 
 metry, profundity and immensity of the universe. It 
 is the most transcendental of all arts, for it is a purely 
 metaphysical outward manifestation of the inward 
 soul ; it is the most complex of all arts, for at once it 
 is vague, definite, and infinitely precise ; it is the most 
 ideal of all arts, for it is the beautiful result of un- 
 shaken faith in progress towards perfection, and is itself 
 almost a religion, in its purity and sublimity. In the 
 evanescent, intangible form of music, from small ma- 
 terials yet vast possibilities, the human heart and mind 
 have gradually evoked a language, a science, an art, 
 compared with whose simple means and immense re- 
 sults, the miraculous creation of the fabulous magicians 
 of antiquity would appear cold, pale, aimless and 
 meaningless. 
 
 I shall now endeavor to sketch the share of woman — 
 which art history has until now neglected to point out, 
 fully and separately — in this gradual, historical develop- 
 ment of music to the point of preeminence where we 
 find it in our own day. Woman's voice certainly 
 united in the chants and hymns that echoed through 
 
lO Woman as a Musician. 
 
 the caves and deserts to which the early Christians fled 
 in order to celebrate their worship ; though afterwards, 
 in the i6th century, she was cast out as an official mu- 
 sician from the prosperous church, we know that in the 
 early, persecuted church, she bore her part as singer as 
 well as martyr ; whether she had any share in the com- 
 position of those early chants in which she practically 
 united, is doubtful, and will forever remain unknown. 
 In the middle ages, woman was the universal martyr ; 
 forgot by others, she forgot herself. It was not until 
 the end of the 14th century, that women began to be 
 anything more than the toys of the higher, the beasts 
 of burden among the lower classes. That mediaeval 
 epoch must have been an epoch of darkness, ignorance, 
 oppression and despair for women of low station — the 
 great majority of women, in short, who, finding them- 
 selves almost wholly unprotected by law or opinion, 
 fled for safety to the pretended practice of magic, i 
 Discovering that the superstitious fears of men would 
 invest them with a sort of protection, they affected to 
 become witches, though they knew that torture and 
 death await them if they were betrayed. The early 
 church even condemned those women to the death of 
 the sorceress, who dared " to cure other sick than those 
 of their own families, unless they had previously 
 studied medicine," and to what opprobrium would they 
 not have been subjected then, had those anxious 
 mothers, wives, sisters, then dared to enter a school of 
 
Woman as a Musician. 1 1 
 
 medicine for the purpose of studying the healing art ! 
 Yet, when the famous doctor Paracelsus burned the 
 tomes of Arabic, Greek, and Jewish medicine, he de- 
 clared that he had not learned anything of physic 
 worth retaining, except from the sorceresses, whose 
 medicines were principally vegetable. The few his- 
 torical clues we possess, lead us most unwillingly to 
 the conclusion that the first timid steps of woman 
 within the portals of this new art, were rather tram- 
 melled, than encouraged and assisted ; and if any trace 
 of woman as a musician remains from the era of me- 
 diaeval sorcery, witch-burning, and the slow overcoming 
 of popular superstition by means of philosophy and 
 natural science, it is to be found in the folk-songs, 
 those beautiful memorials of individual and national 
 life, composed and written by anonymous singers and 
 poets among the people. It is almost impossible to 
 believe that women traversed that long period of per- 
 secution, struggle, despair, hope, and aspiration, with- 
 out giving voice to their emotions and as national and 
 peasant folk-songs are traditionally said to have been 
 nearly always composed by the persons who first sang 
 them, and as women have always been their most zeal- 
 ous performers, it is only fair to suppose that they have 
 also had something to do with their composition as 
 well as with their poetry. It would be unnatural to 
 think that the beautiful lullabies and cradle songs, of 
 which hundreds exist, in different languages and na- 
 
12 Woman as a Musician. 
 
 tionalities, were composed by martial barons, rough 
 serving-men, or rougher peasants, and not by their 
 wives or daughters ; we know that in Bfearn, in Ireland, 
 in the Basque provinces, and elsewhere, women have 
 always been preferred as the vocal eulogists of the de- 
 parted, in funeral songs ; nor could the sibyllic utter- 
 ances of Druid priestesses, the terrible incantations 
 and magic songs of the early sorceresses, have been in- 
 vented by others than themselves. And the melan- 
 choly wife of the serf, watching her flocks on the green 
 hills, or gathering wood for her hearth amid the im- 
 placable brambles, — and the lonely lady of the castle, 
 spinning or embroidering her cunning tapestries while 
 she waited, sometimes for years, the return of her 
 father, husband, brother, lover, — and then the anxious 
 women of the fisher people, — did they indeed endure 
 their sorrows voicelessly ? — I cannot believe it ; I have 
 no doubt but that many of those simple, touching, 
 heart-breaking melodies and poems were of women's 
 creation. This question is a novel one ; but, since the 
 comparatively recent study of philology has been the 
 source of many unexpected revelations, further study 
 of the musical branch of historical investigation will 
 throw light on many points that have hitherto re- 
 mained obscure. 
 
 And yet, though woman's share in the authorship of 
 these folk-songs is uncertain, she has had considerable 
 part in their compilation from the mouths of the peo- 
 
Woman as a Musician. 13 
 
 pie, who, unable to read or write, have handed them 
 down, viva voce, through centuries. Fernan Caballero 
 (recently deceased) has collected a number of Spanish 
 popular songs ; the Countess of Dufferin and Miss 
 Brooke have translated many Irish folk-songs from the 
 original Celtic into English ; the Countess de la Ville- 
 marqufe was of the greatest assistance to her son in 
 making his famous collection of Breton songs ; Cousse- 
 maker wrote down the larger part of his interesting 
 Flemish songs from the lips of the poor lace makers of 
 Holland ; Madame George Sand says that she has seen 
 Chopin and Madame Viardot Garcia spending hours in 
 noting down the wild melodies sung by the peasant 
 women of the French provinces ; Rivarfes, in his col- 
 lection of Bfearnais folk-songs, gives a funeral song im- 
 provised by Marie, one of the most famous recent 
 songstresses of the valley of Aspe in Bfearn. Marie's 
 striking, healthy beauty, which, as well as her voice, 
 she preserved to a great age, her lively imagination, 
 her lofty character, and the high opinion she enter- 
 tained of the nobility of her profession, rendered her 
 a lovely modern embodiment of the antique Pythoness. 
 When Goethe's fine translation of a Servian folk-song, 
 " The complaint of the noble wife of Hassan Aga," 
 drew the attention of poetical and musical Europe to 
 the wonderful beauty of Servian folk-songs, a lady was 
 among the first of those who attempted to preserve 
 these monuments of national character, tradition and 
 
14 Woman as a Musician. 
 
 emotion, from the invading or effacing influences of 
 change or oblivion, by means of the printing press. 
 Fraiilein von Jakob, afterwards the wife of an Ameri- 
 can professor, collected and published a large number 
 of Servian folk-songs, which she translated into Ger- 
 man from the original. In her compilation, as well as 
 in those made by subsequent Slavonic, Italian and 
 German literateurs, it is impossible not to be struck by 
 the indescribable poetic loveliness of the Servian 
 " Women's Songs," bearing, as these do, the stamp of 
 Hindoo and Greek antiquity, as well as after invasion, 
 conquest, emigration, and national change. And in 
 studying the folk songs of the Arabians — which, being 
 yet universed in Arabic, I only know by means of 
 Spanish, Italiart, German or French translations, scat- 
 tered, few and far between, through scarce and rare old 
 collections of national music now in my possession, — 
 I have been struck by the poetic delicacy of feeling in 
 regard to women, with these fragments of the antique 
 glory of a people who held poetic tournaments at 
 Mecca and elsewhere, before the 5th century, display; 
 but which, perhaps, need not so much surprise us when 
 we remember that an Arabian queen, Balkis, of Saba, 
 or Sheba, possessed knowledge enough to venture on 
 visiting king Solomon, son of the musical king David, 
 for the purpose of proving the genuineness of his learn- 
 ing " by hard questions," and that the reputation of 
 that literary and artistic queen impelled the royal 
 
Woman as a Musician. 1 5 
 
 amateur to make splendid and tasteful demonstrations 
 for her reception and in her honor. Was queen Balkis 
 a feminine, unique phenomenon, or was she only one 
 of a class of cultivated women among the Arabian 
 aristocracy of that day ? 
 
 It is well known that the subtle vein of feeling in re- 
 gard to women, which permeates Celtic and Arabic 
 folk song, was in part appropriated by the troubadours 
 during the epoch of the crusades. Without pursuing 
 this part of my subject further at present (which I have 
 already treated in a series of essays " On the music 
 and poetry of the troubadours," originally published 
 it the New York Weekly Review, and shortly to appear 
 in collected form), I must observe the remarkable fact 
 that a number of ladies of rank, wives, sisters, or 
 daughters of troubadours, generally, became trouve- 
 resses, as they were called. Marie de France, and 
 Clara d'Anduse, were among the most famous of these. 
 In spite of the narrow educational resources then open 
 to ladies even of the highest rank, and the restricted 
 circle of their lives, we find, in the poetry of the trouve- 
 resses, as much apparent truthfulness and impassioned 
 depth of feeling as in that of the troubadours, though 
 betraying more negligence of treatment ; while their 
 melodies evince a greater want of finish and clearness 
 of form than do those of the troubadours. Among 
 the minstrels, followers of the troubadours, a few song- 
 stresses, generally the wives or daughters of minstrels, 
 
1 6 Woman as a Musician. 
 
 were trained to sing their male companions' songs by 
 rote. From some of the old minstrel ballads it is pos- 
 sible to form an idea of the characters of these women ; 
 in a song by Colin Muset, a minstrel who flourished in 
 the 13th century, he mentions his settled home, cook, 
 groom, vallet, etc., and represents his wife and daugh- 
 ter as industriously engaged in spinning, on his return 
 from one of his tours ; but the language with which 
 they greet him, and which he doubtless copied from 
 life, without reflection, betrays uneducated minds, and 
 commonplace habits of thought and action. 
 
 By a singular contradiction, though the church for- 
 bade women, throughout mediaeval times, and by actual 
 prohibition in the i6th century, to take any active mu- 
 sical part in its services, — as I have already mentioned. 
 — a feminine saint was adopted as patroness of music, 
 and especially of church music. The life of Saint Ce- 
 celia, though narrated in the Golden Legend, is, how- 
 ever, partly mythical. We know that the lady so fa- 
 miliar to all lovers of art and poetry as Saint Cecelia, 
 really existed and died a martyr ; but it is uncertain 
 whether Rome or Sicily was the scene of her death, 
 and the date of that event varies in the narrations of 
 various authorities. In regard to her musical attain- 
 ments, we only know with any certainty, that she was 
 in the habit of sweetly singing pious songs. If we 
 search still further back in what I may term the pri- 
 meval epoch of musical art, we find the Greek poetess 
 
Woman as a Musician. 17 
 
 Sappho to have been credited as the inventress of the 
 so-called mixolydian mode in music, and also of a (then) 
 new musical instrument, the pectis or magadis. And 
 Miriam, the prophetess, who went out dancing and 
 singing, the timbrel in her hand, who can say that her 
 song of triumph was not her own composition ? 
 
 But, to advance to the early days of modern music, — 
 banished from active musical participation in the church 
 service, woman's practical career as a public artiste only 
 began with the invention of the opera, about A. D. 
 1600. It was not until her superiority as an actress 
 and singer had been undeniably and triumphantly es- 
 tablished on the stage, that she re-conquered her musi- 
 cal share in the religious service. And what great dis- 
 tinction in such a position, woman has won for herself 
 during the past 200 years ! Volumes have been writ- 
 ten on those opera singers, many of whose very names, 
 as they echo through the pages of history, are in them- 
 selves romance and poetry, recalling as they do, the 
 gifts, charms, accomplishments, charities, virtues, errors, 
 adventures, and caprices of their possessors. 
 
 I shall only allude to a very few of these ladies ; and 
 one of the first mentioned in history we find to have 
 been Vittoria Archilei, a highly accomplished musician 
 at the court of Florence in 1600, and who took part in 
 the first Italian opera that was composed and repre- 
 sented in publie. Faustina Bordoni, born in 1700, wife 
 of the famous composer Hasse, was one of the great- 
 
l8 Woman as a Musician. 
 
 est artists that ever lived ; medals were struck in her 
 name, and societies established in her honor. Her 
 rival, Regina Mingotti, whose portrait now stands in 
 the Dresden Gallery, delighted the historian, Dr. Bur- 
 ney, by her freshness of voice at a very advanced old 
 age, as well as by her power of conversing with equal 
 elegance in five languages. Madame Mara, the favorite 
 singer of Frederick the Great and of Marie Antoinette, 
 enchanted Europe for nearly fifty years ; at the age of 
 seventy she still sang in public, though the power of 
 her voice had vastly declined ; some years afterwards, 
 the great poet Goethe wrote a poem in honor of her 
 birthday. Caterina Gabrielli, the pupil of Metastasio, 
 excited her audience to alternate frenzies of admira- 
 tion and anger, with her voice, beauty, caprices and ad- 
 ventures. When Catharine of Russia complained to 
 the singer that her emoluments were far higher than 
 those of the Field Marshals of the Empire, Madame 
 Gabrielli replied, " Then your Majesty must try to 
 make the Field Marshals sing !" Madame Catalani, 
 born in 1779, possessed a trumpet-like power of voice ; 
 in London she received twelve hundred dollars for 
 singing the solo in " God save the King," and twelve 
 thousand dollars for assisting at one musical festival. 
 Mrs. Billington, a blooming English woman, far re- 
 moved in physical and mental characteristics from the 
 popularly received idea of a sorceress, was accused by 
 superstitious Neapolitans of causing the eruption of 
 
Woman as a Musician. 1 9 
 
 Mount Vesuvius in 1794, by her wonderful vocal 
 powers, and the excitement they produced in Naples. 
 M. Thiers has translated the autobiography of Mrs. 
 Billington into the French language. Another gifted 
 and beautiful singer, Agnes Schebest, published an in- 
 teresting autobiography (" Aus dent Leben einer KUnst- 
 lerin "), about twenty years ago. Mrs. Sheridan, too 
 (the wife of the dramatist), whose personal beauty and 
 thrilling voice have been celebrated by poets and 
 painters, was also remarkable for her poetic talent. Of 
 Miss Stephens, the ballad singer, it was said that her 
 power over the hearts of others arose from the depth 
 of her own feeling, and the warmth and sensitiveness 
 with which this informed her charming voice. Miss 
 Stephens afterwards married the Earl of Essex. If I 
 am not mistaken, the countess is still living. 
 
 I might long continue to enumerate such instances 
 of genius and success in public songstresses ; but any 
 musical student can search for them in the standard 
 Italian, French, German, and English dictionaries and 
 biographies of musical art. 
 
 And who cannot recall, from the descriptions of 
 older persons, or from memory, the accomplishments 
 of more recent artists ? Who has not heard or heard 
 of the rich-voiced Mrs. Wood, the fascinating Mali- 
 bran, the impassioned Madame Devrient — of whom 
 it has been said that " she never sang an inferior song 
 in public during her whole life," — the charming Sontag 
 
io Woman as a Musician. 
 
 and Patti, the intellectual Madame Lind, the exquisite 
 Madame Nilsson ? 
 
 Madame George Sand, in her art-novel " Consuelo," 
 has drawn, with that poetic charm and persuasive force 
 of style that belong to her supremely, the ideal char- 
 acter of a pure and noble artist woman, too deeply im- 
 bued by lofty enthusiasm for her fine vocation, to bar- 
 ter its true principles for transitory success, social 
 flattery, or pecuniary advantage. This character has 
 been in some measure realized in the persons of two 
 ladies yet living, Madame Viardot-Garcia, the singer, 
 sister of Malibran, and Madame Clara Schumann, the 
 pianist, and widow of the composer Schumann. 
 
 That many of the famous songstresses of past days 
 were capable of interpreting the works of composers 
 in an almost independently creative manner, the scores 
 of old operas prove. In many of these the melody is 
 reduced to a mere thread, in order to give the song- 
 stress perfect liberty in varying the theme according to 
 the passion and action of the poetry she was to in- 
 terpret. But it is impossible for the most ardent dis- 
 ciple of woman's progress to point to such a galaxy 
 of celebrities among female composers, as may be 
 placed, without losing their brilliancy, besides the 
 names that add lustre to womanhood in other branches 
 of art, and in literaturei In musical composition we 
 cannot boast stars of such distinction as Mrs. Brown- 
 ing, Heloise, Mrs. Lewes, Mrs. Siddons, Mdme. Sand, 
 
Woman as a Musician. 21 
 
 Rosa Bonheur, Aspasia, Miss Cushman, Mdme. de 
 Stael, Miss Brontfe, Dora d'Istria, Miss Thompson, the 
 nun Roswitha, Fernan Caballero, and all the rest. The 
 list of feminine composers is a brief one, and most of 
 its members are now living. There was the princess 
 Amalia, of Prussia, sister of Frederick the Great, who 
 composed operas and cantatas ; Leopoldine Blahetka 
 (daughter of a professor of mathematics in Vienna), 
 who published more than seventy pianoforte pieces and 
 songs, some of which were greatly admired by Beetho- 
 ven ; Josephine Lang, the friend of Mendelssohn, who 
 composed a number of charming songs ; Madame Far- 
 renc, whose inspiration and science attained masculine 
 proportions ; Madame Fanny Hensel, sister of Men- 
 delssohn ; Louise Puget, whose vocal romances lately 
 enjoyed an enormous popularity in France, and won a 
 large fortune for their composer ; Mdme. Schumann 
 and Mdme. Garcia, who have composed some fine 
 works, though few ; Madame Dolby in England ; Vir- 
 ginia Gabriel, the balladist ; Elise Polko, who, carefully 
 educated as a singer, lost her voice prematurely, then 
 wrote for many years a number of novelettes, and now 
 appears before the world as a song composer ; and a 
 few other ladies. 
 
 But women have only lately realized the depth and 
 strength of the science of music, and what long years 
 of severe mental discipline and scientific training are 
 necessary in order to master the art of composition. 
 
22 Woman as a Musician. 
 
 This is not much to the dishonor of their courage and 
 patience, indeed, for a comparatively small number of 
 musical students among the other sex in America are 
 willing to devote themselves to such self-sacrificing 
 study ; too many who do commence it become dis- 
 couraged when they begin to understand the amount ' 
 of labor required, and the thorough training necessary 
 to insure perfect development to their talent for com- 
 position, and lasting fame to its results. Mathematics, 
 acoustics, psychology, languages, as well as general 
 literary acquirements, the practice and technicalities 
 of several instruments, and the science of music, must 
 all be mastered by the aspirant in composition, and 
 gradually, through the application and assimilation of 
 long years of study, become the " second nature " of 
 his mind. It may be some encouragement to the sin- 
 cere student to know that the grandest original idea of a 
 Handel or a Mozart, demanded as perfect working out, 
 as fine polishing, as the smallest fancy that ever issued 
 from the brain of a ballad writer. And why should 
 not women of sufficient intellectual and especial' ability 
 to warrant the possibility of their obtaining honorable 
 distinction, make an effort, and, discarding the absurd 
 idea that composition is an affair of instinct, study to 
 compose for immortality also? Tj|ere is surely a 
 feminine side of composition, as of every other art. 
 And I would suggest the adoption of the science of 
 composition as an elective, if not obligatory, branch of 
 
Woman as a Musician. 23 
 
 the higher course of study in ladies' colleges. From 
 actual personal experience, I do not hesitate to pro- 
 nounce it equal — merely as a mental discipline — to 
 mathematics, while it enriches the mind to a far higher 
 degree, and is far more likely to prove of practical 
 benefit to women in after ■ life, than the study of the 
 other science. 
 
 The possible practical advantages of the conscien- 
 tious study of other branches of music are well under- 
 stood ; talent, not sex, commands the highest prices in 
 this art ; the thorough, patient teacher is certain to 
 earn a respectable livelihood ; the fee of the first-class 
 teacher is equal to that of the first-class physician ; 
 the salaries of great artists are equal to those of great 
 ministers of state ; the social position of the musician, 
 even when of very low origin, rises in proportion to his 
 or her talent, so that a Wagner, a Nilsson, a Schumann, 
 etc., is received as an equal, possessing a God-given 
 patent of nobility, in court circles to which mere wealth 
 could never hope to atta,in ; happily far from the days 
 when a Haydn, a Mozart, were forced to solicit patron- 
 age, and even from those, more recent, in which a 
 Baroness Dudevant begged her daughter-in-law to adopt 
 a n'om de plume, if she must dabble in literature, we see 
 kings and emperors rivalling each other, as once in 
 troubadour days, for that poetic fame with which a 
 great artist is able to crown the memory of his friends ; 
 in a few words, — mind is rapidly becoming the great ac- 
 
24 Woman as a Musician. 
 
 knowledged motive power, and its manifestation, in 
 the exquisite form of art, is beginning to be appreci- 
 ated as it should be. Therefore, music pays. 
 
 And so our lady teachers and concert pianists are 
 legion (and the names of the best among the latter so 
 familiar to cultivated people that I do not need to 
 recall them), and yet the supply is not more than equal 
 to the demand. More attention should be paid by 
 women to the study of other instruments ; the elegant, 
 poetic, but very difficult harp, the soul-thrilling violin, 
 even the — in a musical sense — picturesque guitar, are 
 unjustly neglected, though several professional violin- 
 ists among women now compete for the palm of 
 preeminence in Europe ; still, lady violinists may be 
 counted by tens, where lady pianists number hundreds ; 
 and who that has heard the sisters Milanollo, and 
 Madame Neruda there, or Camilla Urso in America, 
 will deny that a woman's violin-playing possesses a 
 tender, delicate, sympathetic charm, as pleasing in its 
 way as the more varied and po,werful stroke of a man ? 
 The study of singing ought to become far more general 
 than it is in all schools ; I do not mean the singing by 
 rote of silly milk-and-water choruses, or the singing, 
 also by rote, of shallow ballads and operatic airs ; but 
 a slow and gradual mastery of the vocal art, from early 
 childhood, and from its elements upwards. For 
 though, to become a fine singer, a woman should pos- 
 sess more than average mental ability, patience and in- 
 
Woman as a Musician. 25 
 
 dustry, a healthy physique, personal attractions, and a 
 powerful voice ; though very few, indeed, may hope to 
 obtain universal contemporary fame, and subsequent 
 historical recognition as great songstresses ; though the 
 concert singer's career does not yet offer sufificient pe- 
 cuniary inducements, in America, to ladies who object 
 to appear on the operatic stage ; yet every woman 
 possessed of a tolerable voice and ear, and unhindered 
 by actual physical infirmity, should devote some portion 
 of her time to the practice of singing, if only for 
 health's sake. Singing, which is regulated by respira- 
 tion, is the most important element of the gymnastic 
 science ; it is an aid to circulation ; it heightens the 
 spirits, adds grace and activity to the movements, and 
 animation to the face. But the physical side of sing- 
 ing, like that of all arts, is only one of its sides ; it 
 does not merely improve the physical health of the 
 singer, — when pursued under reasonable conditions, 
 and the advice of an experienced musician — but it also 
 exercises a positive moral force upon her hearers. The 
 voice is an instrument which the singer carries with 
 her ; and as goodness, beauty, and happiness are almost 
 the sole objects of unperverted artistic expression, and 
 as even grief and terror themselves are ennobled when 
 illustrated by art, the singer, merely by the action of 
 communicating elevated emotion to her hearers by 
 means of her voice, becomes, for the time, a moral 
 agent. It would be needless for me to dilate on the 
 
26 Woman as a Musician. 
 
 beneficial and enlivening effects of music at home and 
 in society, or woman's interest in encouraging it ; this 
 is almost too well understood. 
 
 But, for the woman of refined musical taste and culti- 
 vation, who has no occasion to resort to music as a 
 profession, there yet remains a role of no common in- 
 fluence ; I mean that of the amateur. In every art 
 there are three classes of persons interested ; the 
 creator, — poet, composer, painter, etc. ; the reproducer, 
 — artist-virtuoso, executant, etc. ; and the amateur or 
 art-lover. The creator, with the aid of that gift which 
 we call " inspiration," by the force of genius, enthusi- 
 asm, and industry, enriches the world with new art- 
 creations, greater or less of their kind ; the reproducer, 
 of every rank from a Kean, a Pasta, a Hans von Biilow, 
 down to the humblest country organist, attains a de- 
 gree of perfection according to his or her industrial ca- 
 pacity and power of identification with the vision, 
 which it is his task to embody, of the creator ; and the 
 amateur ranks in value according to the good he is able 
 to accomplish, not in, but for art and artists. Occa- 
 sionally we find the producer and the reproducer com- 
 bined, — as in the case of Bach, Mozart, Mendelssohn, 
 without apparent injury to either faculty ; but we can- 
 not hope to find creator and performer distinct or com- 
 bined, to any significant extent, in the amateur. For, 
 as Hamerton says, the result of the artist's daily labor 
 is that of many thousand consecutive previous days of 
 
Woman as a Musician. 27 
 
 study, experience, and reflection ; while the result of 
 the labor of the most enthusiastic amateur can only be 
 drawn from unfinished training, and the experimental 
 practice of a few occasional days. An abyss in de- 
 gree, therefore, must always remain between the value 
 of the works, critical opinions, and teachings of the 
 artist, and those of the amateur ; yet the amateur is 
 as necessary to the artist, as is the artist to the amateur. 
 The genuine amateur, with that inborn " hunger of the 
 soul " for beauty and science, which is native to every 
 noble mind, wishes to possess artistic productions, and 
 to enjoy that refined, ideal influence, with which the 
 society of the true artist delights those among whom 
 he lives ; on the other hand, the genuine artist is not 
 only sustained in his elevated sphere, by the pecuniary 
 appreciation shown by the general public for his book, 
 music, paintings, sculpture, but he is incited to re- 
 doubled efforts by the admiration, encouragement, 
 sympathy, of his particular amateur friend. We al- 
 ways find that where largely appreciative amateur 
 taste exists, it is accompanied by great artistic pro- 
 ductivity. In this sense, the amateur is the very left 
 hand of the artist. Such was Lorenzo the magnificent ; 
 the Duke of Chandos to Handel ; the late Prince Al- 
 bert of England ; such is Louis of Bavaria to Wagner. 
 Such great amateur power is rarely found ; but even 
 good-will works wonders. Taste for art does not con- 
 stitute an amateur ; every one has a taste for art, of 
 
28 Woman as a Musician. 
 
 course, just as all women love flowers. But the genuine, 
 unpretending amateur, the assistant, the befriender of 
 artists, is an indispensable adjunct to all serious art de- 
 velopment. 
 
 This role is, from its sensitive, sympathetic nature, 
 especially fitted to a cultivated woman. If early 
 trained to such technical knowledge of one or more 
 arts as may render her judgment intelligent, if rever- 
 ential towards the meaning, and enthusiastic for the 
 beauty of art, if able to communicate her impression 
 to others, she is the best of mediators between artists 
 and the public. If we search the history of music, we 
 find many women who have themselves become illus- 
 trious as amateurs, from the beneficent influence they 
 have exerted on the lives of famous artists. But for 
 Marie Antoinette's faithful support of her old master, 
 Gluck, his wonderful operas, " Alceste," and his two 
 " Iphigenias," might never have been brought out in 
 Paris ; Madame Von Breuning was almost an intel- 
 lectual mother to Beethoven, in her kindness for, and 
 care of him ; Mdlle. Bosellis' friendship consoled 
 Haydn in his severe trials : Mozart's wife, Constance, 
 whose name he gave to the heroine of his opera, " The 
 elopement from the Seraglio," was also his best friend ; 
 between Mendelssohn and his sister, the closest intel- 
 lectual friendship existed ; Madame Voigt was the 
 helpful friend of Schumann and other composers; the 
 beautiful voice of the countess Delphine Potocka, the 
 
tVoman as a Mtisician. 29 
 
 constant friend and pupil of Chopin, soothed the suf- 
 ferings of his dying hour ; and many more instances 
 might be cited of woman's inspiring kindness and 
 helpfulness to composers and performers, though they 
 might not exceed in interest the charming memories of 
 Goethe in his Weimar circle, incited to fresh efforts by 
 the society of such women as the duchess Amalia, 
 Madame von Stein, Bettina von Arnim, and the lovely 
 singer Coronna Schroeter ; or the exalted friendship of 
 Vittoria Colonna and Michael Angelo ; and many other 
 well known instances among poets and painters. Not 
 all ladies, however, are fortunate enough to boast a 
 Gluck, a Handel, a Beethoven, a Michael Angelo, a 
 Tasso, among their everyday friends ; not all women 
 possess the wealth and power of a Princess Belgioioso 
 or a Baroness Rothschild ; but every American lady 
 who possesses the indispensable kindness of heart, re- 
 finement, generosity and culture, as well as influence, — 
 the wives'of men of intellectual power, inherited wealth, 
 or great commercial prominence, more especially — can 
 accomplish a great deal in her own small circle. 
 
 Ladies can do this in many ways ; by reasonably 
 persistent self-culture ; by aiding in the formation of 
 libraries of musical literature, of collections of rare musi- 
 cal instruments, and of private societies for the home 
 practice of music ; by condemning all that is unworthy 
 of,, and extraneous to art ; by discountenancing the in- 
 sinuating charlatanism of impudent adventurers, or 
 
30 Woman as a Musician. 
 
 vulgar speculators, and by seconding the claim to social 
 and public distinction of genuine artists ; by dissuading 
 aspirants of insufificient talent, from the profession of 
 art, which, rightly pursued, is a secular ministry, but 
 which, to be really successful as such, demands re- 
 markable qualities in its high-priests ; by sustaining 
 the efforts of gifted women-artists, compelled by sa- 
 cred duty or sublime adversity, to make a public dis- 
 play of their talents ; by lending their influence to, 
 and bestowing pecuniary aid on, every worthy artistic 
 enterprise. These grateful offices fall most naturally 
 into the hands of the women of America, since, from 
 the very nature of life here, the time of men of in- 
 fluence is almost wholly occupied with the claims of 
 business or politics ; few among them study music at 
 all in their youth, and how many who do, are able, on 
 leaving college and entering the actual school of life, 
 to prosecute musical practice and studies, and to carry 
 them to any practical result, amid the conflicting claims 
 of some profession, of commerce, or statesmanship ? 
 
 With lady amateurs, then, will chiefly rest the happy 
 task of preparing, by a beneficent use of such abilities 
 as they may possess, the soil which must foster the 
 young germs of future American art, and of hastening 
 the day of its appearance, though this may be long in 
 coming ; for history teaches us that the formation of 
 so-called national " schools " of any art, acknowledged 
 as such by other nations, and the world at large, and 
 
Woman as a Musician. 31 
 
 not only by friends at home, must be the work of long 
 centuries rather than of years. 
 
 One of the finest recommendations of music to our 
 sex, as an art worthy of universal cultivation, is, that it 
 not only penetrates to the mind of the hearer, but to 
 the heart also, thus widening and enlivening the facul- 
 ties, and rendering them better prepared, by sympathy, 
 to receive humane and elevated impressions. For 
 what is all culture, even the highest, save a means to 
 an end ? And what is that end, if not the vivifying 
 and humanizing of the heart, even more than the puri- 
 fying and strengthening of the intellect ? Music pos- 
 sesses a lofty ethical significance ; the very heart of 
 humanity beats in its rhythm ; and heart speaks to 
 heart far more completely and efficaciously than brain 
 to brain. Music too, bases itself on the social senti- 
 ment of mankind ; it is the annihilator of egotism, the 
 most complete expositor of the life of mankind in 
 unison, the art whose high mission it is to express the 
 noblest, warmest, most generous of human feelings, 
 religion, love, and patriotism ; the art of order, unity, 
 harmony ; the art that is destined to become, in the 
 far-distant, slowly advancing era of general civilization, 
 equality, and brotherhood, the universal language of 
 humanity. 
 
THE WOMAN OF THE FUTURE. 
 
THE WOMAN OF THE FUTURE. 
 
 The great Mazzini, in his superb essay " On the 
 Philosophy of Music," prophesied that a splendid 
 union of the highest qualities of Italian and German 
 operatic art would ere long make its appearance, and 
 become "The Music of the Future." The famous 
 philosopher and statesman also suggested, that in such 
 a music-drama, the ancient practice of using special 
 musical phrases, or leading motives, as exponents or 
 heralds of character, action, etc., might be revived 
 with advantage. Such a charming description of opera, 
 as Mazzini declared " The Music of the Future " 
 would be, has not yet appeared, — no genius great 
 enough for the requirements of the eloquent and pro- 
 found Italian having yet arisen ; but Wagner finely 
 carried out some of Mazzini's ideas, as did Verdi and 
 Meyerbeer, and every one knows how Wagner's follow- 
 ers, opponents, and friends applied Mazzini's term to 
 the music of the man they hated or worshipped, — few of 
 them aware, however, that the appellation originated 
 with the poetic Italian progressist, and was intended 
 to designate a species of art which Wagner did not 
 achieve. 
 
 In that " communication to his friends " with which 
 Wagner prefaces the words of his three dramas, The 
 
36 The Woman of the Future. 
 
 Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser, and Lohengrin, a 
 passage occurs, which I translate : " Death can only be 
 won by the doomed Dutchman by means of a woman 
 who must sacrifice herself to him for love's sake ; long- 
 ing for death drives him in search of such a woman ; 
 this woman, however, is no longer the housewife, die 
 befreite Penelope of Ulysses, but woman in general, 
 the yet unfound, longed-for, foreseen, endlessly wo- 
 manly woman — in a word, the woman of the future." 
 
 This title, " the woman of the future," given by 
 Wagner to the type of heroine he admires and pro- 
 poses to depict, is, it will be observed, a plagiaristic 
 transposition of the title given by the Italian revolu- 
 tionist to that ideal type of opera, which those modern 
 students whose musical education began at the time 
 Wagner's music was little known, are still vainly hop- 
 ing for. But this woman, so entitled by Wagner, did 
 the composer-librettist find, invent, depict, or even 
 sketch her, in his music-dramas, or did he leave this 
 world, his heroine " still unfound " ? 
 
 According to Wagner's own testimony, the grand 
 turning point on that poetico-musical path which he 
 afterwards pursued, is marked by his composition of 
 the Flying Dutchman. That tradition apparently sug- 
 gests to him some of the ideas which he afterwards 
 carried out to the extent of his power in his subse- 
 quent music dramas, and Senta was the model of all 
 his after heroines, self-sacrificing for love's sake, the in- 
 
The Woman of the Future. 37 
 
 dispensable characteristic of the woman of the future, 
 according to Wagner. But not even this leading trait 
 in Senta's character is original with Wagner; it is 
 borrowed from Heine's version of the legend, which 
 Wagner followed. Did Wagner develop the character 
 of Heine's shadowy heroism into anything like " the 
 woman of the future " — or as we now say, the coming 
 woman ? Senta, an interesting girl, half peasant, half 
 bourgeoise, has fallen in love with a picture, and in 
 visionary trances of imaginary passion, longs for the 
 coming of its original, whom she thinks she is fated to 
 redeem, and for whose sake she eventually commits 
 suicide. This is a very old idea in art and poetry ; and 
 in real life, from primeval days, woman has continually 
 sacrificed herself for love's sake, while dreams like 
 Senta's, on a higher plane and of a higher type, have 
 inspired the heroism of Jeanne d'Arc, the prayers of 
 countless novices, the martyrdom of myriads of moth- 
 ers. In one trait, Senta is a survival of the hysteric or 
 hypnotic " subject " of the middle ages, the half 
 crazy, all-despairing, supposed witch, — in that mystic 
 magnetic mood which seems to influence her actions 
 far more than the piety which we supposed natural to 
 the Scandinavians, until Ibsen altered the opinion of 
 some of us in that respect. Nor is Senta morally per- 
 fect, or even true ; she prevaricates with, and then 
 abandons the man she has loved, though she fancies 
 
38 The Woman of the Future. 
 
 that in doing so she will be able to redeem one who 
 has suffered more than her former lover. 
 
 Tannhaeuser's Elizabeth is a very interesting out- 
 line ; but she is not the perfect ideal of a princess who 
 lives to serve and worship the moral aspect and effect 
 of poetic art, as she is said to do ; in the singer's tour- 
 nament she at first gives evidence of a vacillating 
 willingness to condone Tannhaeuser's lyric excesses. 
 Nor is it quite certain that Elizabeth, praying and pin- 
 ing unto death, is entirely the cause of Tanjihaeuser's 
 redemption ; his own changeful moods count for much 
 in the denouement. 
 
 Elsa is more engaging than Elizabeth, with her 
 feminine timidity, her doubt in regard to the nature of 
 the man she has ^yedded, her original confidence in the 
 advice of an older woman. Yet Elsa is but a variation 
 of Senta ; she also displays the somnambulistic mood, 
 when, on her first entrance, apparently half unaware of 
 the questions addressed to her, she relates her vision 
 of the hero who will come to defend her. Although 
 the schemes and characters of Ortrud and Telramund 
 are a copy of those of Eglantine and Lysiart in 
 Weber's " Euryanthe," Ortrud is perhaps the strong- 
 est of all of Wagner's women ; but she does not pos- 
 sess a single feature of the woman of the future ac- 
 cording to Wagner — an Ortrud would laugh to scorn 
 the idea of sacrificing herself to any man, above all, 
 f >r love's sake ! 
 
The Woman of the Future. 39 
 
 Only two women are prominent in the four divisions 
 of Der Ring des Nibelungen — Sieglinde and Brunn- 
 hilde ; the former is almost a primeval woman, sub- 
 ject to passion and doom in her mortal ignorance, as 
 the immortal was only in part ; Briinnhilde is but a 
 noble stock figure, almost an " allegorical woman " 
 (wearisome type !), for whom we should care little, were 
 she not so unjustly ill-treated. As for Freia, Fricka, 
 Gutrune, Erda, and the rest, have we not met them 
 often in fairy mead and classic grove ? Classic grove, 
 under many names and nationalities ? And there is 
 such an air of remoteness about them, there are so 
 many revolting, tiresome, and painful traits in their 
 actions and their destinies, that they never move our 
 deepest feeling, even when Wagner's idea of womanly 
 self-sacrifice is partly carried out by some of these 
 characters. 
 
 Everywhere in Greek poetry, in legend, in history, 
 in the cycle of Kelto-Teutonic romance, do we en- 
 counter similar women — Albertis, Genevieve, the rival 
 queens and furies of Burgundy, Melusina — whose 
 legend was reversed by ungallant Teutonic poets, for 
 in that old form of the swan-serpent-woman tradition, 
 it was the husband's and not the wife's curiosity that 
 lost Eden ; nor has Wagner developed the characters 
 of any of these heroines in a new direction save in 
 tliat of his id^e fixe. 
 
40 The Woman of the Future. 
 
 It may almost be said that Wagner's "second 
 women " are his most characteristic ones, and more 
 modern than the prime donne ; this appears to be 
 the case especially, when we find these parts enacted 
 and sung by such an artist as Frauline Brandt, who 
 does not merely pose and declaim, but who lives her 
 part for the moment, whether it be Weber's Eglantine 
 or Wagner's Magdalene. 
 
 Eva possesses that odd, mystic trait with which 
 Wagner distinguishes so many of his women in being 
 subject to the fatalistic spell of love at first sight ; and 
 that touch of magnetism, the lingering, fixed looks of 
 Wagner's lovers when they meet, is not absent in the 
 " Mastersingers." Of the self-sacrifice of " the woman 
 of the future " according to Wagnerism, there is hap- 
 pily naught needed in this opera ; nay, charming Eva 
 at times much resembles the Penelope type, the very 
 ideal decried by Wagner. Eva at heart is thoroughly 
 human, perhaps the most charming of all Wagner's 
 heroines, delightful in her impulsive petulance, yet 
 even bourgeoise. 
 
 The character of Isolde as depicted by Wagner, 
 poetically as well as musically, is in some respects his 
 masterpiece of feminine portraiture ; a companion 
 picture to that of Siegfried, which is now one of the 
 best embodiments in modern art, of the ancient 
 Thamnus, Linus, Adonis idea — the masculine form of 
 Spring, the sun-god in youth. 
 
The Woman of the Future. 41 
 
 Egyptian Isis, Asyrian Istar, Keltic Elissa, Ashtoreth- 
 Basym Asti, Astarte, — Star, island : goddess of many 
 a shrine, old as earth, young as this morning's dawn, 
 echoes of whose many titles and transmigrations may 
 be found all over Europe and the Orient, worshipped 
 for ages ere she had become, in Icelandic Saga, in old 
 French romance, in Scotch and Cornish and Irish song, 
 a mere mortal maid, despoiled of her high prerogatives, 
 though not of her voice, her beauty, her sorcery and 
 charm, her passion and sorrow, " that indescribable 
 witchery of the Celt," as Renan calls it, — from the 
 " infinite variety " of her fascinating legend, an ex- 
 celling musical ideal might have been created. Dei 
 cidedly the most poetic of Wagner's women, he de- 
 picted her in but one phase of her character, chiefly as 
 he found that described in Kelto-Teutonic romance, 
 and added to the sketch the spell of his wondrous 
 harmony. From this magically attractive character 
 and myth, about which the idolatry of so many 
 races of men, the imaginations of many poets have 
 clustered, another Shakesperian enchantress, an ideal 
 " woman of the future " incarnate, might have been 
 evolved, — it was not. 
 
 Where, then, amid the masters' works may we seek 
 this elusive She, — this combination of contrarieties ; 
 prophecies, echoes, shadows or gleams of whom we 
 fancy we have seen and heard in Hamerling's, Foe's, 
 Flaubert's, Loti's Women, in Esmeralda, even Carmen, 
 
42 The Woman of the Future. 
 
 in the tones of Ibsen's Noble Malcontents, in the eyes 
 of Bastien-Lepage's Jeanne d'Arc, as in the electric 
 glances of Makart's poseuses, in the silence of those 
 wives and mothers who follow the men they love 
 through the horrors of a worse than Dantesque hell of 
 ire on earth, — the women whom Raphael foresaw when 
 he fixed the gaze of the Sistine Madonna, and Leon- 
 ardo when he took captive forever the smile of Mona 
 Lisa ? 
 
 Is it perhaps in Wagner's final feminine creation, that 
 we may hope to find the new ideal, — ^in Kundry, 
 doomed to ages of slavery, — Kundry, the sorceress and 
 temptress of the enchanted garden, — Kundry, absolved 
 and redeemed ? 
 
 No ; Kundry is almost a satire on Wagner's precon- 
 ceived and early announced ideal ; or would be, but 
 that, as I think, the women of Pagan days were the 
 only women Wagner admired and was able to depict 
 and understand ; and they, his natural objects of ad- 
 miration, insensibly influenced every endeavor which 
 he made to embody, with conscious and preconceived 
 intention, a very different ideal. 
 
 Wagner has given us three types of women, and all 
 three are ancient and conventional ; the self-sacrificing 
 woman — Senta, Elsa, Elizabeth , the heroic or ambi- 
 tious woman, — Briinnhilde, Ortrud ; and the sensuous 
 being, imbued with supersensuous power, as touc'ned 
 by the finger of Fate, — Venus, Sieglinde, Isolde. 
 
The Woman of the Future. 43 
 
 Kundry, in whom we find something more or less of all 
 these salient features of Wagner's women. Kundry is 
 in no sense whatever a " Woman of the future," but 
 includes the entire womanly ideal now lost, in that she 
 is a compound of womanly character in general as we 
 find it in history and tradition, a complete embodi- 
 ment of the women of the Past, — the pre-historic serf, 
 the legendary sorceress, the virgin saint or martyr 
 mother ! 
 
 As for the woman of the future, the sister of man, 
 seek her not in the serfs, sorceresses, saints of the 
 Wagnerian music drama ; there, though perhaps 
 " longed for," she is, indeed as " yet, unfound !" 
 
THE RANK AND DIVISION OF THE ARTS. 
 
THE RANK AND DIVISION OF THE ARTS. 
 
 The Greeks grouped the arts in two divisions, each 
 division subdivided into three. The first group — of 
 tactile or plastic arts, works in which group appeared 
 complete to the beholder, when they left their maker's 
 hand, — consisted of architecture, sculpture and paint- 
 ing, "governed by symmetry and resting in space." 
 The second group — of practical and ideal arts, needing 
 the services of interpreters or performers to render 
 perceptible the meaning of all creations belonging to 
 this group — consisted of poetry, music and dancing, 
 " governed by rhythm and motion, and existing in 
 time." The Greek system, of which the above is an 
 outline, also assumed that all arts were dependent on 
 each other, and were united and completed in the form 
 of the drama, as that was accepted and practiced 
 among this highly artistic people. 
 
 The German classification of the arts — notably that 
 of Vischer the great aesthetician, is threefold : Plastic 
 or ocular, psychic-emotional or aural, and ideal or 
 poetic. The aural and ocular arts are supposed to re- 
 pose on a basis of sensuous objectivity and subjectivity ; 
 while poetic or complete art is said to unite the sub- 
 jective and objective, the intellectual and emotional. 
 This system ranks the arts thus : poetry, music, archi- 
 
48 ' The Rank and Division of the Arts. 
 
 tecture, sculpture and painting, with lesser but insig- 
 nificant subdivisions. 
 
 If I were to characterize the various arts, it would 
 be somewhat as follows : 
 
 " Art is a unity ; but in this unity we find the variety 
 that exists in every organization. Poetry, the most 
 emotional and intellectual of the various branches of 
 Art, may be likened to its heart and mind ; Archi- 
 tecture, Sculpture and Design, the most formal, we may 
 term its bony structure and its fashioning hand ; Paint- 
 ing the most sensuous, gives it flesh and blood ; and 
 Music, the least earthly, is the winged soul, whose 
 power elevates the entire organism of art to the high- 
 est supernatural and spiritual atmosphere." 
 
 Leonardo da Vinci was once asked which art he re- 
 garded as first and finest ? His response was, — that 
 which demands the greatest mental, the least manual, 
 labor. Were his judgment correct, poetry would 
 stand, first, as its labor is exclusively mental ; the poet 
 need not even write his verses down ; he can commit 
 them to memory, and recite or sing them. But the 
 universality of poetry, places it beyond rivalry as first 
 and finest of arts, including all, as it does. Music 
 stands second, according to Leonardo's definition, for 
 although the composer's work is all of the brain and 
 heart, he, and he only, can properly commit his crea- 
 tion to paper, though it is just possible for a secretary 
 to do this manual labor for him. Three plastic arts, 
 sculpture, architecture, painting, follow ; painting last, 
 
The Rank and Division of the A rts. 49 
 
 for although the sculptor and architect may in a meas- 
 ure transfer some of their brain work to other hands, 
 there is little indeed which the painter can pass over to 
 his pupils — and his art is all, though light, manual 
 labor. Then comes the army of reproducers ; en- 
 gravers, etc., — conductors, musical performers, actors, 
 dancers. Singers take a sort oi unique position ; to 
 be eminent, they must be exceptionally gifted, physi- 
 cally ; without such gifts the greatest mental excel- 
 lence avails them naught ; and then comes the ques- 
 tion — do singers work, or only spontaneously enjoy 
 their own exceptional physical qualities, when they 
 sing ? 
 
 That which a really great artist has to say about art, 
 is always delightful to read ; he understands profoundly 
 what he is talking about ; the pleasure ground through 
 which he leads us, does not need the signboard " No 
 technicalities to be found here " ; the great artist, 
 having technics at his finger ends, uses them as nature 
 uses her very technical and specific agencies when she 
 reveals to us a perfect flower, the clumsy, bungler, the 
 half-informed amateur, is never technical ; he dare not 
 expose his own ignorance. But the artist can be 
 charmingly, reliably, instructively technical, and if, 
 when he unfolds his mastery of technique in general 
 conclusions, he happens to be a Leonardo da Vinci — 
 musician, painter, explorer, author, man of the world, 
 and man of surprisingly modern tendencies besides, it 
 
50 The Rank and Division of the Arts. 
 
 is no wonder, that in discussing such a subject as that 
 of art classification, he should excel all mere theorists, 
 whether in speculation or practical judgment. 
 
 Leonardo having been asked which of the arts he 
 ranked first, replied, after a little reflection, that he 
 considered that art noblest, which, — inborn gifts as- 
 sumed, and all necessary preliminary study and labor 
 over — demanded the least amount of bodily exertion 
 on the part of its practician. 
 
 According to Leonardo's judgment, then, we find 
 poetry ranking as with the Greeks and Germans, the 
 first of the arts (in an intellectual sense it includes 
 them all), for it scarcely demands any bodily labor ; 
 the poet, having mentally conceived and completed 
 his works, can then, if he pleases, dispense with even 
 the light manual labor of the pen, by memorizing, and 
 that of publication, by reciting them. 
 
 The second of the arts must be Music, for the 
 composer, his brain creation completed, sits down, and 
 pens his score for performance. This he can in hardly 
 any case omit to do ; at the utmost he may recite his 
 work to a secretary ; and that secretary, in order per- 
 fectly- to carry out the composer's intention, ought to 
 have previously studied under him for many years. 
 Seldom, however, do composers relegate this important 
 task to others, save in a few exceptional cases — as when 
 blindness renders it necessary. 
 
The Rank and Division of the Arts. 5 1 
 
 It is a little doubtful whether the third rank, ac- 
 cording to Leonardo's standard, should be adjudged to 
 the creative architect, or to the painter. While it 
 would seem that the great architect should not need 
 to accomplish with his own hands work which his sub- 
 ordinates could do almost as well as himself, yet the 
 greater his genius, the greater will be his enthusiasm, 
 his anxiety to see his creation approach his ideal as 
 nearly as possible in every detail, the great painters of 
 decorative works, even a Michael Angelo — is exposed 
 not only to bodily labor and fatigue, but to actual 
 danger, while working. Then the rank of painters de- 
 pends much on their rank within the limits of their 
 own art. The great creative, imaginative, historical 
 artists — even some famous painters of character in 
 portraits are considered to stand far above painters of 
 landscape and animal and still life, in which branches 
 of painting technical, imitative and mechanical facul- 
 ties are brought more into play than the higher intel- 
 lectual ones. Every painter however, whether his art 
 takes rank high or low within the limits of painting, is 
 compelled to undergo a certain amount of manual la- 
 bor, and not always of the pleasantest kind, before 
 he can accomplish his pictorial intention. The sculp- 
 tor and the architect probably follow, according to 
 Leonardo's standard, though some will argue in favor 
 of the superior rank of the architect, while others will 
 regard the sculptor as the more intellectual of the two. 
 
52 The Rank and Division of the Arts. 
 
 It is doubtful whether Leonardo took the reproduct- 
 ive arts into consideration ; I do not think he did. 
 In his day, workers and engravers of meta:! and gems 
 were often very great artists indeed ; the singer was 
 frequently a composer, the painter an engraver, and 
 yet his standard may still be applied, with some ex- 
 ceptions, to our modern reproductive arts. 
 
 Among the representatives of these occupations, 
 singers and engravers, wood carvers, etc., are those 
 whose labors appear highest. But great singers, 
 though merely imitators or reproducers of other peo- 
 ples' musical thoughts, are nevertheless exceptional 
 creatures ; possessing an inborn gift, their studies are 
 light, and by the mere exhalation of breath, they are 
 able to utter beauty in exquisite tone. The art of en- 
 graving does not at first blush appear very intellectual, 
 but it necessitates studies that may be termed as 
 philosophic as they are scientific ; and as engravers 
 are valuable in exact proportion to the fidelity with 
 which they copy for us the ideas and efforts of others, 
 they have ample opportunity for the cultivation of two 
 noble qualities, patience and self-denial or abnegation. 
 The artist-engraver, etcher, etc., of course ranks with 
 the painters. 
 
 The occupation of the actor must be fatiguing to a 
 considerable degree, but pursued under fair conditions, 
 nothing in it is of a menial nature, or likely to degrade 
 body or spirit. On the contrary, at least half the ac- 
 
The Rank and Division of the Arts. 53 
 
 tor's occupation — rendering the mind familiar with the 
 great or witty thoughts of poets and dramatists, is 
 purely intellectual. Sustaining Leonardo's standard, 
 I might raise a question of precedence within the lit- 
 tle kingdom of instrumental performers. Organ play- 
 ing is a fine pursuit, yet it flattens the finger tips as 
 much as violoncello playing hardens them ; and what 
 shall we say to the inflating of metal and wood wind 
 instruments, which distorts the mouth, according to 
 the testimony of Minerva and Alcibiades? We should 
 regard the violinist, I think, as superior to the pianist ; 
 each endures some hours of daily exercise on his 
 instrument, be he never so perfect ; but the violinist 
 exacts finer faculties than the pianist ; he must create 
 his tone, must possess a strong sense of symmetry, or 
 delicate sensuous organization ; and he finds, even with- 
 in the bounds of mere reproduction, greater opportuni- 
 ties for the development of individuality and originali- 
 ty, than any other instrumental player. It is, how- 
 ever, usually true, that the greater the violinist or pian- 
 ist, the more gifted is he or she in other respects, excep- 
 tions only prove this rule — but while the great pianist 
 is often an excellent composer, seldom is the great 
 composer as excellent a pianist as was Mendelssohn. 
 
 In spite of the high rank accorded to dancers among 
 the Greeks, I should be inclined to award them the 
 lowest rank, according to Leonardo's standard. The 
 labor attendant on their preparation for their profes- 
 
^4 The Rank and Division of the Arts. 
 
 sion is greater than that endured while " in training" 
 by any athlete, and only supportable by persons of 
 excellent health and more than ordinary strength. 
 There are so very few really great premieres danseuses, 
 that we may assume the survivals to be infrequent 
 among aspirants to this rank. There is little of an 
 intellectual nature in the dancer's calling, and yet, the 
 more talented the woman, the greater the dancer — as 
 in the case of Taglioni. 
 
 One of the oddest, and most amusing endeavors to- 
 wards a classification of the arts appeared recently in 
 an English artistic periodical ; in an article Apropos of 
 French acting, this observation occurred — " the in- 
 telligent arts as distinguished from the intellectual " — 
 and again, " the Latin races, which are intelligent, will 
 always act and paint better than the Teutonic, which 
 are intellectual." The only logical conclusion to be 
 drawn from such a sweeping and prejudiced classifica- 
 tion as this, is, that the painter's art is merely on a level 
 with the actor's, and further, that the Latin races are 
 not intellectual, while the Teutonic people are not in- 
 telligent ! 
 
SOME FAMOUS SONGS. 
 
SOME FAMOUS SONGS. 
 
 How evanescent — beyond all other musical crea- 
 tions — a song appears at first thought ! Intangible as 
 the breath of the sod, the perfume of the flower, its 
 brief, yet ever-renewed existence resembles that of the 
 morning cloud, or of dew that vanishes at the touch of 
 the morning ray. But fragile as this delicate art-form 
 may appear, it is as much an evidence of inward hu- 
 man force and fire as the dew, the cloud, the breath of 
 flowers, are manifestations of the subtle yet powerful 
 agencies of Nature. The apparently transitory char- 
 acter of music is but superficial ; the law of Music's 
 being, like that of Nature itself, is active, fluid, pro- 
 gressive, endless transformation ; and transformed, ex- 
 tended, developed, song is at once the creative germ, 
 and the end of music as an art ; while in its primal 
 form — intense, brief, concentrated — it is a more com- 
 plete artistic medium than any other for the instan- 
 taneous expression of lyric passion. When thus em- 
 ployed by genius, it not only strikes us at first as \v\th 
 the fresh charm of a spontaneous, natural emanation, but 
 it seems to attach man more intimately to Nature, and, 
 in its continually renewed existence, to unite the emo- 
 tions of one generation with those of another. The 
 power of song is as deep as it is universal. It gives a 
 
58 Some Famous Songs. 
 
 liberal course to many noble enthusiasms, wrongly de- 
 frauded of expression by the cowardice of convention- 
 ality ; it enlivens labor and society ; exalts religious 
 feeling, and transfigures even the crime and horror of 
 barbarous war. It is this glow of truth and warmth 
 that has given so extended a fame to many songs, 
 simple in outward form — above all, to the folk-songs 
 of European nations, pulsating with the very pulse of 
 the people to whom they owe their birth. But amid 
 the vast chorus of songs composed by singers of more 
 conscious aspiration than that which inspired the un- 
 known authors of the folk-songs, we find a few of such 
 universal meaning, that they rise beyond the others in 
 an isolation resembling that which isolates the soaring 
 song of the lark above the music of the wood, and, 
 like that, uttering tones at once of earth and heaven ; 
 at home with the heart in its nest, with the soul in its 
 ether. Such songs have not all been written by artist- 
 musicians ; Luther, Rouget de I'lsle, and others who 
 have composed world-famous songs, though musicians 
 by education, were only so by profession in part, or for 
 a time ; others were not artists at all ; yet in spite of 
 this disadvantage, it would seem as if some great event 
 of universal or individual interest had the power of 
 temporarily transforming a layman as regards musical 
 art, into an instrument of inspired enthusiasm. The 
 songs born of such emotion cannot perish ; they be- 
 come immortal. Musical immortality, however, is but 
 
Some Famous Songs. 59 
 
 comparative. Music is an art so new, so modern in its 
 history, that few songs of importance — aside from 
 some Gregorian chants, still well known among us — 
 can boast an existence of more than ten centuries ; and 
 on questioning art history for the records of songs 
 either remarkable from their historic significance or 
 from circumstances of general or romantic interest con- 
 nected with them, I find these to be very limited in 
 number compared to the many whose fame exists by 
 right of intrinsic artistic beauty alone. 
 
 More than eight hundred years ago, a war song was 
 sung by a Norman soldier and minstrel, as he rode at 
 Hastings in the front rank of William the conqueror's 
 army ; and while he advanced singing, he also played 
 juggler's tricks with his drawn sword, as if the subjuga- 
 tion of England were a mere jest to soldier-singers 
 among Frenchmen like himself. 
 
 A passage in the " Roman de Rou," written by Wace 
 in the twelfth century, says : — 
 
 " Taillefer, who sang so well and loud. 
 Passed swiftly on a charger proud 
 Before the Duke ; he sang the strain 
 Of Roland and of Carlemaine, 
 And of the vassals stricken low 
 With Olivier at Roncesvaux." 
 
 Tennyson, in the last act of " Harold," makes Stig- 
 
 and say of Taillefer : — 
 
 " There is one 
 Come as Goliath came of yore ; he flings 
 His brand in air and catches it again ; 
 He is chanting some old war-song." 
 
6o Some Famous Songs. 
 
 This " old war song " was then already any age not 
 exceeding 290 years or so, if, as the chroniclers are 
 fairly well agreed, it was the Chant of Roland. This 
 song (or these various songs?) described the famous 
 fight, defeat, and death at Roncesvaux, in 778, of 
 Roland, Charlemagne's paladin, while invading the 
 Basque country ; 317 years after the battle, Arch- 
 bishop Turpin wrote a chronicle of the event in 3,976 
 lines. It is, I think, more than probable that Turpin's 
 chronicle was merely a compilation of folk-songs and 
 traditions which he found floating about, and in which 
 Roland had already become a half mythical hero. One 
 of these may have been the very song sung by Taillefer 
 at Hastings. M. Francisque-Michel, one of the best 
 authorities on Basque lore, believes that it was. He 
 even expresses an opinion that the ancient " Chant 
 of Altabisear " which was translated into French verse 
 and prose about 25 years ago, is a fragment of one of 
 the Roland songs, and contemporary with the battle — 
 basing his opinion on internal evidence contained in 
 the meaning and language of the Basque song itself. 
 Granting the chant of Altabisear to be a veritable 
 antique, and supposing this especial song of Roland to 
 have been sung by Taillefer, some of its striking and 
 original passages are not inappropriate to the battle of 
 Hastings. "A cry arises amid the Basque Mountains. 
 The master, standing at his door, asks, " who is there ?" 
 The dog, asleep at his master's feet, rises and fills 
 
Some Famous Songs. 6i 
 
 Altabisear with his barking. 'Tis the dull murmur of 
 an approaching army. What seek they in our moun- 
 tains, these men of the North ? God gave us our 
 mountains to keep strangers from troubling our peace — 
 the rocks turn, they fall — they destroy the troops — 
 what mountains of crushed bones? What a sea of 
 blood ! Fly, king Carloman, with your black feathers 
 and red cloak ! Your nephew, Roland the brave, lies 
 dead below ; his courage availed him naught. Basques, 
 launch your arrows after the flying troops ! Where is 
 now their hedge of lances ; where are their banners of 
 every colour ? No more the lightning flashes from 
 their blood-stained armor. There is not one left. The 
 eagle shall feast to-night upon their crushed flesh, but 
 leave their bones to bleach through all eternity." The 
 Basques are rich in romantic legendary folk-songs, 
 many of which relate to the ghost of Roland (or 
 Roldan) and also in war and marching songs ; and 
 their ancient custom of singing these when descending 
 their mountains to battle with the Moors and Romans, 
 won for them the name of Cantabri (Cantabrians) 
 among the latter. 
 
 No reliable records exist of the music of the song or 
 songs of Roland, though such a chant is said to have 
 been sung by French soldiers up to the fourteenth 
 century. For the thirteenth, no popular song was 
 so universally sung — in camp, fair, feast and market — 
 as that entitled " L'homme armfe." It finally besieged 
 
62 Some Famous Songs. 
 
 the very gates of the church, and obtained admittance 
 there as tenor or principal motive, of masses composed 
 by such men as Dufay, Josquin, Tinctor, Palestrina 
 and others. Towards the end of the last century, an 
 opinion worth recording, prevailed among erudite mu- 
 sicians that the air of " L'homme armfe " was that of 
 the " Chant of Roland." But since the appearance of 
 M. Francisque Michel's work, this opinion has fallen 
 into general discredit. The real air or airs of the 
 ancient song or songs probably resembled the Grego- 
 rian chants more than the later songs of the trouba- 
 dours and trouvferes who succeeded that race of warrior 
 bands of whom Taillefer was probably one. 
 
 The troubadour songs exerted a great and lasting 
 influence on the progress of vocal art in Europe, and 
 many possess beauty enough (when, at least, sung by a 
 poet-singer with sufificient genius to re-vivify them) to 
 warrant admiration even in our day ; but few indeed 
 have become famous, and only one may be termed 
 universally so, from the fame and adventures of its 
 poet, Richard Lion-heart of England, and its composer, 
 his friend the minstrel Blondel de Nesles. King Rich- 
 ard, having quarreled with the Duke of Austria, at- 
 tempted, when on his way to England from the Holy 
 Land, to pass through the Duke's dominions in dis- 
 guise, but was seized and imprisoned. The minstrel 
 Blondel, on finding that the King had not reached Eng- 
 land, determined to ascertain his fate, and followed his 
 
Some Famous Songs. 63 
 
 traces for a long time, making use of his own ability 
 as a minstrel in order to ingratiate himself with per- 
 sons of importance who lived near fortresses, and to 
 obtain all the information he could in regard to recent 
 prisoners. When he reached the neighbourhood of 
 the castle of the Duke of Austria, he learned that an 
 unknown captive of great consequence was imprisoned 
 there; and after much inquiry and endeavour, he dis- 
 covered the tower in which this prisoner was confined. 
 One evening he placed himself under a window of the 
 tower and sang the first verse of a song " Domna, 
 vostras beatas," which had been composed by himself 
 and King Richard. After a pause of anxious expecta- 
 tion he heard the voice of the King singing the second 
 verse of the song inside the tower. Blondel immedi- 
 ately returned to England, where he gave such infor- 
 mation as led to the king's release. 
 
 This romantic anecdote is a pretty verification of 
 Schiller's lines 
 
 " Singer and king may wander hand in hand ; 
 Equal on highest mortal heights they stand." 
 
 France, sometimes termed unmusical (!), possesses a 
 
 larger number of historically famous songs, than any 
 
 other country, while the number of miscellaneous songs 
 
 produced there in the course of a century, has been 
 
 estimated as about fifty millions ! Michelet says that 
 
 the ancient monarchy bequeathed to France one great 
 
 name, that of Henry IV, and two songs, " Charmante 
 
64 Some Famous Songs. 
 
 Gabrielle," and " Malbrough." Michelet overlooked 
 a finer song than either of these, the characteristic and 
 original, though less popular (because partizan) " Vive 
 Henri IV !" The words of " Charmante Gabrielle " 
 are given to Henri himself, — if they were not written 
 by Bishop Bertaut — on the king's return from Sedan in 
 1666, and are in honor of the beautiful Gabrielle d' 
 Estr^es. The pleasing air was composed by the king's 
 chapel-master Du Caiirroy. 
 
 The satirical song " Malbrough " is one of uncom- 
 mon historical interest. The authorship of the words 
 and music is unknown, though tradition claims that it 
 was written, and either composed or adapted io an air 
 then popular, in 1709, by some comic musical and po- 
 etic genius among the French soldiers, when at bivouac 
 after the battle of Malplaquet. Nisard says, in his 
 work on the French folk-song, that the ballad now 
 known as " Malbrook," was first written in 1563, on 
 the assassination of the Duke de Guise, and was after- 
 wards sung in the French army, with alterations, and a 
 different name, on the death of every general of im- 
 portance. In this song the Duke of Marlborough is 
 declared dead, though he only died thirteen years 
 afterwards ; but it was said of him that, as the French 
 were unable to vanquish, they tried to sing him to 
 death, and made numberless satirical songs after each 
 new victory he gained. In this song French wit amus- 
 ingly revenged the ill-luck of French valour ; and the 
 
Some Famous Songs. 65 
 
 lamentable ballad of " The death and burial of the in- 
 vincible Malbrook " — then very much alive indeed — 
 with its absurd burden, " Mironton, mironton, miron- 
 taine," and its merry dance tune, has woven an in- 
 eradicable thread of ridicule through the reputation of 
 the great Duke of Marlborough. It was traditionally 
 sung in France for seventy years before its publication, 
 until Marie Antoinette took a fancy to it from hearing 
 it often sung as a cradle song to the Dauphin by his 
 nurse. Nothing less than the fall of the Bastille was 
 necessary in order to stifle the popularity of this song. 
 Napoleon, though he entertained a sort of apathy to 
 music, was accustomed to sing " Malbrook " in a loud 
 voice when he mounted his horse at the beginning' of 
 a campaign. If we may believe Chateaubriand as a 
 musical authority, the air was known to and sung by 
 Godfrey de Bouillon's crusaders under the walls of 
 Jerusalem. The Arabs still sing and claim to have 
 learnt it at the battle of Massoura, when the French 
 troops are said to have sung it to martial verses, clash- 
 ing their bucklers, and shouting their war cry " Mont- 
 joye St. Denis !" On the other hand, it is thought 
 that Malbrook may have been brought to Europe at 
 the time of the crusades, or transplanted from Egypt 
 or Arabia by French soldiers. It is well known that 
 Carl Maria von Weber carefully examined, drew from, 
 and developed the rich treasures of melody to be 
 found in European folk-songs. According to his own 
 
66 Some Fatuous Songs. 
 
 acknowledgment, he has, as he said, " insidiously con- 
 cealed " the air of " Malbrook to the war is going " in 
 the second part of the " Hunters' Chorus," in his 
 opera " Der Freischutz." 
 
 Beethoven introduced " Malbrook " in his " Battle 
 Symphony " ; Beaumarchais in his " Mariage de 
 Figaro," and the air is often heard in French Vaude- 
 villes. 
 
 Gr^try, the composer of such charming operas, il- 
 lustrated the adventure of Blondel and the English 
 king, in his opera " Richard coeur de lion," and com- 
 posed a chant, or rather couplets, for the scene in which 
 the minstrel recognizes the king's voice. These coup- 
 lets, " Une fi^vre brulante " became very popular, but 
 another air of Gr^try given to "Blondel, " O Richard 
 6 mon roi !" became historical. This air was sung at 
 the Versailles theatre on the occasion of a loyal ban- 
 quet at which poor Louis XVI was present (October, 
 1789), and the report of the enthusiasm with which it 
 was sung is said to have precipitated the advance of 
 the enraged people. It has even been affirmed that the 
 " (^a ira " (in the words of which Lafayette and Frank- 
 lin " are said " to have had " a say ") and " La Car- 
 magnole " were the revolutionary responses to the 
 royal song ; but the air of " ^a ira " had been known 
 before. 
 
 The real utterance of the French revolution was 
 breathed in " La Marseillaise," greatest of battle 
 
Sotne Famous Songs. 67 
 
 marches, and now by common consent the universal 
 song of progress and freedom, spite of some too 
 sanguinary verses which it includes. Yet its poet- 
 composer was a man of gentle nature, who seemed to 
 have become a soldier rather from accident than choice ; 
 the song itself, all sounding flame, was composed 
 amid friendly, half idyllic surroundings ; its author 
 lived a poor and almost hunted life, and died a pa- 
 thetic death, forlorn and neglected. Surely it was the 
 tocsin of Fate that awakened the lava breath of that 
 redoutable melody ? At the bidding of a lady, too, 
 the wife of Rouget de I'lsle's friend, baron Frederic 
 de Dietrich, then mayor of Strasbourg, and who asked 
 .the young officer to aid them with his talents by writ- 
 ing a patriotic march against the foreign coalition and 
 distracting the minds of their guests from passing 
 events (which this ode eventually helped to precipi- 
 tate !). After its composition — Rouget de I'lsle wrote 
 the words first, and the music afterwards, he said, 
 though many of us were long led to believe differently, 
 from Lamartine's enthusiastic relation, since proven in- 
 correct in some details — It was played on a Silbermann 
 piano by a little niece of the baron, and he, who pos- 
 sessed a good tenor, sang it. Madame copied and ar- 
 ranged it, and distributed copies among friends. The 
 immense popularity of the ode surprised and disquieted 
 its author ; who, however going into garrison at Hu- 
 ningue, and in the house of his friend M. Ritter, mem- 
 
68 Some Famous Songs. 
 
 ber of the legislative assembly, put the finishing 
 touches to the words of the Marseillaise, often trying 
 over snatches of its air on his violin (he was not a singer 
 or a pianist, as Lamartine asserts). He made MS. 
 copies of the hymn and sent them to friends in other 
 places ; this accounts for its appearance in Provence be- 
 fore its publication at Strasbourg. It was sung in 
 Marseilles at a banquet of sans-culottes for the first 
 time ; a month later as they entered Paris, and again 
 at the storming of the Tuileries. It was published 
 soon afterwards, but anonymously, by Dannbach in 
 Strasbourg ; and in 179S, three years later, it was re- 
 published with its author's name attached to it. But 
 soon after its first publication it became universally 
 accepted as the hymn of the Republic, carried through 
 France from Provence to Paris by the 600 federalists 
 of Marseilles, Barbaroux at their head. Rouget de 
 risle refusing to take the revolutionary oath, was 
 cashiered (by_ the famous ancestor of the present 
 president Carnot) ; and while hiding in the Jura Moun- 
 tains, learned the name that had been given to his 
 march from a peasant ; while his mother, religious and 
 a royalist, was horrified to hear the family name asso- 
 ciated with a chorus sung by " a horde of brigands," 
 as she called them. The Marseillaise, they say, can 
 never be fully understood until we have heard it sung 
 in chorus by thousands of voices, vibrating with patri- 
 otic enthusiasm. Yet I have heard those who have 
 
Some Famous Songs. 69 
 
 heard Rachel, declare that when she chanted La Mar- 
 seillaise, so intense was the impression produced by 
 her fire and passion, that the spirit of an entire army- 
 seemed concentrated in her slender figure and flaming 
 eyes. Heine wrote of this song, in 1830 : " A strong 
 joy seizes me! as I sit writing, music resounds under 
 my window, and in the elegiac rage of its large melody 
 I recognize that hymn with which the handsome Bar- 
 baroux and his companions once greeted the city of 
 Paris. What a song ! It thrills me with fiery delight, 
 it kindles within me the glowing star of enthusiasm 
 and the swift rocket of satire. Swelling, burning tor- 
 rents of song rush from the height of freedom, in 
 streams as bold as those with which the Ganges leaps 
 from the heights of Himalaya ! I can write no more, 
 this song intoxicates my brain ; louder and nearer ad- 
 vances the powerful chorus — 
 
 ' Aux armes citoyens !' " 
 Gr6try in his " Essais Sur la Musique," says — " French 
 music in our day, takes tremendous strides ; * * * 
 So the air of the Marseillaise, composed by an ama- 
 teur who has only taste, and who is ignorant of har- 
 mony * * * has been the chief musical illustra- 
 tion of our revolution. And why? Because here we 
 have melody ; without melody there is no music that 
 mdy be remembered ; and a song that cannot be re- 
 membered, is an enigma that has no solution." Gr^try 
 adds, that the citizen Rouget de I'lsle sent him his 
 
"JO Some Famous Songs. 
 
 hymn from Strasbourg, where he then we^s, six months 
 before it was known in Paris, and at the officer's re- 
 quest Gr6try had several copies made and distributed 
 them. 
 
 There is something fatalistic about the whole story 
 of the Marseillaise, and it would seem as though its 
 author, in composing it, was inspired by some greater 
 influence than that of his own ability — increased to 
 genius for a brief period. The Greeks would have de- 
 clared him momentarily inspired by " the breath of the 
 god," — an oracle, for the time. A royalist, or at most, 
 a moderate republican, — an officer by profession, a mu- 
 sician by choice — quartered in Alsace, ancient Druidic 
 ground, Gallic 2,000 years before the time of Charle- 
 magne, " The finest province of Gaul," said Julius 
 Csesar, — he writes a hymn to inspirit soldiers on the 
 march against a foreign coalition — Fate turns it into a 
 weapon that wounds his own party — for the Marseil- 
 laise has killed its thousands of all parties. His friend, 
 the baron de Dietrich, for whose wife he wrote it, died 
 on the guillotine to its strains. Nor was it without 
 something of the experience of a folkrsong, in that it 
 was altered (ameliorated, shall we say ?) by others than 
 its author, Mme. de Dietrich, possibly ; Gossec and 
 Navoigille, certainly; the" people " themselves, prob- 
 ably, having also somewhat aided it in achieving its 
 final form, Rouget de I'lsle never repeated his one suc- 
 cess — this child of his imagination was a lion, the rest 
 
Some Famous Songs. 71 
 
 of his creations were very gentle lambs, though he 
 wrote the words of a hymn to liberty some time 
 before he composed the Marseillaise. His operas were 
 failures ; his fifty songs, published when he was 65 
 years old, are weak, though some are on heroic sub- 
 jects — even on " Roland k Roncesvaux." But it is 
 
 singular, that the refrain of this song about Roland, 
 " Mourir pour la patrie ! 
 C'est le sort le plus beau, 
 Le plus digne d'envie " 
 
 was taken for that of the Girondist party song ; and 
 that refrain has more of the genuine ring in it, than 
 has any French patriotic song, — the " Chant du depart," 
 " Partant pour la Syrie," " La Parisienne," etc., written 
 since La Marseillaise. There is a veritable literature 
 of the Marseillaise ; so incredibly numerous have been 
 the disputes, romances, anecdotes and legends concern- 
 ing it, that its " tradition " is as voluminous as that of 
 any great goddess of antiquity. The statue lately 
 erected to Rouget de ITsle at his birthplace, Lous le 
 Sanhires, is appropriately the work of the Alsatian 
 sculptor Bartholdi. 
 
 After the battle of Valmy, Kellermann wrote to the 
 minister of war for permission to perform a Te Deum 
 jn honor of the victory. Servan responded by saying 
 that the Marseillaise, of which he sent him the score, 
 was now the Te Deum of the French Republic. 
 
 But as if the song of Roland, L'homme arm^, Mal- 
 brook,Jthe Marseillaise, etc.. etc., werenot glory enough 
 
72 Some Famous Songs. 
 
 for France in regard to popular and patriotic songs, we 
 even owe to her the psalm popularized in England and 
 America as the " Old Hundredth." First attributed 
 to Goudimel, and then to Le Franc, this tune has 
 been finally ascertained to belong to Louis Bourgeois, 
 an able singer and contrapuntist of Paris. Haydn, 
 when he heard this psalm performed in London by a 
 chorus of six thousand voices, declared that it gave him 
 the greatest pleasure that he had ever derived from a 
 musical performance. Berlioz, too, when he heard it 
 sung in St. Paul's Cathedral by six thousand five hun- 
 dred charity children, wrote :- " It would be useless to 
 attempt to give any idea of such a musical effect. It 
 was more powerful, more beautiful than all the most 
 excellent vocal masses you ever heard, in the same pro- 
 portion that St. Paul is larger than a village church, and 
 even a hundred times more than that. I may add that 
 this choral, of long notes and of a noble character, is 
 sustained by superb harmony which the organ inun- 
 dated, without submerging it." The first English 
 psalm ever sung in Australia by an English clergyman 
 and his congregation (in 1814) was this descendant of 
 the Gregorian chants — grave as the march of hopeless 
 humanity through the valley of the shadow of death — 
 that were sung by Christian voices more than a 
 thousand years ago. 
 
 Strange to say, the Germans, whose great composers 
 shine with so brilliant a light among the planets of 
 
Some Famous Songs. 73 
 
 the musical heaven, do not possess a National Song 
 really worthy of their musical eminence. The " Wacht 
 am RTiein " owes its celebrity rather to local applica- 
 bility than to internal merit, and its fame is not more 
 than national and temporary. Germany has two stir- 
 ring battle songs, however; the "Sword Song " and 
 " Luetzow's wild hunt," words by the young poet sol- 
 dier, Theodor Koerner, music by C. M. von Weber. In 
 writing to his parents from the seat of war, Koerner 
 said that while writing, he had his guitar hung on the 
 nearest tree behind him, and busied himself with it 
 whenever he had a moment to spare. The poetry of the 
 " Sword song " is sublimely wild ; it glows, it clashes in 
 a manner worthy of its subject. Written immediately 
 before the attack in which he was shot, while leading 
 on his troops — killed, to be buried on the field of battle, 
 under an oak, his favorite tree, Koerner's death stamped 
 this song with a romantic and patriotic prestige to 
 which it might otherwise not have attained. The 
 poem is magnificent ; it is steeped in the electric at- 
 mosphere of battle; but the music — though it seems 
 heresy to say so of any Weber chorus — is that of an 
 ordinary march. The words of " Luetzow's wild hunt " 
 are less original, the music is more exciting ; but it is, 
 after all, only a stirring " chorus for male voices " ; it 
 has not the tossing ring of the French hymn for hu- 
 man liberty, a song in which men, women, children, all 
 have a part. 
 
74 Some Famous Songs. 
 
 The Hungarian Raeoczy March is one of the most 
 universally known and admired patriotic songs. Several 
 songs having the same name were composed at the time 
 the Transylvanian princes opposed the attacks of Aus- 
 tria, but none has attained the celebrity of that broad 
 and noble melody with its splendid harmonic possibili- 
 ties, which Berlioz instrumentated so brilliantly in his 
 " Damnation de Faust." It is said that he placed the 
 scene of this composition in Hungary merely in order 
 to be able to introduce the national march with some 
 appearance of reason. The Servian national march is 
 also fine, and like the Marseillaise, Raeoczy, and other 
 patriotic songs, is the more beloved for having been at 
 some time prohibited. 
 
 Austria, a country that may point with pride to its 
 great " South German School " of m'usic — of which 
 Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven were the- leaders — is 
 more fortunate than Northern Germany in regard to a 
 national song. The melodious hymn, " Gott erhalte 
 Franz den Kaiser," was composed by Haydn to words 
 by Haschka, in 1797; it was publicly sung at the 
 theatres on the Emperor's birthday in that year, and 
 at once attained the popularity which its noble style 
 and inventiveness deserve. Haydn afterwards intro- 
 duced the melody in one of his quartettes, called, on 
 that account, the Emperor's quartette. During 
 Haydn's last illness, in May, 1809, when Vienna was 
 beseiged and occupied by Napoleon's troops, the vener- 
 
Some Famous Songs. 75 
 
 able composer, the lover and bestower of serenity and 
 joy, was often overcome with melancholy. The tumult 
 of battle reached his house, and doubtless shortened 
 his life, though he was treated with the highest atten- 
 tion and respect by the French officers who frequently 
 visited him. But Haydn only seemed to forget his 
 sufferings at the pianoforte, and played his hymn, 
 " God preserve the Emperor," every day ; on the last 
 occasion that he was able to do this, he sent for all his 
 servants, desiring them to hear him perform the hymn 
 for the last time. Four days after, the great and gentle 
 composer was no more. 
 
 Germany is as rich in folk-songs as almost any other 
 European land, and some among these, such as 
 " Aennchen von Tharau," " O Tannenbaum " (adopted 
 in the war of secession to the words " My Maryland "), 
 etc., have become so well known outside their national 
 boundaries, that they may almost be termed famous. 
 
 Some operatic airs have attained more than theatrical 
 favor, — like Weber's Huntsman's Chorus and Brides- 
 maid — of which latter Heine said that it persecuted him 
 everywhere, from morning to night as " Malbrough " 
 did Goethe. 
 
 Italy, the land of song, cannot boast of one that 
 may be called truly famous. Every musical amateur 
 sings or plays or whistles at least a few Italian operatic 
 airs, and a chosen few are acquainted with Italian folk 
 music ; but few indeed know anything of the Royal 
 
76 Some Famous Songs. 
 
 March, or even the Garibaldi hymn. Some of the 
 beautiful Italian folk-songs have made the tour of the 
 world, owing to adventitious circumstances — for there 
 are hundreds more beautiful by far— and among these 
 may be signalized the Sicilian mariner's hymn, and the 
 boat song commonly known as " The Carnival of 
 Venice." So, too, the most universally known of all 
 the wondrously original and characteristic Spanish folk- 
 songs or dances, is — " La Cachuca !" 
 
 Spain cannot point to any one essentially national 
 patriotic song, though it is not strange in a country 
 whose political colors are of so mosaic a nature, that 
 a number of party-songs should be popular in Navarre, 
 Aragon, and Catalonia. None of these possess the 
 dreamy, melancholy charm, or the spirited passion, that 
 renders the folk-songs of the south of Spain so irrre- 
 sistibly fascinating ; but the Issabellist hymn, " Paz 
 predicaron," is not without beauty; " El tragala " is 
 decidedly martial, and the Carlist song of 1 833, " Decian 
 los negros de la Andalucia," has immense swing and 
 fire. In the warlike chorus of " Hoy, las dos Ciuda- 
 des," however, it is amusing to encounter, undisguised, 
 the melody of Naegeli's " Life let us cherish." 
 
 Of all American national airs, the finest, in my 
 opinion, is " The Star Spangled Banner," which has 
 much of the same character as — though less fire than — 
 the English " Rule, Britannia." It needs a grand voice 
 of large compass, and fine declamation, however, to 
 
Some Famous Songs. yy 
 
 invest it with the spirit of pomp that is its chief 
 characteristic. The air to which Key's words are set, 
 is said to have been French, afterwards united to tlie 
 verses of an old English glee. 
 
 As every American is necessarily of foreign origin 
 (the native of Indian descent, of course excepted), it 
 seems quite natural that the melodies of the three 
 American national songs should also be of foreign 
 origin. " Hail, Columbia," was written in 1798 by 
 Judge Hopkinson, and arranged by an actor belonging 
 to the theatre in Wilkesbarre, to a commonplace air 
 then popular under the name of the " The President's 
 March." The air had been composed by a German 
 musician in New York, on the occasion of some visit 
 of Washington's to the John Street Theatre in that 
 city. 
 
 The source of the most popular of^merican national 
 airs, the restless, grotesque " Yankee-doodle," is doubt- 
 ful ; perhaps " it composed itself," as a German proverb 
 says of folk-songs. It is pretended that it originated 
 among the Dutch, who had a commercial sort of folk- 
 song about the price of buttermilk and harvesters' la- 
 bor in Holland, running, 
 
 " Yanker diddle, doodel down, 
 Didel, dudel lanter, 
 Yanke viver, voover vown, 
 Botermilk und Tanther." 
 
 But there is a tradition that the tune was a nursery 
 song in England under the name of " Lucy Locket," 
 
78 Some Famous Songs. 
 
 in the time of Charles I., and that verses ridiculing 
 Cromwell, in which he was nicknamed " Yankee-doo- 
 dle," were afterwards written to it. Old New-Eng- 
 landers assert that it was known as " Lady Fisher's 
 Jig" before the Revolution. It was not adopted by 
 the Americans as a familiar air until after the battles of 
 Concord and Lexington, when the brigade under Lord 
 Percy marched out of Boston, playing by way of con- 
 tempt, " Lydia Fisher's Jig," or what is now known as 
 "Yankee Doodle." It is also said that the name was 
 first partly given to this tune by the Indians, who, 
 hearing it often played by English military bands, 
 fancied it must have some symbolic connection with 
 the red coated Yenghees, or English. Kossuth told an 
 American friend that when the Hungarians first 
 heard " Yankee-doodle " played in America, they 
 recognized it as an old national dance of their own. 
 Mr. Smith, American Secretary of Legation at Madrid 
 twenty years ago, said that a Spanish professor of mu- 
 sic told him that " Yankee-doodle " resembled the 
 ancient sword dance of San Sebastian. Dr. Ritter has 
 been informed by a Brunswick gentleman, that the air 
 is that of a nursery song, traditional in the Duchy of 
 Brunswick, whence it was brought to America by Hes- 
 sian soldiers, \vho localized its German nonsense verses. 
 The origin of the English Hymn " God Save the 
 King " is not more romantic than that of " Yankee- 
 doodle," indeed it is even less so. Composed and 
 
Some Famous Songs. 79 
 
 written by Henry Carey, it was sung by him in public 
 in 1740, and accepted as an expression of loyalty a few 
 years later. Its authorship was disputed afterwards, 
 but the oddest mistake I ever heard of in regard to it, 
 was when, a few years ago. the Prince of Wales was 
 entertained by the London Merchant Tailors, the 
 Master of that company made the singular error of 
 publicly " reminding " his guests that " in that hall, 
 two hundred and fifty years before, ' God save the 
 King,' as written by Ben Johnson and composed by 
 Dr. Bull, had been sung !" This hymn is quite popu- 
 lar in American Sunday Schopls, under the title, " My 
 country, 'tis of thee " ; it is also known as a Danish 
 national, and a German popular song ; Beethoven did 
 it the honor of using it in composition, while Weber 
 adopted it four times. The other English patriotic 
 song, " Rule, Britannia," of a more national and mar- 
 tial character than " God save the King," was com- 
 posed by Dr. Arne in 1740, to words written by Mallet, 
 if not, as some assert, by the poet Thomson, or possibly 
 partly by Lord Bolingbroke. 
 
 The Danish patriotic song, " Kong Christian Stod," 
 is said to be an imitation by Hartmann (died in 1791) 
 of " Rule Britannia." This fine air was introduced by 
 Handel in his " occasional oratorio." A very splendid 
 English national air, one too seldom heard, is the noble 
 one said to have been composed in honor of Henry V, 
 
8o Some Famous Songs. 
 
 after the victory of Agincourt, and entitled " Deo 
 gratias, Anglia !" 
 
 Of all British folk-song, the most beautiful are those 
 of Ireland — the loveliest in the world, said Beethoven, 
 and few of us will dare dispute his musical judgment — 
 and yet few are known outside British bounds. 
 Among them, many possess historical as well as na- 
 tional celebrity, but perhaps ouly one may be called 
 famous — that now entitled " The last rose of sum- 
 mer" — originally a woman's song, a lament, ending in 
 a most exquisite cadence, now never heard. Its Eu- 
 ropean celebrity is owing to its introduction in Plotow's 
 opera " Marta." Such songs as " Auld Robin Gray," 
 "John Anderson," the Jacobite songs, " Drink to me 
 only," "The Boyne water," " Tara's harp," etc., etc., 
 are almost unknown in other lands ; " Annie Laurie," 
 the song of the soldier and . sailor, as it has been 
 called, is only sung by English and American voices. 
 Henry Purcell's tune, composed somewhat more than 
 two centuries ago, soon after used as a march, and then 
 as the music of a grotesque song in irnitation Irish- 
 English with the Irish refrain " Lili burlero " (of the 
 meaning of which the concocters of the English 
 doggrel had plainly not a shadow of an idea), has been 
 cited by Dr. Perry as having once had a more power- 
 ful effect than either the Philippics of Demosthenes 
 or Cicero. Nothing but party feeling, however, could 
 have raised the ballad into prominence ; the words are 
 
Some Famous Songs. 8i 
 
 beneath contempt (let us hope that Lord Wharton did 
 not write them) ; the air is scarcely even one of Pur- 
 cell's medium best, and by comparison with genuine 
 Irish melodies, still further loses musical caste. 
 " Home, sweet home," however, may be granted an 
 almost international fame, for it is a Sicilian air ar- 
 ranged by the English composer. Sir Henry Bishop, 
 the words written by Payne the American, and it has 
 been introduced in many countries by the prime donne 
 of the concert room, and by the hand organ and street 
 orchestra. On the authority of Mdme. Anna Bishop, 
 it is said that Mdme. Pasta heard the melody in 
 Bishop's house, when he was composing the operetta 
 " Clari, or the Maid of Milan," in which it was intro- 
 duced ; Pasta was so pleased with it, that when she en- 
 gaged Donizetti to compose " Anna Bolena " for her, 
 she gave him the Sicilian air to introduce into the 
 opera. Payne, poor, unsuccessful, long a wanderer, 
 died in 1852, Consul at Venice, the only place — save 
 perhaps his childhood's dwelling place — that ever was 
 anything like home to him, was buried there in the 
 beautiful Protestant cemetery, only to be exhumed, 
 and brought to America to be buried at Washington 
 in 1883. 
 
 If the " Marseillaise " is the Te Deum of Republican 
 principles, Luther's choral, " Ein feste Burg ist unser 
 Gott," may be styled the Marseillaise of the Reforma- 
 tion. And as with the Marseillaise, the words and 
 
82 Some Famous Songs. 
 
 music of this fine hymn seem to have flowed, united, 
 in one stream, from one source. A noble source in 
 this case — the grand heart and mind of Luther: and 
 both music and words are stamped, not only with the 
 general character of those times and of that struggle, 
 but also with the inmost individuality of their author. 
 The words are a free translation or imitation of the 
 Latin version of the 46th Psalm, and were written in 
 1 52 1, — according to some accounts, in Coburg ; accord- 
 ing to others, on the road to Worms. Hiibner relates 
 that Luther wrote it on the Wartbu'rg, and, having 
 finished, upset his inkstand over it; whereupon the 
 devil laughed, and Luther retorted by throwing his 
 inkstand at the devil. During the sitting of the Augs- 
 burg Assembly in 1530, Luther sang it daily, accom- 
 panying himself on the lute, standing at his window, 
 and looking up to the sky. The hymn was first printed 
 in 1529, and at once became the representative song of 
 the German reformers. In 1532 it had become so 
 popular in the churches, that thousands of Protestant 
 children knew it by heart. During the religious perse- 
 cutions in France in 1560 to 1572, this hymn was the 
 rallying song of the Huguenots : Meyerbeer has made 
 an effective use of this circumstance by the introduc- 
 tion of Luther's choral in his opera " Les Huguenots ;" 
 Bach has founded a cantata on it ; Mendelssohn has 
 used it in his Reformation Symphony, and Wagner in 
 his Kaisermarsch. ' Before the battle of Leipsic, in 
 
Some Famous Songs. 83 
 
 163 1, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden comrpanded 
 his entire army to sing this song ; and after the victory- 
 he threw himself on his knees amid the dead and 
 dying, and, intoned the second verse of the hymn. 
 The great effect of this choral does not surprise us 
 when we consider that Luther was a gifted, trained, 
 practical musician, and consequently qualified to ex- 
 press in music a considerable measure of his great na- 
 ture. And " Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott " is the 
 finest hymn which has been written by this strong, 
 sensitive, imaginative man, whom Hans Sachs called 
 " the clear-voiced nightingale," and whom his enemies 
 compared tp Orpheus, because, as they said, " he 
 roamed about with a lute in his hand, and was con- 
 tinually followed by beasts." One of Luther's con- 
 temporaries, Spangenberg, said, " When I saw Dr. Lu- 
 ther at Wittenberg, I could think of nothing less than 
 of a large, powerful, well-armed war ship setting out 
 to sea in confidence, amid tempestuous waves." This 
 is the spirit — trust in God and in friendship, open de- 
 fiance of enemies, courage, health, warm feeling — that 
 we are made aware of in all Luther's hymns, and above 
 all, in " A mighty fortress is our God." The third verse, 
 especially, the climax of the song, breathes the very 
 breath of that heroic determination which prompted 
 Luther to say, when his friends sought to dissuade him 
 from going to Worms : " Though there be as many 
 devils in Worms as there are tiles on the roof, I will 
 
84 Some Famous Songs. 
 
 go, fearing nothing. What if Huss be burned to 
 ashes? Truth can never be annihilated !" 
 
 The words of this choral have been translated into 
 twenty languages at least. In some old letters pub- 
 lished in France only a few years ago, the Flemish mu- 
 sician Jerome deCockx describes his meeting with Lu- 
 ther at Wittenberg, and his surprise on finding how 
 genuine and extensive was the reformer's musical 
 science. Luther played the guitar and flute for him, 
 sang a Flemish madrigal with his disciples, and drank 
 the health of the Flemish masters. Dr. Coch says : 
 " Whatever opinion posterity may have of Martin Lu- 
 ther concerning his treatment of the Catholic church, 
 I think and believe he will long be honored as a great 
 musician." 
 
 The French have carried their national passion for 
 song into Canada, and a wondrous, living charm, this 
 love of song among its inhabitants gives to the grandiose 
 scenery of the country, almost oppressive at times 
 in its sublimity ! The first time I heard " A la 
 claire fontaine " the favorite of all among the peo- 
 ple (it hails from Normandy, too, like many of 
 them) was on a still and perfect evening on the 
 shore of the St. Lawrence opposite the mouth of 
 the Saguenay. The young man who sang it, walk- 
 ing slowly by, paused at the end of every two meas- 
 ures as if in expectation of an echo or a reply. I can- 
 not express the sentiment of longing, and yet of se- 
 
SomelFamous Songs. 85 
 
 renity, which this mode of performing the air awakened ; 
 but it fully explained, to me, the popularity of this 
 simple yet touching song. " Vive la Canadienne " the 
 national song par excellence, is sung to an old French 
 air, used in Franche-Comte for the verses " Par der- 
 riferchez mon pfere " (translated by Dante Rossetti with 
 utter disregard of the necessities of the melody, be it 
 said with all respect). This charming little air cannot 
 be called exactly stirring, but it possesses a striking 
 rhythm and great vivacity, which is most effective 
 when the air is played by an orchestra or a military 
 band, as it usually is at the close of public festal gather- 
 ings, etc. I asked a French band-leader one day why 
 the order was always adhered to of playing " La Can- 
 nadienne " followed by " God save the queen ?" Per- 
 haps, Madame, responded he, " because the ' God save 
 the queen ' makes such a good amen." " Then why 
 do you so often cease playing in the midst of it, before 
 the audience is quite gone ?" A roguish, enigmatical 
 glance was the reply ; he 
 
 " Folded his violin case, 
 And smilingly stole away." 
 
THE MADRIGAL. 
 
THE MADRIGAL. 
 
 What's in a word ? Very much. Often, in a little 
 word, there may be concentrated the solution of an 
 archseological riddle, a geographic-philological ques- 
 tion; nay, even a brief chapter in, a volume of, the 
 history of mankind. But the clue, the key, may not 
 always be found easily, especialy when the origin, 
 meaning, and contents of the word have become ob- 
 scure. In a piquant chiar oscuro lies the origin of the 
 pretty and singular word now adopted into English, — 
 Madrigal. According to the Encyclopedia Brittanica, 
 the word first entered our language in 1588, when 
 Nicholas Yonge, a merchant and a great lover of music, 
 received some foreign compositions among his chests 
 of merchandize, which pleised him so well, that he 
 translated the words, and published a collection of 
 some of these " Madrigales," under the title, " Musica 
 Transalpina." 
 
 But, it appears to me, this can scarcely have been 
 
 the first introduction of the word in a musical sense, 
 
 into English, for Christopher Marlowe, born 1565, died 
 
 1593, in his pastoral, beginning "Come live with mc 
 
 and be my love," speaks of 
 
 , " — shallow rivers, by whose falls 
 
 Melodious birds sing madrigals," 
 
90 The Madrigal. 
 
 proving that in the time of Elizabeth the word was not 
 only accepted, but also understood already in a purely 
 musical sense ; for birds cannot recite poetry, they only 
 sing. 
 
 There are many theories as to the definition of the 
 word ; and among these fairy tales there is one by 
 Kircher, who declares that Madrigal was simply the 
 name of the inventor of the poem. Praetorius terms 
 it a " carmen pastorale, dictum a mandra," that is, a 
 song to be sung to a herd of sheep ; — a Madriale or 
 Madriagale. There is some sense in this — and Dante 
 spelled the word Mandriale, — while Doni says that 
 madrigals " furono prima da Provengali chiamati ma- 
 drials," signifying songs about material, ordinary 
 things. I have indeed found the word madaula in old 
 troubadour poetry, signifying matter, material. Mat- 
 theson says the opera itself is but a developed, histori- 
 cal madrigal, and he is so far right, in that the opera in 
 general is an evolution of the simple pastoral, or folk- 
 song. It has been suggested that the word is a cor- 
 ruption of the Spanish madrugada, the dawn, and that 
 the term was applied to the poem on account of its 
 fresh, early-morning character. But why so ? I think 
 the Italian preceded the Spanish madrigal, and as for 
 the fancy that it was named from a famous madrigal 
 writer, a don Jorge who lived at a place called Madri- 
 gal, — is there not some confusion between him and don 
 Jorge de Montemayor. Don Jorge de Montemayor 
 
The Madrigal. 9 1 
 
 was born in Portugal atMontemor about 1520. Being 
 of an obscure family, he adopted for his own name 
 that of the place of his birth — Castilianizing it, how- 
 ever (there is also a place in Castile called Montemayor). 
 Although first a soldier, and afterwards a poet, on ac- 
 count of his fine voice and musical talent, he was em- 
 ployed as a singer in the chapel choir of the Infanta 
 Don Philip. He was almost the inventor of Spanish 
 pastoral poetry, published charming cancioneros, and 
 translated the poems of the troubadour March, as well 
 as Italian madrigals which in their turn were translated 
 into English by Sir Philip Sidney and others. So far, 
 we may term him Don George of the madrigal — but 
 not as its originator. Some Italian historians claim 
 that the word madrigal was first applied to poems in 
 honor of the Virgin Mary, as our Lady of joy, — Madre 
 di gala, or, di gaia, hence its first spelling, madrial or 
 madriagale. I half incline to their supposition, — unless, 
 indeed, the poems were originally addressed to some 
 antique Keltic goddess Maia, — for two reasons ; first, 
 because in the early days of the Catholic church, while 
 many folk-songs were altered to serve as hymns to the 
 virgin, on the other hand, hymns in her honor, origi- 
 nating with the church, often became popularized and 
 adapted to " profane " words, among the laity ; and 
 secondly, because I have as often- found the clue of 
 fascinating or romantic paths through the maze or 
 myth of archaeology, ending in the figure of some very 
 
92 The Madrigal. 
 
 antique goddess, — as men are said to find the explana- 
 tion of some mysterious imbroglio in the form of " the 
 woman behind it." 
 
 This is a more plausible origin from the fact that the 
 earliest madrigals so greatly resemble ecclesiastical 
 hymns, that some of the former might now be easily 
 mistaken for some of the latter. At a very early 
 epoch, songs for the first of May, maggiolate, were in- 
 troduced in Italy to celebrate the return of Spring. 
 May, it will be remembered, is also the month of Mary 
 in the Catholic church. These were succeeded by the 
 songs called madriali or mandriali. And, I may 
 mention, — since the fact is usually ignored by musical 
 historians — some of the best poems written for these 
 occasions were set to music by distinguished ladies, 
 who competed successfully with the best male com- 
 posers of their time. Among these the most admired 
 settings were those of the ladies Agyazzari, Archiuta, 
 Baglioncella, Bellamano, Eufemia, Maina, Perego, 
 Rota, and Vezzani. Taking the evidence altogether, I 
 should judge the word to have a composite origin, 
 chiefly derived from the pastoral idea — mandra — and 
 the happy, feminine, spring signification, — Madre or 
 Mary or Maid (d6 gaia). 
 
 In one of his sonnets ("To Mr. H. Lawes, on his 
 airs ") Milton says, 
 
 " Dante shall give Fame leave lo set thee higher 
 Than his Casella, whom he wooed to sing, 
 Met in the milder shades of Purgatory." 
 
The Madrigal. 93 
 
 The second canto of Dante's " Purgatorio " describes 
 his meeting with the soul of the musician Casella, and 
 this so exquisitely, that the episode is scarcely inferior 
 in beauty to that describing* the passage before the 
 mind's eye of the poet, of the spirits of Paolo and 
 Francesca. After the coming of the celestial barque 
 with its angelic guide, its hundred or more hopeful 
 spirits who disembark, singing " In exitre Israel de 
 ^gypto," Dante is recognized by Casella, who in the 
 first impulse of love) for his friend, attempts vainly 
 three times to embrace him, and then smiles at his own 
 forgetfulness of his present spiritual nature, though he 
 loves him now, he says, " bosi con' io t'amai me mortal 
 corpo." Questioned by the poet as to whether a new 
 life has not caused him to forget those lovely songs, 
 that once soothed Dante's spirit, and now might so 
 fully heal his soul, wounded and saddened by what he 
 has seen in hell and purgatory, the musician responds 
 by singing Dante's own " Amor che nella mente mi 
 ragiona " so divinely, that all, spirits and mortals, be- 
 come wholly engrossed by his voice, until Catone re- 
 proves the former for loitering, when the musician 
 ceases his song, and the happy souls flee upwards to- 
 wards the mountain like a flock of chidden doves. 
 
 This song (" Amor," etc.), one of Dante's noblest 
 canzoni on divine and intellectual love, was placed by 
 him in his " Conoite," and had been set to music by 
 Casella. This Florentine musician, immortalized by 
 
94 The Madrigal. 
 
 Dante, was the friend, possibly also the musical in- 
 structor of the poet. There is a MS. in the Vatican 
 library, verses by Lemmo da Pistoja, music by Ca- 
 sella, entitled " Ballatella o Madriale," the date of 
 which must have been prior to 1300 (as Casella died 
 before the " Purgatorio " was written). From this 
 testimony we may term Casella the first known com- 
 poser of madrigals, though of course he did not har- 
 monize his melodies, and though the form was probably 
 first made use of by amateur singers, who developed it 
 from the folk-song. Even the poetic form of the 
 madrigal was a novelty in Dante's time. 
 
 But does the madrigal, on its poetic side, possess a 
 distinct form ? I have not been able to discover any. 
 When we take up a brief poem entitled ballad, sonnet, 
 rondel, elegy, etc., we know exactly what the form of 
 that lyric will be ; but the Italian and English madri- 
 gal is apparently lawless on its poetic side ; in length 
 varying from four to twenty lines or more, in any metre 
 the poet pleases, and on any subject, sad, gay, amatory, 
 religious ; there is a madrigal by Tasso, on the 
 theme of The crucifix on Good Friday ; Michelangiolo 
 wrote madrigals, noble ones, if Metastasio also com- 
 pounded them of honey and water; I have only found 
 one rule applying always to a good madrigal, — it must 
 have something to say, said in its author's most ex- 
 pressive and condensed manner — otherwise, it is a lyric 
 only — and it should end in a climax, a little epigram- 
 
The Madrigal. 95 
 
 matic if possible. In this sense, Goethe's beautiful 
 '• Ueber alien Gipfeln ist Ruh," is a madrigal. 
 
 Watson's selection of madrigals (1590) was published 
 as " Italian madrigals Englished, not to the sense 
 of the original ditty (i. e. text), but after the affection of 
 the note ;" and when we study the verse and music of 
 Italian and English madrigals, we find more symmetry 
 of form, more character, in the music than in the 
 verse ; therefore it seems but just that the name 
 eventually became the exclusive property of the musi- 
 cal side of this art-poem, " the affection of the note," 
 and it is now impossible to think of a merely recited 
 madrigal as a madrigal at all. The authors of some of 
 the first Provengal, Italian, and Spanish madrigals are 
 as nameless as the authors of folk-poesy ; but later, 
 almost every poet of distinction in Europe enshrined 
 at least one fancy or feeling in a madrigal. Among 
 those English poets whose verses were chiefly prized 
 by English madrigal composers, we find Ben Jonson, 
 Breton, Davison (the son of Mary Stuart's unfortunate 
 secretary), Daniel (poet Laureate to James the First), 
 Donne, Drayton, Green, Herrick, Hewitt, Sir Edward 
 Dyer, Sir Philip Sydney, Fulke Greville Lord Brooke, 
 and the Earle of Essex. Extracts from Chaucer, 
 Shakespeare, Spenser, have also been set, as well as 
 some of the Percy ballads, and translations from Ari- 
 osto, Horace, Petrarca, the Spanish poets — especially 
 Montemayor, — and some Neapolitan and other folk- 
 
96 The Madrigal. 
 
 songs. One of the last good madrigals was composed 
 by Wesley in 181 1, to the beautiful words beginning 
 " O sing unto my roundelay," by Chatterton. Some- 
 times madrigal composers have written their own 
 words ; but then the poetry seems to have been de- 
 signed merely as a foil to or framework for the music, 
 and possesses little value apart from this, while the 
 " poems " of some of the Elizabethan madrigalists are 
 worthy only of the demons in Berlioz's " Damnation 
 de Faust," or Wagner's Rhinedaughters and Val- 
 kyries. 
 
 On its musical side, the madrigal is only a little more 
 than four hundred years old. It was developed, as a 
 musical form, by the Flemings, and was — apart from 
 the more antique folk-songs, — the first artistic secular 
 branch of music, which, in its origin, as an art, was en- 
 tirely ecclesiastical. It is founded on the form of the 
 church motet ; the old Flemish madrigal writers even 
 combined the plain-chant with secular themes in their 
 compositions ; and the madrigal has been composed, 
 ever since, in accordance with the rules of the old 
 church modes. This peculiarity gives it the unique 
 character of a work of elegant, graceful, melodious, 
 symmetrical, even airy proportions, founded on a deep 
 broad, solid basis ; like art itself, that loveliest flower 
 of human culture, which is fragile and short-lived, 
 however, when it does not blossom from a healthy and 
 profoundly rooted support. The madrigal is usually 
 
The Madrigal. 97 
 
 in one movement, scored for three, four, five, or six 
 voices without accompaniment, though many madri- 
 gals are exceptionally accompanied by the organ or 
 harpsichord ; and the composer is at liberty to display, 
 in his scoring, all the resources of science and inven- 
 tion, restrained, however, by the limitations of the hu- 
 man voice, and the laws of good taste and musical 
 aesthetics. The vocal harmony is complete in itself, 
 and many voices, instead of one only, may be used on 
 each separate part. At first thought it would appear 
 as if color and variety of tone must necessarily be 
 absent — from the absence of instrumental aid — in 
 the madrigal, and that monotony must result from 
 such an exclusive use of vocal material. But this is 
 by no means the case. Six kinds of voices are em- 
 ployed, including a compass of three octaves and half ; 
 the first treble or soprano ; the second treble or mezzo 
 soprano ; the high, or counter-tenor or alto ; the tenor ; 
 the baritone ; and the bass. That rare voice, the con- 
 tralto, was scarcely used in old madrigals, but its place 
 was occupied by the male alto, which we now seldom 
 hear except among boys. Therefore the part sung in 
 modern days by the contralto, is a little too low for 
 that voice, unless very deep and voluminous. But 
 though the madrigalist has only six instruments at his 
 disposal, while the Symphony composer has more than 
 a score, we must remember that the former are human 
 instruments — not mere machines of wood and metal — 
 
98 The Madrigal. 
 
 instruments framed of the finest silken and velvet 
 nerves and muscles, informed by the divine breath of 
 the soul, warmed by the heart, controlled by the mind, 
 and as varied in tone and quality as the characters, the 
 feelings, and even the passing moods and circumstances 
 of the human beings whose life vitalizes these instru- 
 ments. And then the madrigalist may make use of all , 
 the resources of language — an advantage that the 
 symphonist does not possess. The Italians had their 
 polysyllabic words, flowing, open, rich, full, varied in 
 vowel tones, suggestive of suave melodies and long- 
 involved phrases ; the English have their rhythmical, 
 accentuated, monosyllabic language, suggesting short 
 and spirited phrasing. An English madrigal, intelli- 
 gently sung, is a revelation of the resources of the 
 language in regard to rhythm and accent. An Italian 
 ecclesiastic who once confessed to me his astonishment 
 at the rich, powerful voices, and fine concerted singing 
 of the English laboring classes whom he heard in the 
 fields and the streets, attributed it to the fact of their 
 hearing fine military bands and good church chanting 
 all over the island ; but I thought some of this com- 
 parative excellence, especially as to correctness of time 
 and variety of accent, ought to be attributed to the 
 spirit of the language, the musical resources of which 
 have been rather undervalued, I think. The madrigal 
 composers made excellent use of these, however; so 
 did Henry Purcell, the greatest of English composers ; 
 
The Madrigal. 99 
 
 so, too, did Handel, in setting the words of Holy Writ 
 and of Milton to music ; for there are passages in his 
 choruses where we scarcely know whether words or 
 music are most effective, and, though a German, he ex- 
 presses and accentuates the language, in his recitatives, 
 magnificently. As an instance of the power of 
 language in suggesting character and color to a com- 
 poser, take the flowing Italian lines set as a madri- 
 gal by Gastoldi, and then the tripping, rhythmical 
 translation of the same, set by Thomas Morley : 
 
 " Al suon d'nna zampogna e d'una citera, 
 Sopra I'herbette floride 
 Danzava Tirsi con I'amata Cloride ; 
 Ed a I'usanza Vetera, 
 S'abraciavan ridendo e si bacciavano ; 
 Ed in lode d'araor tieto cantavano." 
 
 " About the May-pole new, with glee and merriment, 
 While, as the bag pipe tooted it, 
 Thirsis and Cloris fine together footed it ; 
 And to the joyous instrument 
 Still they danced to and fro, and freely flaunted it, 
 And then both met again, and then they chaunted it ; 
 Fa la la la la la !" 
 
 The first printed collection of madrigals (by Flemish 
 composers) appeared at Venice in 1501 ; and even the 
 madrigals of Arcadelt, which also illustrate early 
 Flemish art, appeared at Venice in 1538 ; so that in a 
 certain sense, the madrigal, poetic and musical, would 
 seem to have really originated in Italy, though com- 
 posers born in the Netherlands, but educated and living 
 in Italy, were apparently its first inventors, and though 
 
lOO The Madrigal. 
 
 Willaert, a Fleming, is called the father of the madri- 
 gal. The great madrigalist Arcadelt, spent most of his 
 life in Italy, and published his madrigals there, and 
 after the death of Orlandus Lassus, pre-eminence in 
 their form was wholly assumed by the Italians, who 
 were able to boast of such masters as Monteverde, 
 Palestrina, Anerio, Luca Marenzio — of whose madri- 
 gals it was said that even the muses themselves might 
 have been proud of having composed them, — and 
 others, all of whom enriched the form and style of the 
 madrigal, and gave it a new national character. 
 
 Once more the beautiful musical form emigrated 
 into England, during the great epoch when Italian art, 
 especially Italian poetry, was making so distinct an 
 impression on English art, poetry, and life. In the 
 same year (1588) in which the collection — already na- 
 tional — by Nicholas Yonge appeared William Byrde 
 also gave a selection of Italian and Flemish madrigals 
 to the public. The madrigal so exactly suited the 
 English taste of that day, that many other collections 
 of madrigals speedily followed Byrde's, and English 
 composers naturalized the form among them, giving it, 
 in their own original compositions, a strong, simple, 
 pure, arch, social character, not unclouded with occa- 
 sional touches of melancholy ; a character entirely dis- 
 tinct from the rather cumbrously scientific manner of 
 the Flemings, and the elegant, suave, ceremonious, and 
 sometimes spiritualistic style of the Italians. The 
 
The Madrigal. loi 
 
 madrigals of Byrde, Dowland, Ford, Gibbons, Morley, 
 Purcell, Wilbye, and many otiiers, — among them John 
 Milton, father of the great poet,— beautifully illustrate 
 the madrigal epoch, and the third, and, so far, the last 
 madrigal style. 
 
 Dowland, a man of amiable, retiring disposition, 
 and a composer of softly melancholy melodies, was a 
 bachelor of music in two universities; and was compli- 
 mented for his lute-playing in those famous lines, the 
 authenticity of which has been disputed, addressed to 
 a friend by Richard Barnfield, in a volume of whose 
 poems, published in 1598, it appeared : 
 
 " Dowland to thee is dear, whose heavenly touch 
 Upon the lute doth ravish human sense ; 
 Spencer to me, whose deep conceit is such, 
 As, passing all conceit, needs no defence. 
 Thou lov'st to hear the sweet melodious sound 
 That Phoebus' lute, the queen of music, makes. 
 And I in deep delight am chiefly drowned, 
 When as himself to singing he betakes." 
 
 In spite of that second line — Shakespeare's or not — 
 and spite of the praise of Luca Marenzio himself, I 
 cannot admire Dowland (who so excelled in quantity) 
 as a madrigalist of the very highest quality. Apropos 
 of Shakespeare, it is not uninteresting to remember 
 that Dowland dated his second book of madrigals froni 
 Helsingnoure (Elsinore) in Denmark, 1600. 
 
 Morley, another celebrated English madrigalist 
 whose madrigal, " Fire, fire, my heart I" sweeps through 
 the auditory sense in man3'-colored, organ-like waves 
 
102 The Madrigal. 
 
 of tone, has also been sung in poetry ; Drayton, one 
 
 of the minor Elizabethan lyrists, tells Morley that he, 
 
 though not quite a god, need not fear Orpheus : 
 
 " Draw thou the shepherds and the bonny lasses, 
 And envy him not stocks, stones, oxen, asses." 
 
 We shall better understand how such fine works as 
 the English madrigals could have been written at so 
 early a period of musical art, by recalling the fact that 
 music was much cultivated in England during the 
 early years of its history as a kingdom ; in 1378, the 
 choristers of St. Paul's presented a petition to king 
 Richard the Second, beseeching that ignorant persons 
 might not be permitted to sing and perform in the 
 mysteries, or acted history of the old testament. In- 
 deed, the English choir-boys and singing parish-clerks, 
 at the time they were incorporated into a society, in 
 1240, were more a religious literary fraternity than any- 
 thing else, for they not only sang, but also read and 
 wrote, accomplishments which were chiefly confined to 
 the clergy, 650 years ago. The new and peculiar char- 
 acter which the madrigal assumed on its emigration to 
 England from Italy, was partly owing to the circum- 
 stance that English madrigal writers endeavored to en- 
 graft on this new form as much of the spirit of the old 
 British folk-songs as they could conscientiously and ar- 
 tistically assume. Here is a passage in old Scotch- 
 English, of the date 1549, which shows how much use 
 was made of music for the embellishment of life even 
 
The Madrigal. 103 
 
 among the peasantry at that time. The writer says : 
 " Being worn and weak, from over study, I passed to the 
 green, wholsom fields, where I beheld mony herds, blaw- 
 ing their buck horns and their corn pipes, calling and 
 convoying mony fat flocks to be fed on the fields ; then 
 the shepherds put their sheep on banks and braes, and 
 on dry hills, to' get their pasture. Then I beheld the 
 shepherds' wives bringing the morning breakfast out. 
 And after this disjeune, they began to talk with great 
 merryness ; and when the shepherds had told some 
 stories, they and their wives began to sing sweet melo- 
 dious songs of the natural music of the antiquity, in 
 good accords and reports of diapason, diaterseron,and 
 prolations. The musician Amphion did sing sae douce, 
 they say, that the stones moved; nathless, his harmoni- 
 ous song could not have exceeded the songs of these 
 simple folk, who, after this sweet, celest harmony, did 
 begin to daunce in great joy with all their rosy wives 
 together." 
 
 Many of the early English collections of madrigals 
 were dedicated to Queen Elizabeth, who was an excel- 
 lent musician, and very anxious to prove her supremacy 
 in that art, especially with regard to her rival Mary 
 Stuart. In the verses of these collections, Elizabeth 
 was extravagantly complimented under the names of 
 Bounibel, Cloris, Cynthia, Diana, Doris, Lycoris, Ori- 
 ana, ThoraHs, and so om A recent compiler of Eng- 
 lish madrigal poetry says very naughtily, that " Queen 
 
I04 The Madrigal. 
 
 Elizabeth had as many aliases among her poets, as an 
 old Bailey convict !" In Nichol's account of the pro- 
 gresses of the queen through her kingdom, we are told 
 of the performance of a new madrigal by Michael Este, 
 beginning, 
 
 " In the merry month of May, 
 On a morn at break of day." 
 
 under her windows during her visit to the Earl of Hert- 
 ford at Elvetham ; " On Wednesday morning about 
 nine o'clock, as her majesty opened the casement win- 
 dow, there were three excellent musicians, who, being 
 disguised in ancient country attire, did greet her with 
 a pleasant song of Corydon and Phillis, made in three 
 parts, of purpose. The song, as well for the worth of 
 the ditty as the aptness of the words thereto applied, 
 it pleased her Highness, after it had been once sung, 
 to command again, and highly to grace it with her 
 cheerful acceptance and commendation." Queen 
 Elizabeth, with her many-sided character, — great and 
 yet small, vain, just, narrow, farseeing, hot-headed, 
 stern, impulsive, prejudiced, fanciful, — though passion- 
 ately fond of music, was discriminating in her taste, 
 and during her reign, as for some time before it, music 
 was considered a necessary part of a gentleman's edu- 
 cation ; one unable to read music notes, or to take part 
 in a madrigal at first sight, was looked upon much as, 
 in our day, a gentleman unable to read his own tongue 
 in written or printed characters would be regarded. 
 
The Madrigal. 105 
 
 During that era of splendor, riot, exaggeration and 
 revelry, masques, pageants, open air operas, were con- 
 tinually in progress ;, the effervescence of the Renais- 
 sance, which Italy embodied in a glorious school of 
 painting, the English made use of in their daily lives, 
 turning these into a magnificent, though often very un- 
 refined sort of work of art ; and, to make glowing and 
 effective dramas, the English dramatists of that age, — 
 Shakespere at their head, — had only to transfer to the 
 stage what they actually saw and heard — the strong, 
 beautiful, ideal or villainous characters they encoun- 
 tered, the stir, the tumult, the passions, the contrasts, 
 the astonishing events they witnessed. In these days 
 of average prosperity, mediocrity, and moderation, we 
 consider the Elizabethan era as almost a saturnalia, 
 and we are half inclined to regard its Rubens-like glow, 
 its overflow of natural power, as unnatural. 
 
 But while the grand outlines, the vivid colors, the life, 
 the warmth, the motion of this gorgeous picture, were 
 defaced by countless defects in its details — vulgarity, 
 brutality and superstition among the lower classes, want 
 of taste, cruelty and egotism among the nobles, — it is 
 surprising to the mere student of history, but. delightful 
 for the musical connoisseur, who regards music as the 
 least sensuous, the most refining and the purest of all 
 arts, to see that in spite of the large amount of wealth 
 they bestowed on musicians, the prominent pari taken 
 by them at court festivals, and in spite, also, of the 
 
1 06 The Madrigal. 
 
 great license of those times, his good opinion of the 
 art is sustained by the character of that form in which 
 the musical sentiment of the Elizabethan era embodied 
 itself. — I mean the madrigal. As a ,product of that 
 turbulent age, the madrigal stands alone, in its finished 
 form, its refined taste, its airy gracefulness springing 
 from a solid foundation, its peculiar style, at once 
 antique and modern. It charms us as if a full choir of 
 birds struck up with their healthy, spontaneous, full- 
 throated melody, amid the sunny pauses of a splendid 
 yet dreadful storm in a thick wood on a mountain 
 height ; it touches the fancy as might an urisullied 
 flower on the edge of a field of battle ; or as when, 
 in deep Shakesperean tragedy, we come upon such 
 lines as 
 
 " Take, oh take those lips away, 
 That so sweetly were forsworn." 
 
 or the tender beauty of the song, 
 
 " Nothing's so dainty sweet as lovely melancholy," 
 in Beaumont and Fletcher's furious play, " The pas- 
 sionate madman." Only the finest, the fancifuUest and 
 most delicate feelings of that time sought expression 
 in this charming creation ; such feelings as Shakespeare 
 himself, in his lyrical moods. Lady Jane Grey, Sidney, 
 Spencer, Surrey, Amy Robsart, — even exquisite Imo- 
 gen, the gay Mercutio or Benedict, or witty Rosalind, 
 might have first experienced, and then given musical 
 expression to, had they possessed talent of such a na- 
 
The Madrigal. . : 07 
 
 ture as madrigal composition demands. Take, for ex- 
 ample, those two madrigals by which the name of Ford 
 is best remembered : that beginning, 
 
 " There is a lady sweet and kind ; 
 Was never face so pleased my mind ; 
 I did but see her passing by, 
 And yet I love her till I die !" 
 
 And the yet more beautiful, 
 
 " Since first I saw your face, I resolved 
 To honour and renown you." 
 
 How great is the heart that sings in these ! A charac- 
 ter that " disdained," as Ford sings, might withdraw, 
 not embittered, but with reverence and regret, from 
 the presence of the gentle lady, and seek to counter- 
 balance disappointed affection in the performance of 
 heroic deeds for some noble cause. Such love songs 
 would not have offended Una. How refined are the 
 musical creations of Ford, the composer, compared to 
 the intensely powerful, yet anything but ethical pro- 
 ductions of his contemporary Ford, the dramatist ! 
 As for the gayer madrigals, or " Fa la las," as they were 
 called, such as Morley's " Now is the month of May- 
 ing," they are fit for the nymphs who dance through 
 Spenser's " Fairy queen." 
 
 Madrigal composition almost disappeared— having 
 flourished for a hundred years-^during the latter half 
 of the 17th century, transformed into the glee in Eng- 
 land, and gradually displaced in Italy by the increasing 
 supremacy of instrumental music. As early as 161 o, 
 
io8 The Madrigal. 
 
 Orazio Vecchi, the Italian madrigalist, composed his 
 " Antiparnasso," a succession of madrigals accompanied 
 by dramatic action — a sort of preparation for the lyric 
 drama and vocal monody, as we find it in modern opera. 
 I may observe here, en passant, that the glee is an al- 
 most exclusively English form of concerted music ; 
 even the word itself is of Keltic or Anglo-Saxon origin. 
 The glee differs in form and character from the madri- 
 gal, in that its harmonic progressions are modern, it 
 usually (though not always) has an instrumental ac- 
 companiment, it requires only one voice to each part, 
 and it may be in several contrasting movements, in- 
 stead of in only one, like the madrigal. The verses 
 may be in any style, not culminating to a lyric or epi- 
 grammatic climax, like the best madrigal poetry. The 
 glee diverged, rather than developed itself, from the 
 madrigal, which it left, original and charming, to its 
 own unique position, in order to follow paths of a more 
 general, every-day character. The first period of truly 
 fine glee composition was that of the Restoration, 
 when youthful English art began to recover from the 
 violent oppression and repression of Cromwellian 
 iconoclasm. Almost every English composer of ability 
 has since essayed his powers in the glee ; and Men- 
 delssohn, who carefully studied English music, made a 
 very near approach to the glee in his part-songs, which, 
 however, are naturally more distinctively German than 
 English. Fine madrigals have since been, and indeed 
 
The Madrigal. 109 
 
 still are, occasionally written, but they appear out of 
 place and sea.son, like hawthorn and rose-eglantine fh 
 the woods in August, or gorse and blue-bells in a con- 
 servatory. They were the natural product of heartier 
 and more leisurely days than the days of steam, elec- 
 tricity, speculation, tea, coffee, and tobacco. By-the- 
 bye, one of Este's madrigals, beginning with the words, 
 " O metaphysical tobacco !" celebrated the first intro- 
 duction of smoking into England. However, very 
 good and charming modern madrigals may be found 
 in the list of favorites ; among others, some by the 
 Irish composer viscount Wellesley earl Mornington, 
 the father of the Duke of Wellington. Lord Morn- 
 ington was also Doctor of music and professor in the 
 faculty of the University of Dublin. The English 
 madrigal Society, which was established by Mr. John 
 Immnys in 1741, expressly for the cultivation of this 
 branch of singing and composition, claims the distinc- 
 tion of being the oldest musical association in Europe. 
 It is still in a very flourishing condition, although its 
 number is limited, its social rules are exclusive, and its 
 musical requirements strict. It has counted among its 
 members many social, literary, and musical celebrities, 
 such as Greatorex, Hullah, Novella, Sir John Hawkins, 
 Lord Saltdun, Prince Dhuleep Singh, and others. 
 
 An American painter once observed to me, that on 
 those rare occasions, when he had been able to hear 
 madrigals well sung, especially such old Italian ones as 
 
no The Madrigal. 
 
 those of Palestrina, he involuntarily remembered cer- 
 tain early pictures by Rafael and his predecessors, and 
 not those alone, but even the places where he had seen 
 those paintings. Such a parallel, indeed, is the only 
 fitting one ; for no precise counterpart of the madrigal 
 (in its complete form of verse and music) can be found 
 in the arts of poetry or sculpture. Severfe design and 
 structure (the antique ecclesiastical system of counter- 
 point), but softly, delicately, richly illumined by the 
 loveliest glow of Italtan vocal coloring ; an unique 
 combination of gay grace with ceremony that verges 
 on quaint stiffness ; an ecclesiastical ground-plan, orna- 
 mented, but not overladen, with mundane brilliance, 
 polish, and arabesque.- The treatment of the voices is 
 so remarkable, such local color, such depth is some- 
 times obtained by a skillful use — without any instru- 
 mental accompaniment, — of their different characters, 
 that all the force of expression, the direct simplicity, 
 the single-minded intention of certain mediaeval pic- 
 tures, often heightened by the rich sunset radiance of 
 a golden background, may also be found in the madri- 
 gal, and almost only in that, among the many and va- 
 rious forms in which musical art has displayed itself- 
 At the same time, though the madrigal is original, 
 sometimes fantastic — -nay, even odd, it is not mere- 
 tricious or small ; it is great art, but art in miniature, 
 in its finest concentration. 
 
The Madrigal. 1 1 1 
 
 And among the lesser forms to be found in different 
 arts, that of the madrigal is the most ideally unique ; 
 whether Franco-Belgian, Italian, or English, it is more 
 admired as time rolls on, — an exquisite antique that 
 never can become old-fashioned ; while, from its pe- 
 culiar, lasting, genuine qualities, its rare combination 
 of poetic and musical value, 
 
 " Most singular in each particular,'' 
 it is essentially the vocal music of good society. 
 
HAYDN'S SEASONS. 
 
HAYDN'S SEASONS. 
 
 One of the most interesting facts in the history of 
 art, was the composition of the oratorio of the " Crea- 
 tion " and the cantata of the " Seasons " by Haydn, 
 when that composer had nearly attained the ordinary 
 limit of human life. The finest works of art have 
 usually been invented while their authors were yet in 
 the prime, not touching upon the decline, of their 
 powers ; this is the rule, in spite of such brilliant, 
 precocious exceptions as Mozart, Keats, Schubert, 
 Raphael, or such remarkably tardy ones as Alfieri, 
 Haydn, and a few others. Haydn's physique, though 
 he could not be termed unhealthy, was never robust, 
 even in youth, and his person was small ; where did 
 the lively, tirelessly industrious Austrian master find 
 strength sufficient to sustain his intellect and imagina- 
 tion at the height necessary for the fulfilment of such 
 laborious and exhausting tasks, at such an advanced 
 age ? He was Haydn ! And, feeling that the fount of 
 melody and beauty within his genial mind had yet 
 other gifts in store for the delight of his fellow-men, he 
 arose from the laurel-crowned retirement which he had 
 already so thoroughly earned the right to ejnoy, and 
 poured forth the thoughts and emotions of his gentle, 
 cheerful, elevated nature, in the noble beauty of the 
 
Ii6 • Hadytts Seasons. 
 
 " Creation " and the idyllic charm of the " Seasons." 
 Through the effort by means of which he bequeathed 
 so much pleasure to posterity, Haydn undoubtedly 
 shortened his own life ; indeed, he said that the labor 
 of writing and producing the " Seasons " had given 
 him his death blow, and he composed but little after 
 that work. 
 
 When the production of the " Creation " had proven 
 the amazing fact that Haydn's powers had only reached 
 their culmination at so late a period of his life, he was 
 persuaded by his friend, the baron van Swieten, to 
 write a cantata to words adapted by the latter from a 
 well-known descriptive poem of the Enghsh poet James 
 Thomson. During the arrangement of the words, 
 Haydn and the literary baron had more than one alter- 
 cation, and if Haydn had been left to himself in the 
 arrangement of the verses, this would have been in 
 better taste. The reader of Thomson's poem will find 
 very few lines as unaltered in the cantata as those of 
 the invocation 
 
 " Come, gentle Spring, ethereal mildness, come !" 
 Van Swieten wanted to do that impossible thing — to 
 please everyone — so he adapted, and interpolated, and 
 inserted one of Burger's poems (the Spinning Song), 
 and a translation from the French (" A wealthy lord 
 who long had loved ") ; Haydn thought the verses 
 " Ye gay and painted fair " betrayed too much ac- 
 quaintance with the etiquette of court dress, its pow- 
 
Haydn's Seasons. 117 
 
 der and patches, hoops and high heels, for a plain 
 countryman to express, and that Jane herself was rep- 
 resented as too conscious of her own charms ; but, 
 when the baron proposed that Haydn should put into 
 the mouth of Simon, whistling behind his plough, one 
 of those vulgar, popular songs which were sung at the 
 Viennese comic opera with applause, Haydn's pure and 
 healthy taste, his sense of the impropriety of giving 
 such tunes to be sung by a strong and manly character 
 like Simon, and his own artistic pride, rose in rebellion. 
 After a serious altercation that at first threatened to be 
 lasting, the composer finally played a very pretty little 
 trick on his literary friend, by adapting the words of 
 Simon's air, " With joy the impatient husbandman " 
 to an andante from one of his own symphonies (the 
 " Surprise symphony"), which was just as popular as, 
 and far more appropriate than any comic operatic air — 
 now forgotten — of that day could possibly have been. 
 The words of the cantata, as we now read them in 
 English, were of course still further altered to suit the 
 music, when they were translated over again into our 
 language from van Swieten's adapted and interpolated 
 German version ; so that little of Thomson's original 
 text now remains. Van Swieten did his best to per- 
 suade Haydn to write an oratorio on " Les quatre 
 fins derniferes." <9w^ Last Judgment would have been 
 enough to becloud Haydn's fame, who, great as he 
 was, was not a Michael Angelo. It was van Swieten 
 
Ii8 Haydn's Seasons. 
 
 who pleaded for frogs, as well as doves, in the 
 " Creation." Luckily the baron died, before persuading 
 the composer to become false to his own taste and 
 judgment, though not before he had written eight sym- 
 phonies, which Haydn described as being as stiff as 
 himself, and all his productions swarmed with the very 
 faults he blamed in others — the universal peculiarity of 
 amateur critics. 
 
 One of the very best descriptions of Haydn's 
 " Seasons " ever written, is that by his friend Signer 
 Carpani. Carpani was a lawyer and author ; he lived 
 at Vienna during Haydn's residence there, knew him 
 intimately, and was present at the first production of 
 the " Seasons," which he afterwards translated into 
 Italian. Like most of his educated countrymen, Car- 
 pani was an adrriirable judge in matters of art, and a 
 pretty good poet besides ; among his sonnets he wrote 
 one on Haydn, and among his verses are those be- 
 ginning 
 
 " In questa tomba oscura," 
 
 which Beethoven afterwards immortalized by setting 
 them to music. The Princess Lobkowitz in Vienna, 
 requested sixty-three artists and amateurs, Beethoven 
 among them, to illustrate Carpani's verses, and had the 
 collection published, ornamented with a caricature rep- 
 resenting a garden-party in a cemetery, and an incon- 
 solable widow, dressed in the old French Court mourn- 
 ing costume, leaning on a tombstone, holding a hand- 
 
Haydn's Seasons. 119 
 
 kerchief to her eyes. The princess distributed this 
 curious pubhcation among her friends. The contribu- 
 tion of Beethoven was criticised as " heavy, gloomy, 
 confused, the accompaniment very simple, the melody 
 dragging and monotonous ;" while the compositions by 
 amateur ladies and gentlemen were prettily be-praised, 
 and Maestro Salieri's setting pronounced the best of 
 all, by no less an authority than the Leipzic " Allge- 
 meine Musikalische Zeitung," for June, 1809! Who 
 thinks of, or sings, Salieri's version of " In questa 
 tomba oscura " now ? Among his other works Carpani 
 wrote a book on Haydn entitled " La Haydine," which 
 was published in Italy at the beginning of this century, 
 and which combines two of the most necessary qualifi- 
 cations of a good book — entertainment and instruction. 
 From this Italian work, now very rare and precious, I 
 translate a few passages on the " Seasons." Carpani 
 says : " Imagine a gallery of pictures, all different in 
 style, color, and subject. Four grand principal paint- 
 ings are placed among several much smaller. In the 
 first we find snow, ice, wind ; in the second, summer's 
 heat and storm ; in the third, harvest, vintage, the 
 hunt; in the fourth, a winter's evening among plain, 
 village folk. The enharmonic prelude with which the 
 cantata opens, gives one a slight shiver ; for, in the 
 manner of Rembrandt, Haydn has chosen to placehis 
 shadows in the foreground, so as to render the delicious 
 coming of Spring more brilliant. The description of 
 
I20 Haydn's Seasons. 
 
 this season opens with a gay, pleasing chorus, yet, as 
 the subject demands, somewhat in the manner of an 
 invocation. After this comes a joyous, vigorous air, 
 describing the merry lab6rer, who, preoccupied with 
 the thought of future harvest, scatters the grain over 
 the field that he has already ploughed. This is the air 
 that Haydn stole from himself, adapting the words to 
 a beautiful andante from one of his symphonies. Af- 
 ter several remarkable numbers, a fine fugued chorus 
 terminates this part of the cantata. But here is sum- 
 mer, the masterpiece of the Supreme Director of the 
 universe, which Haydn commences with the dawn and 
 the rising of the sun. This composition is not more 
 or less fine than the similar one in the " Creation ;"but 
 the proverb, " Happy are those who arrive first," is just 
 as applicable to producing an effect with, as in taking 
 possession of, anything. To this succeeds a chorus in 
 praise of the sun ; and it would be impossible to paint 
 with greater truth of pencil and gorgeousness of color 
 than that employed by Haydn in the following num- 
 bers, the warmth, the wealth, and finally the languor 
 of a summer noon. Suddenly a flash of lightning 
 breaks the clouds ; thunder precedes a storm, nature is 
 aroused, men are alarmed, fire, fear, tumult reign su- 
 preme, — ah, what force, what a glow, what imagination 
 are included in this picture ! What a Master's hand 
 is here ! I cannot recall a single composition that ex- 
 cels this in point of color, in unity of effect. It is 
 
Haydn's Seasons. I2i 
 
 treated throughout in the manner of Michael Angelo 
 and Tintoretto. The tempest strikes us unprepared 
 and overwhelmingly, like the flash of genius that it is. 
 The voices tremble, alarmed ; the chorus seems at war 
 with the accompaniament that represents the hissing of 
 the wind, the rumbling of thunder, the noises of rain, 
 hail, waterfalls. We hear and see two opposite worlds 
 — man and matter — struggling together ; nature her- 
 self seems on the verge of annihilation. But the hand 
 that evoked the tempest lays it as suddenly to rest, 
 leaving us under the irresistible spell of the powerful, 
 beautiful vision. In the part of Autumn, we may ask 
 again, where did Haydn find the clear variety of colors 
 with which he describes quail shooting, in an air for the 
 bass voice ? The instrumental part vividly sketches 
 the impatient, eager hound, turning and returning the 
 dry grass a thousand times, and seeking, rather with 
 scent than sight, the bird that has grown too plump to 
 be in full possession of its powers of flight. In the 
 busy stag hunt that follows, the order and tactics of 
 the chase, borrowed from those of war, are described 
 in a piece of music, perfect from beginning to end, al- 
 most as completely as in a treatise. To this succeeds 
 the vintage, the fruit of our Creator's most vital gift, 
 the cro}vning harvest of the autumnal season. Amid 
 the different groups that compose this grandiose, many- 
 sided picture, we observe a dithyrambic bacchanal, al- 
 most Greek in its sincerity, in which the composer has 
 
1 22 Haydn's Seasons. 
 
 introduced, in the midst of the joyous chorus, a fugue 
 of an entirely novel character, precisely at a moment 
 when it is least expected, the subject of which is taken 
 from a national Austrian dance. Throughout the 
 fugue, which is conducted according to the strictest 
 rules of art, we clearly distinguish this dance tune ; 
 wonderful, agreeable confusion ! Mingled, yet dis- 
 tinctly perceptible are the gravity of the elderly vint- 
 agers, industriously occupied with this important task, 
 and the rollicking joviality of the maids and youths look- 
 ing on, or dancing or tasting the juice as it flows while 
 the bag-pipe drones its vigorous accompaniment to the 
 hearty songs of the honest laborers, celebrating a har- 
 vest that is at once a task and a festival. Teniers him- 
 self has seldom accomplished anything that glows with 
 a riper vitality than this picture, which far exceeds, in 
 delicacy and grace of touch, even his most finished 
 productions." 
 
 But gorgeous as this picture is — like autumn itself, — 
 it would have been still finer if Haydn had arranged 
 the text, which at this part is silly, weak, and in rather 
 coarse taste. The poet ought to have been a man 
 equal to Haydn, an Ariosto, instead of that obstinate 
 literary amateur, the worthy Baron and Court-Coun- 
 cilor van Swieten ! Handel and Mendelssohn were 
 more fortunate in their poet friends ; yet Haydn bore 
 the heavy weight of his friend right royally. 
 
Haydn s Seasons. 1 23 
 
 Signor Carpani continues, describing the last part of 
 the cantata : 
 
 " But here is winter, beginning with a symphony, ex- 
 pressive of the heavy fogs with which this season is 
 often ushered in. Presently we listen to an air that 
 describes the fears of a traveller, crossing the plains at 
 nightfall, perplexed amid the drifting snow and icy 
 wind (hear the floundering of his steps in that staccato 
 accompaniment !), until the blaze of a farm-house fire 
 serves as a beacon to guide him to the homestead 
 where country people of all ages are gathered together, 
 occupied with games or employments suited to their 
 tastes. Matrons spin, men talk, girls sing, boys play ; 
 Jane sings a song describing a country girl's punish- 
 ment of an impertinent lover, with such a spirit as we 
 only find in the genuine antique comic song. The 
 whole work is fitly closed by a fugue chorus, imposing 
 and pompous, in which a magnificent prayer for future 
 happiness is addressed to the Deity." 
 
 Although the success of the " Seasons " was scarcely 
 second to that of the " Creation," comparisons were 
 made between the former and the latter, not always to 
 the advantage of the " Seasons." But, it seems to 
 me, the palm of melody and richer tone color must be 
 adjudged to the cantata rather than 'to the oratorio, 
 though the opening of " Summer " in the " Seasons " 
 is inferior as a tone picture, to the sinfonia in the 
 "Creation." Into the movement that describes the 
 
124 Haydn s Seasons. 
 
 rising of the sun, violins, other string, and then wind 
 instruments, successively enter, like the deepening 
 colors of morning ; gray, blue, and delicate rose seem- 
 ing to salute us in liquid flute tones, green and violet 
 floating from the horns, until we almost hear the sun 
 shine, evoked by the trumpet blast in regal mantle of 
 orange and scarlet^scarlet, once held sacred among 
 the Romans for its mysterious, elusive qualities, which 
 dazzle and escape the searching eye as the sound of 
 the trumpet overwhelms the listening ear. This brief 
 introduction is an almost visible example of tone color. 
 Thomson has been termed the Claude of Lorraine 
 among English poets ; Haydn was more ; in the 
 " Seasons " his colors are richer than those of the 
 great painter, while his personages display a character 
 and individuality never seen in Claude's insignificant 
 figures. The lovely brilliancy with which Haydn per- 
 meates every instrumental detail, may excuse me for 
 indulging in another comparison, and entitling him the 
 Tintoretto of Music. 
 
 Among those of Haydn's contemporaries who were 
 unable to discern the full extent of his merit, was 
 poor, dear, blundering, wooden-minded grandpapa Zel- 
 ter, who never. could see much more in music than 
 mathematics, geometry and the natural sciences, which 
 are really merely the a. b. c, the foundation, on which 
 music rests. He pronounced the " Creation " and the 
 " Seasons " to be nothing but " words, accompanied by 
 
Haydn's Seasons. 125 
 
 instruments." Yet Zelter was the man who attempted 
 to make Goethe comprehend music. No wonder that 
 with such a Mentor, the art remained forever a sealed 
 book to the poet ! Some critics have since declared 
 the " Creation " too spiritual, the " Seasons " too hu- 
 man ; but what was to be expected of a large-minded 
 man like Haydn, when he took angels for his charac- 
 ters, unless to make them sing as he fancied angels 
 might do, and when he chose human personalities, as 
 in the " Seasons," to make them act and sing like the 
 Austrian country people he understood so well ? More 
 able German critics than Zelter were even more en- 
 thusiastic than Haydn's Italian friend, SignorCarpani ; 
 and to give my readers as life-like a picture as possible 
 of the effect of the work upon those who had the 
 privilege of attending its first performance, I translate 
 a passage from that now very rare musical journal, the 
 " AUgemeine Musickalische Zeitung " describing the 
 first hearing of the " Seasons." 
 
 " The ' Seasons ' was brought out at Vienna on the 
 24th and 27th April, at Prince Schwarzenberg's palace, 
 and later, in the Redoutensaal, when it was conducted 
 by Haydn himself. Admiration, astonishment, wild 
 enthusiasm, were alternately displayed by the listeners ; 
 the supernatural richness of Haydn's imagination, the 
 powerful effect of his colossal ideas, completely subju- 
 gated even those whose expectations had been 
 most highly raised. The poem calls for such variety 
 
126 Haydn's Seasons. 
 
 of expression, that only a great composer who is also 
 a great poet, could fully realize its demands. The pub- 
 lic agreed with one voice that Haydn had done so com- 
 pletely. Under the touch of this Prometheus, every 
 word lives and breathes. Here we are moved by the 
 simplicity and melody of the song, there shaken like a 
 woodland torrent by the storm of instrumental har- 
 mony, the rush of musical ideas ; from beginning to 
 end we are carried out of ourselves by the spell of this 
 magician's wand. Of course there are passages that 
 cannot be understood on a first hearing ; for who among 
 us is idiot enough to attempt to judge or measure the 
 extent of Haydn's genius without serious preparation? 
 But how poor words appear when we attempt to de- 
 scribe the noble enjoyment these three performances 
 have given us, considered merely from their most 
 salient points !" 
 
 This appreciative reporter continues in much the 
 same tone of eulogy as Carpani, describing particular 
 numbers of the cantata that struck him as finest, and 
 concluding as follows : 
 
 " The melody of the spinning song only needs to be 
 heard once, to be remembered forever. The laughing 
 of young and old, repeated and echoed in high and 
 low tones, is just such a production of the purest fun, 
 the most mischievous archness, as might have been ex- 
 pected from Haydn's exquisite temperament. In tne 
 double chorus that concludes the whole, Haydn sum- 
 
Haydn's Seasons. 127 
 
 mons up all his giant strength ; the voice of the Al- 
 mighty speaks, graves burst asunder, the doors of 
 heaven open, eternal spring dawns, and virtue triumphs, 
 burning and blushing in the rosy glow, the golden 
 splendor of blissful morning in the happy realms of 
 immortal serenity." 
 
 In summing up the vast debt we owe to the genius 
 and achievements of Haydn, especially in his later 
 works, it is only just to his contemporaries to remem- 
 ber that he lived at a period of stirring action, prolific in 
 grand deeds, inspiring great ideas, and peopled by men 
 and women of extraordinary characters. The breath 
 of the French revolution was yet in the air ; Napoleon 
 was at the commencement of his remarkable career ; 
 the American republic was still a new and interesting 
 experiment (Washington was born in the same year as 
 Haydn) ; the memory of the men and women of the 
 revolution was yet a living influence. Beethoven, 
 Burke, Chateaubriand, Cherubini, Gluck, Goethe, Mo- 
 zart, Schiller, Mme. de Stael, Spontini, Rossini, David, 
 great statesmen, and many more of those powerful in- 
 dividualities to whom we look in order to measure and 
 value the worth and strength of the races they belonged 
 to, were living, or but recently deceased ; the young 
 romantic school of art and poetry was about to rise in 
 Europe ; Haydn's own emperor, Franz of Austria, was 
 brother of the unfortunate Marie Antoinette. The 
 occurrence of great events, the presence of great men. 
 
128 Haydn's Seasons. 
 
 must have excited feelings of emulation and deter- 
 mination to achieve something worthy, in the mind of 
 every man deserving that name ; and Haydn might not 
 have cared to shorten his career, to strain his powers, 
 in the evening of his days, had it not been for the 
 friendship, the sympathy, the recreation he had so 
 lately experienced from his visit to England, where he 
 was enthusiastically received, and the appreciation con- 
 tinually offered him by the circle immediately sur- 
 rounding him. But, as I have already said, Haydn 
 was Haydn ! His " mind to him a kingdom " was, 
 and a sufficient source of inspiration besides. Dearly 
 he loved the society he found in the drawing-rooms of 
 elegant and accomplished Viennese ladies ; thoroughly 
 he felt the intellectual influence of men like Princes 
 Esterhazy, Lichnowsky, Counts Aponi and Erdody, 
 Baron van Swieten, Carpani, the abb6 Vogler (Brown- 
 ing's Abt Vogler !) and the artists and literary men of 
 the Kaiserstddt ; to the last he was a passionate hunts- 
 man, rider, angler ; but he himself declared that his 
 greatest pleasure was to sit in his own study, deeply 
 immersed in intellectual creativeness, the melodies of 
 his own invention rising like forms of light about him, 
 and inspiring him with joyful gratitude to the Maker 
 who had distinguished him by such gifts. Uncon- 
 sciously he sang himself. Haydn's character was a 
 beautiful one, truly a manly one ; unworldly, sane and 
 healthy to the heart, kind, generous, cheerful, open, 
 
Haydn's Seasons. 129 
 
 trusting ; and he only reflected himself with all these 
 charming traits, in the mirror of his own music. Yes ; 
 music as beneficent, musicians as benevolent as Haydn, 
 are enough to convince us — were conviction any longer 
 necessary — of the truth of Herbert Spencer's words, 
 " music must take rank as the highest of all the fine 
 arts ; as the one which, more than any other, ministers 
 to human welfare. And for this, even leaving out of 
 view the immediate gratification it is hourly giving, we 
 cannot too much applaud that progress of musical 
 culture which is becoming one of the characteristics of 
 our age." 
 
MENDELSSOHN'S WALPURGIS 
 NIGHT MUSIC. 
 
MENDELSSOHN'S WALPURGIS 
 NIGHT MUSIC. 
 
 Saint Walpurga lived in the seventh and eighth 
 centuries. By vocation a nun, she emigrated from 
 her native country, Britain, to Germany, by the advice, 
 it is said, of her uncle and brother, Saints Boniface and 
 Wilibald, in order to convert the Germans to Christi- 
 anity, and to found religious houses. She eventually 
 became abbess of Heidenheim and Eichstaedt, where 
 she was buried in a cave from the rocks of which flows 
 a medicinal bituminous oil (termed " Walpurgis oil") ; 
 hence she is often represented in sculpture and paint- 
 ing, with a flask of balsam in her hand. 
 
 Saint Walpurga has several commemorations ; it 
 therefore appears strange that her principal " Saint's 
 day " should have been fixed by the Catholic church 
 on the first of May, the great Pagan festival day, which 
 had been held as a holy day by Pagan nations, for ages 
 previous to St. Walpurga's time ; the Greeks and other 
 people honored it by festivals of Ceres, Bacchus, 
 Dionysus, etc., at which religious songs and dances 
 were performed, expressing gratitude to the gods for 
 the return of spring. The druids, in their celebrations, 
 played the harp, sang hymns, and lit great bonfires on 
 
134 Mendelssohn s Walpurgis Night Music. 
 
 the mountains in honor of the " All-Father," whom 
 they worshipped, and his symbols, light, warmth, and 
 the sun. 
 
 I have never found a sufficient reason given for the 
 choice of this day as St. Walpurga's ; but I fancy that 
 a clue to this election may be followed in the name 
 itself. Old Keltic and Scandinavian forms of this 
 curious name, — Ualborg, Walberog, Valburg — (the 
 shrine or kneeling place of a perhaps Phoenician or 
 Scythian seeress or goddess) — points to its derivation 
 from that of a very ancient city and temple wherein a 
 great mother-goddess or serpent (that is, wise)-woman 
 was worshipped, and especially during the spring sea- 
 son. Such, at least, is my surmise in regard to the 
 derivation of the name. The Druids and Egyptian 
 monks whose ancestors worshipped at Mahbog, seem to 
 have brought down to Christian times many very old 
 ways of celebrating spring, such as dancing, masquerad- 
 ing as animals, — a common custom of the Scythians 
 and ancient Americans — from whom, by the way, some 
 antiquarians declare that we inherit the very name af 
 the month of May. Whether or not the fathers of the 
 churches, struck by this coincidence in names, or the 
 gradual development of one from the other, endeavored 
 to sanctify a festival to which the various European 
 tribes or peoples had become so faithfully attached, by 
 baptizing it anew with the name of the good nun, it 
 was rather too bad to fix St. Walpurga's festival on a 
 
Mendelssohn's Walpurgis Night Music. 135 
 
 day that must have found some of her devotees too 
 wearied by their efforts in casting out devils the night 
 before to pay her proper honor ; so that her gentle 
 memory, — especially as a destroyer of much of 
 the prestige of witchcraft among the peasantry — has 
 become inextricably confused with ideas of gods, 
 goddesses, witches, broomsticks, whips, charms for pro- 
 tecting cattle from the evil eye. May poles, May fires. 
 May dew, spring songs, and the devil ! For, after the 
 advent of Christianity, keeping up these old customs 
 in part, and partly transforming them, the more super- 
 stitious persons among the advocates of the new 
 Christian doctrines, fancying or pretending themselves 
 to be witches and warlocks, repaired to lonely and bar- 
 ren mountains, on the night of April 30, where they 
 performed noisy rites under the imaginary leadership 
 of Satan, whom they thought they had inherited from 
 the Jews, as the prince of all the devils of the witch- 
 Sabbath. The summit of the Hartz mountains, the 
 Brocken, was supposed to be an especially desirable 
 locality for these gatherings of the German witches. 
 On the same night. Christians of a quieter turn than 
 the poor half-sick, half-crazy, and all-ignorant and mis- 
 erable witches and warlocks (as they fancied them- 
 selves), were displaying just as much superstition by 
 industriously striving to banish evil spirits from fields, 
 gardens, and woods, with the noise of whips, cymbals, 
 shouts, and by brandishing lighted torches. 
 
136 Mendelssohn'^ Walpurgis Night Music. 
 
 The night of April 30 is still called Walpurgis night 
 in Germany, where it is now often celebrated in a jovial 
 way by students, and in a more subdued, yet fanciful 
 manner — masquerade balls, etc., — by the witches and 
 warlocks of respectable modern society, among whom 
 the festival now merely bears the same pretty meaning 
 as does that of May day in rustic parts of England. 
 
 Goethe seems to have considered the subject of the 
 Walpurgis Night celebration very suitable for poetry ; 
 he not only introduced it as one of the scenes of his 
 drama of " Faust," but he also made use of the idea 
 for an independent cantata, which he wrote expressly 
 for music, and which Mendelssohn illustrated with his 
 genius. In this cantata, Goethe represents the people, 
 led by the druids, praising the " All-Father," or " Un- 
 seen One," or Hesus, and his divine son, both of whom 
 they worshipped, as well as another suppositious deity, 
 Belinus, or Bel, patron of wisdom and music. While 
 the druid worshippers sing, play the harp, pray, and 
 light bonfires and torches over the mountains, Christian 
 guards attempt to break up the meetings, by force of 
 arms, and parties of druids and druidesses keep watch, 
 and try to frighten away the Christian guards by 
 shouting, clashing swords, disguising themselves in the 
 skins of beasts, etc. The whole idea is full of life, 
 poetic and picturesque, with only one weak point; 
 Goethe has placed the Christian guards in rather a 
 cowardly light, where he makes them run away from 
 
Mendelssohn's Walpurgis Night Music. 137 
 
 men masquerading in wolves' and bears' heads. 
 Goethe's vast mind, however, comprehended very well 
 the feelings he had to describe as those of druids who 
 no doubt considered themselves persecuted Pre-Puri- 
 tans, and who honestly believed that the Christians 
 had stolen half their religion and the name of one of 
 their deities. The final hymn to Light and Purity, 
 may, notwithstanding, be entered into by Christians 
 to-day as warmly as its principle was felt by the druids 
 of other days. 
 
 Goethe was the great, typical representative of the 
 old Hellenic spirit of poetry in Germany ; Mendelssohn 
 was the last representative of the old classic German 
 musical form ; and this coincidence is emphasized by 
 the intercourse between the venerable poet and the 
 youthful composer. The boy Mendelssohn was greatly 
 influenced by Goethe ; the composer's last visit to the 
 poet occurred at Weimar in the spring of 1830, and 
 one of its results was his setting the Walpurgis Night 
 cantata to music, which he commenced during his 
 Italian journey of 1830 and '31, writing the greater 
 part of it at Rome, during the leisure intervals of busy 
 days there, filled to overflowing with active, apprecia- 
 tive enjoyment of all that the eternal city offers to an 
 artist and a student. In February, '31, Mendelssohn 
 wrote as follows to his dear friend, adviser, comrade, 
 fellow-composer, and sister Fanny : " Since I left Vi- 
 enna, I have already half-composed Goethe's Walpurgis 
 
138 Mendelssohn's Walpurgis Night Music. 
 
 Night, but I have not yet written a note of it down. 
 The whole thing has, however, taken form in my brain, 
 and it may be quite a merry affair, for at the beginning 
 there are spring songs and so on ; and while the guards 
 make a great noise with spears and daggers and owls, 
 the witchcraft begins. You know what an especial 
 weakness I have for that ! Then I bring out the prin- 
 cipal druid in C major with trombones ; then again the 
 guards, who must tremble delightfully when I intro- 
 duce a tripping, mysterious chorus ; and I shall close 
 with one of a large, sacrificial character. Don't you 
 think it will turn out a novel sort of cantata ?" He 
 wrote home later : "I have been taking advantage of 
 some days of bad weather to throw myself zealously 
 into the Walpurgis Night, and find it so interesting 
 that I give every moment that I can snatch to the 
 work." When it was completed a little later, Men- 
 delssohn had the pleasure of playing it over, just fresh 
 from his brain, to the son of Mozart, at Milan. The 
 work, in this first form, was performed at Berlin in 
 January, 1333 ; but Mendelssohn was not quite satis- 
 fied with its effect, although it created enthusiasm in 
 every city where it was heard, and he remodeled it to 
 the form in which we now know it. 
 
 Thus recast, it was performed at a Leipsic Gewandhaus 
 concert, on the 2d of February, 1848, Mendelssohn 
 conducting his own work. At the general rehearsal 
 for this concert. Hector Berlioz, then traveling in 
 
Mendelssohn s Walpurgis Night Music. 139 
 
 Germany, was present, and at its close, besought Men- 
 delssohn to givq him the conducting wand he had used 
 that day. Berlioz acknowledged the gift with his own 
 baton and the following characteristic note : 
 
 " Great chief ! We pronnised to exchange our toma- 
 hawks ; here is mine ! It is heavy, thine is simple ; but 
 only squaws and pale faces love ornamental weapons. 
 Be my brother ! And when the Great Spirit has sent 
 us to the happy hunting grounds, may the warriors sus- 
 pend our tomahawks, united, over the entrance to the 
 Council tent." 
 
 In No. 17 — 1844, of Robert Schumann's paper, the 
 " Neue Zeitschrift fuer Musick " there occurs an article, 
 describing this performance, which I translate in con- 
 sideration of the value of every thing emanating from 
 the now classic coterie of " Davidsbuendler," and their 
 friends, the rarity of copies of their paper, and the in- 
 terest 'of the article itself. This is unsigned, save by 
 an enigmatical initial ; but, from various surrounding 
 circumstances, I believe it to have been written by 
 Herr Anton von Zuccalmaglio, who, under two pseu- 
 donyms, was one of Schumann's most cherished con- 
 tributors, and whom Schumann archly termed " the 
 gentle, the roguish, and the pious." After a short re- 
 view of the solo numbers that filled the first part of 
 the concert, Zuccalmaglio (as I infer) proceeds to de- 
 scribe the chief composition of the evening: 
 
 " In his Walpurgis Night, Mendelssohn has enriched 
 
I40 Mendelssohn s Walpurgis Night Music. 
 
 musical literature with a work unlike any other. The 
 character of the music is still more original than its 
 form, and so varied and fantastic, that we might term 
 Mendelssohn a musical Callot here, but that his fancy 
 is so much more noble, his humor so much more pro- 
 found, than either qualities are in the renowned de- 
 signer. The overture may be truly termed descriptive, 
 as it does not merely prepare the listener for the scene 
 of witchcraft, but also presents a living picture of de- 
 parting winter and coming spring. The musical out- 
 line of the latter I regard as especially happy, for, 
 without being merely imitative, it reminds us of the 
 changing moods of a genuine April day, rain, sun, 
 storm, until at last young May opens her blue eyes, 
 and wafts around us her warm and scented breath. 
 Suddenly the joyful chorus breaks in : ' May laughs ! 
 The woods are freed from ice and snow ;' and fresh as 
 the new green on the birch tree, the voice of May is 
 borne to us. At the words ' Flames are rushing 
 through the smoke,' the chorus assumes an almost fa- 
 natically religious character, aspiring fervidly towards 
 the mountain heights where the ancient cult of the 
 universal Father is celebrated. But, with anxious and 
 warning voice, a woman reminds them of the cruelty 
 of their conquerors, who seek to crush them with 
 treachery and slaughter ; her wail is echoed by a chorus 
 of women, in accents that penetrate the heart. Their 
 complaint is chidden by a Druid who reminds them 
 
Mendelssohn s Walpurgis Night Music. 141 
 
 that those who fear to make sacrifices deserve their 
 chains. All then join in the chorus, ' The wood is free ! 
 Seek, cut, fetch, the torches for the beacons !' Then, 
 to calm the fears of the women, and to outwit the 
 Christian guards, they separate into several parties. 
 This is all of remarkable beauty and originality. How 
 lightly they step ! how softly they whisper ! How the 
 instruments trip and lisp among them ! what magical 
 coloring invests the whole passage ! Yet the follow- 
 ing chorus is still more vital and picturesque, ' Come 
 with spears and daggers.' Here our master has given 
 the reins to his fancy, and thereby given us a picture 
 that is absolutely unrivalled, considering its brevity, in 
 spirit, color, and variety. Its treatment is clear, easy, 
 transparent, and the instrumentation marvellously ef- 
 fective. This number is so rich in invention, so per- 
 fect in execution, so realistic and yet so spiritual, that 
 the listener who fails to see, in this music, the whole 
 mummery and masquerade of witches, devils, and wor- 
 shippers hurrying past him, must be absolutely devoid, 
 not of imagination, but of common, average intelli- 
 gence. When the charm and 'glamour of the druid 
 watch is over, when the Christian guards have escaped 
 in affright from the fancied ' home of Satan's legion,' the 
 splendid aspiration of the closing chorus is entoned." 
 
 Hector Berlioz, in a letter to his friend Stephen 
 Heller, also remarked the beauty of this concluding 
 chorus, when he wrote : " Two magnificent things, in 
 
142 Mendelssohn s Walpurgis Night Music, 
 
 opposite style, are the mysterious chorus that describes 
 the division of the sentinels, and the final chorus, in 
 which the druid's voice rises at intervals, calm and 
 pious, above the tremendous noise of the troup of pre- 
 tended sorcerers." In this final chorus, the general 
 principle of the poem — as explained by Goethe in a 
 letter to Mendelssohn — reaches its culmination. The 
 struggles of two religious systems past, the anger of 
 the ancient creed on finding itself pushed aside by a 
 newer and nobler belief, the impatient young fanaticism 
 of the rising religion outlived, we find, at the close of 
 the work, not, indeed, the settled conviction of religious 
 peace, but a feeling of prophetic, sublime aspiration, 
 expressed in a spirit of joyful enthusiasm and glowing 
 hopefulness. 
 
 Throughout this cantata, Mendelssohn is at his best; 
 here we find not one of his amiable weaknesses, the 
 prose, the formality, the " lengthened sweetness long 
 drawn out " that sometimes weary us even in " St. 
 Paul " and " Elijah." Here is symmetry — but also in- 
 spiration ; fancy, romance, elegance, melody, strength 
 in moderation, healthy — and not one-sided — realism, 
 even humor ; all are here, willing and worshipful genii, 
 attendant on the Mendelssohn of the Mid-Summer 
 Night's Dream music, the Hebrides and Melusina over- 
 tures, the violin concerto. And the best of it is, that 
 every quality seems to have arisen of itself, unsought, 
 uncalled for ! 
 
A WOODLAND TENOR. 
 
. A WOODLAND TENOR. 
 
 " Femme qui vicfele dans un coin 
 Sa voirx son amour, et sa lyre." 
 
 H'ow does it happen that composers make so little 
 use of bird-song? I do not mean in an imitative way, 
 but in a genuinely musical one, by taking the more or 
 less broken phrases of bird-songs as leading motives, 
 and working them out contrapuntally. It is a little 
 difificult for instruments or voice to closely follow the 
 uncertain tonalities of the feathered race, and their 
 undecided attack of tones ; but it can be done nearly 
 enough for aesthetic purposes. The life of composers 
 is passed much indoors, in the study ; perhaps this, 
 rather than want of observation, rttay be the reason 
 why bird motives so seldonj are heard in their works. 
 A partial proof of the truth of my surmise may be 
 found in the fact that those composers who were in the 
 habit of spending much time in the open air, — Haydn 
 and Beethoven, for instance, — have been most success- 
 ful in translating into music the tones of birds ; Beet- 
 hoven in the Pastoral symphony with its inimitable 
 clarionet cuckoo, and in his " Song of the Quail," 
 Haydn in his " Creation," where the cooing of doves, 
 especially, is given with uncommon fidelity to nature. 
 That so little really musical use has been made of bird 
 
146 A Woodland Tenor. 
 
 9ong themes, is an argument against the opinion enter- 
 tained by some unmusical persons, to the effect that 
 music has been developed from bird-song and natural 
 sounds, — as if fugitive, evanescent, spiritual music were 
 not as much an innate element of man's being as of 
 that of other .creations and creatures, and preeminent 
 in direct proportion to the perfection of his mental and 
 physical faculties ! 
 
 There is a curious composition for three voices (which 
 may also be played by instruments), composed by 
 Nicolas Gombert, and printed at Antwerp in 1544, en- 
 titled " Le chant des oyseaux," which imitates, on 
 fanciful syllables, the voices of the cuckoo, mavis, and 
 nightingale ; but the only one that from its faithful- 
 ness would awaken the impression of spring or early 
 summer, were the subject of the composition un- 
 known to the lister^er, is the note of the cuckoo, — easily 
 imitated, and more invariable than that of the dove. 
 Still, Gombert tried the experiment, and worked out 
 his motives with considerable contrapuntal art. In the 
 clever little operetta composed by Schwartzendorf 
 (known in music as Martini il Tedesco) in 1788, en- 
 titled " Les droit du seigneur," there are imitations of 
 bird songs in the introduction and first act, though 
 they are all more or less conventional. This introduc- 
 tion is described by Martini as representing "The 
 awakening of Nature," and as he was a contemporary 
 of Haydn, the work was doubtless known to the latter, 
 
A Woodland Tenor. 147 
 
 as well as to Beethoven. Spohr, in his " Consecration 
 of Tones," a piece of programmemusic (termed by him- 
 self, indeed, "a characteristic tone picture in the form 
 of a symphony), has bird-imitation, of some closeness 
 to nature, as might be expected from a composer- 
 violinist, to whose ear quarter — and less — tone-intervals 
 were an affair of daily familiarity. The bird song in 
 Wagner's " Siegfried " is too well known to need com- 
 ment, unless to observe, that it is warbling of an im- 
 aginary, or rather, even conventional, character, and is 
 not founded on any theme of any especial bird song. 
 Mozart's bird-catcher's song in the " Magic Flute," is 
 whistling, more than an imitation of bird song ; 
 Weber's owl in " Der Freischutz " is the most realistic 
 yet awe-inspiring of all imitative bird notes, and is a 
 worthy pendant to Mendelssohn's truly Shakespearian 
 donkey in the " Midsummer Nights Dream " music. 
 Among vocal imitations of bird song there is a very 
 beautiful one of the cuckoo's call, in the charnling 
 madrigal, " Thirsis, Sleepest Thou ?" by John Bennet, 
 who published a fine collection of works in this form 
 in 1599. Gibbons made a lovely madrigal on "The 
 Silver Swan " — and the swan has long been a favorite 
 bird among composers, for the reason, perhaps, that as 
 no one has ever really heard that magically sweet dying 
 song of his, no one is qualified to criticise the composer 
 who has been so fortunate as to hear it — in fancy. 
 Many more instances might be given of the introduc- 
 
148 A Woodland Tenor. 
 
 tion of so-called bird song in vocal or instrumental 
 music, and in operas in order to heighten the landscape 
 painting of some pastoral scene ; but with few excep- 
 tions they are unfaithful and conventional, caught in 
 flying, one might say, and not testifying to close study 
 or careful observation. 
 
 But while the song of every winged warbler is de- 
 serving of the composer's attention, if only for its sug- 
 gestiveness, there are four birds, superexquisite in 
 their song, who may truly be termed artists in their 
 way, and who are worthy the study of all true artists, 
 condemned to walk through the mire of earth, to move 
 amid its thickets unaided by other wings than those of 
 imagination. These four winged artists are the Ameri- 
 can Mocking Bird and Song Thrush, and the European 
 Lark and Nightingale. 
 
 I do not wonder that Audubon termed the Wood 
 Thrush (Turdus Mustellinus), for the sake of its de- 
 licious song, his greatest favorite, of all the feathered 
 tribe of the American woods ; and most appropriate is 
 the fine passage with which he introduces his descrip- 
 tion of the bird, relating the effect of its song, when 
 that fell on his ear, " thrilling, along the sensitive 
 chords which connect that organ with the heart, the 
 delightful music of this harbinger of day ! * * * Sel- 
 dom, indeed, have I heard the song of this thrush 
 without feeling all that tranquility of mind to which the 
 secluded situation in which it delights is so favor- 
 
A Woodland Tenor. 149 
 
 able. * * * The song of the wood thrush, though 
 composed of but few notes, is so powerful, distinct, atjd 
 mellow, that it is impossible for any person to hear it- 
 without being struck by the effect which it produces on 
 the mind. I do not know to what instrumental 
 sounds I can compare these notes, for I really know 
 none so melodious and harmonical. They gradually 
 rise in strength, and then fall in gentle cadences, be- 
 coming at length so low as to be scarcely audible. 
 
 I know no better general description of their exquisite 
 song, either in prose or poetry. 
 
 Though it lacks, technically, musical lucidity, every- 
 thing else is there ; the French blood of this great 
 naturalist and philosopher " tells " here, in his exquis- 
 ite feeling for the feelings of others — even of birds. 
 When ornithologists and naturalists write of bird song, 
 they often err in a grammatical-musical way ; even the 
 enthusiastic Wilson often disappoints by mistakes of 
 this kind. It is as rare to find a bird's song correctly 
 noted in a naturalist's book, as a folk-song in a traveler's, 
 and two reasons why, fit both cases ; in the first place, 
 the traveler and the naturalist are not musicians, and 
 then the modes in which most folk-songs are set, are as 
 foreign to our own as a bird's uncertain intonation 
 differs, in its variability of pitch, from our fixed one. 
 Newspaper correspondents, and magazinists have re- 
 cently made some praiseworthy efforts to record the 
 songs of birds, with occasional, but only occasional, cor- 
 
150 A Woodland Tenor. 
 
 rectness. But the oddest mistake made by writers on 
 this subject, is that of translating bird song into — 
 words ! Gardiner, the indigent and intelHgent Leices- 
 ter stocking-weaver, who idolized Haydn, and who 
 spent his leisure hours in listening to and noting the 
 voices of birds and insects, and who has said so many 
 and suggestive things about them, in his " Music of 
 Nature," often erred in his descriptions, though cer- 
 tainly not for lack of observation and sympathy. Here 
 is Gardiner's notation of the song of the English 
 throstle ; it bears some resemblance to a part of that 
 of the American song thrush. 
 
 ? LM -• / 1 S 
 
 •7"=^ 
 
 I think, however, since this theme is so brief and un- 
 varied, that Gardiner can only have observed one 
 motif of the English bird's song ; for in the British 
 islands, birds are generally long-breathed in their 
 strains. They sing in a childlike, open and innocent, 
 unconsciously unafraid sort of way, as if they felt that 
 their song was sure of a hospitable, loving reception, 
 and like tame rather than wild (in the sense of hunted) 
 creatures. From their indifference to the refuge of 
 such woods and thickets as are still to be found, one 
 might fancy that they had never had any experience of 
 huntsmen, milliners' agents, or boys, their most merci- 
 
A Woodland Tenor. 151 
 
 less persecutors ; while American birds, in their shy- 
 habits, betray a rather sad experience, and display 
 its effects — perhaps also of the climate, and scarcity of 
 food — in the brief, plaintive, repressed character of 
 their songs. Though from this general characterization 
 I except — setting the passionate mocking-bird entirely 
 out of hearing for the present — the rollicking bobolink, 
 and that aggressive, energetic, in-and-ac-quisitive, rest- 
 less good citizen, the American robin (whose lay, how- 
 ever, is rather a call than a song), even though he be a 
 cousin of the minstrel poet thrush. 
 
 To my fancy, the voice of the wood-thrush is the 
 ideal American bird voice. Utterly devoid of the too 
 self-asserting tones of the cheery robin, but less re- 
 moved from human feeling than his other cousin, the 
 hermit thrush, saintly chorister of the mountains ! too 
 original to play the monkey or the pirate for a mo- 
 ment, characters into which the mocking-bird some- 
 times descends, the brown thrush possesses the one 
 deep-chested, long-breathed, trustful, tranquil, original, 
 sincere yet softly tender heart-voice among them all. 
 It suggests steadfastness and power in reserve; it 
 satisfies while awakening expectation ; it never, by 
 superficial vocal tricks, or reticent, suspicious lack of 
 abandon, leads the listener to suppose that it is deficient 
 in sonority or expressive force. Yet I have often heard 
 or read complaints of this bird's want of compass : 
 surelv his critics have confounded compass with volu- 
 
152 A Woodland Tenor. 
 
 bility ? His voice really possesses a wide compass ; 
 equal, too ; rich and loud in the depths, liquid on the 
 heights, golden in quality, and given forth generously 
 in assured, slow, large tones that are never broken up 
 into twenty little nervous, fidgety runs and quavers, 
 betraying the existing and demoralizing effect of a 
 hard fight for existence with a severe and fickle 
 climate, echoes of which we may often detect in the 
 songs of cat-birds, mocking-birds, orioles and others. 
 Browning says of the European thrush : 
 
 " That's the wise thrush ; he sings each song twice over 
 Lest you should think he never could recapture 
 The first fine careless rapture !" 
 
 But it seems to me that this bird is yet wiser, and 
 in repeating himself, does so from peaceful content, 
 not vanity ; he seems too thoroughly balanced to care 
 a whiff for the opinion of men, — though I have some- 
 times conceitedly fancied that I could perceive a sen- 
 sation of pleasure in his tones during the attentive 
 presence of a sympathetic listener ! He seldom seems 
 to know, or wish, or dream of, anything more perfect, 
 more aesthetic, more delightsome than his life of song, 
 his pretty mate, his haunts among the green, thick 
 leafage, the wind, the rain, the dew, the grass, the 
 glorious skies —especially at sunrise and sunset, for his 
 richest lays, brimming over with the repose of bound- 
 less love, are "^ung, like those of most of his kind, how- 
 ever, at early dawn or twilight. There is no querulous- 
 ness, even in his melancholy ; that, like his joy, pos- 
 
A Woodland Tenor. 153 
 
 sesses a masculine as well as feminine feeling ; his are 
 the tones that combine, like some rarely exceptional 
 contralto, some yet rarer human character, the softest 
 gentleness of love with the trustworthiness of faithful 
 comradeship and heroic friendship. From a technically 
 musical point of view, the instrument his voice most 
 nearly resembles is the oboe, with a flageolet touch for 
 the " high lights " ; sometimes it is as clear as a glass 
 harmonica, but with more vitality in its tones ; only a 
 violin, however, could convey an idea of its vibrations, 
 apparently tremulous (though evenly, rhythmically so) 
 with genuine emotion, or of its pitch, which is vari- 
 able, the tones wavering above and below, a half- 
 quarter tone and less ; never fixed, as are those of 
 keyed instruments. Then the thrush is an artist all 
 'over ! Not only in his character of bard, but also 
 in his refined, retiring, and intelligent habits, elegant 
 form, graceful movements, softly bright glance, and 
 that " utterly " aesthetic coat of his, golden tan slightly 
 touched with olive, not too dark and not too light in 
 shade, with his cream-colored, speckled satin vest. 
 
 In 1 88-, while many thrushes paused to sing in the 
 adjoining grove of elm and maple, oak, linden and 
 evergreen trees, one family took up its abode in the 
 nearest tree on the lawn, only about thirty feet from a 
 bay window within which stood a grand pianoforte. 
 Keeping at a distance as long as his audacious cousin 
 robin was dancing worm-minuets on the grass, the 
 
1 54 -A Woodland Tenor. ^ 
 
 chief singer of that family would then come forward 
 for a little promenade, looking up at me with eyes in 
 which I fancied I read a deeply seated trust. Even 
 undisturbed, apparently, by singing, how enchanting it 
 was, during the process of ballad or Lied, to hear the 
 little creature's rich voice responding from the trees, 
 while the ring doves cooed in echo on the piazza ! 
 I heard my little brother artist so often during his two 
 months' stay as a singer, that I became convinced, on 
 comparing his song with that of other thrushes, that 
 although fundamentally the same, there was a great 
 difference in the quality of the songs of birds of the 
 same species, and as his was the finest thrush song I 
 had ever heard until then (or have since), I determined 
 to observe it with the intention of noting it down. 
 
 From continual familiarity with the song of this 
 thrush, I came to the conclusion that it was actually 
 song in an artistic sense, at a rudimentary stage of 
 development ; that is to say, it was a melody, heredi- 
 tary in the species in its chief motif, based on a foun- 
 dation of rhythm and accent, and also of harmony ; 
 and uttered by this thrush, partly through instinct and 
 physical limitations and qualifications, and partly with 
 perfect consciousness, modified by such peculiarities as 
 belonged to this especial bird's individuality. His 
 instrument seemed incapable of emitting tones in any 
 other key but that of G flat (French pitch) ; his pre- 
 ludes were always in \ time in two, or four, measures ; 
 
n. 
 
 A Woodland Tenor. 155 
 
 his melodies were always in \ time, in three measures, 
 and were based on the chord of the tonic and of the 
 ninth, major. His principal melody (or Leit-motif I') 
 was as follows, but two octaves higher ; I have noted 
 all my examples of thrush song two octaves below 
 their real pitch, for the sake of convenience in print- 
 ing. My examples may be relied on as absolutely 
 faithful, as far as human ears, knowledge, and patience 
 can make them correct, and it much resembles that 
 noted by Gardiner ; 
 
 He usually commenced with that, at full voice ; but 
 
 ' he occasionally begun with a soft prelude, — liquid and 
 
 clear in tone, subdued and hesitating in character, as 
 
 if to try his voice, the acoustic quality of the air or of 
 
 his greenwood character, thus : 
 
 m $miTim[ni''A\?y f^te 'a vi^ ^ 
 
 He never repeated any part of his first principal 
 melody (No. II) but sang it through. Sometimes, but 
 seldom, in that, he would pause after the first measure, 
 omitting the second, and ending the tone, G flat, of 
 the third measure with a half trill, half whistle. Some- 
 times he sang this melody many times over; but not 
 
156 
 
 A Woodland Tenor. 
 
 as if to correct or practice it ; he repeated it slowly, 
 pausing at the end, as if to enjoy a moment of silence, 
 the song itself, or the feeling that inspired it. Among 
 his more pensive variations, oftenest sung at twilight, 
 was this : 
 
 .J? 
 
 ^ 
 
 M^^^^^^ 
 
 1 
 
 The following was a more ordinary variation : 
 
 S^ 
 
 Still finer were the variations in which he fell from 
 the 4th or 6th to the 2d, minor of the key : 
 
 
 or first to the 2d major, then minor : 
 
A Woodland Tenor. , 157 
 
 The most exquisite variation of all, I thought, was 
 that in which he fell from D flat, the 5th of the key, 
 to the D natural; — the interval of a diminished octave. 
 
 Few thrushes are able to take this interval well ; 
 many give a sort of hiss or a trill without musical tone 
 in its place — like some tenor who endeavors to rein- 
 force his wavering ut de poitrine with an additionally 
 martial gesture. 
 
 He always seemed to take this difficult leap with 
 steady serenity and deep delight, pausing long on the 
 low tone, an expression of wonder, and yet of tender 
 feeling in his voice, as he dwelt on it. Occ^ionally 
 he would echo this interval, but as softly as if sighing 
 peacefully. Sometimes, in pauses between the melody 
 and its, variations, he would close his delicate beak, and 
 gurgle a sort of murmuring echo altissimo, as if he 
 were dreaming of his own song, — with a strange, 
 aeolian effect, as though the wind or a lady's fingertips 
 lightly swept the strings of a harp. This whispered 
 song — or these vocal harmonics — resembled the chant 
 of the hermit thrush in spiritual impersonality, though 
 with less aerial evanescence. 
 
158 A Woodland Tenor. 
 
 A violin could exactly repeat the delicious uncer- 
 tainty of these thrush melodies, the tones wavering, as 
 I have said, about a quarter, or half a quarter tone 
 above and below my notation ; of course the key-board - 
 of the pianoforte would present them in too fixed, too 
 literal a manner. Neither were his melodies ever sung 
 as strictly in time as I have noted them, but in a man- 
 ner approximatve to that, tempo rubato, with recitative- 
 like freedom ; while the timbre or clang-tint of the 
 bird's song was so sombre, that it always sounded much 
 lower than its real pitch, and I found myself repeatedly 
 verifying this at pianoforte, tuning fork, or guitar, 
 thinking, every time its deep tones surprised the 
 silence, that perhaps I had set them an octave or two 
 too higln ! 
 
 All the thrushes I heard that summer sang in the 
 same key as my especial one, with the exception of a 
 young bird who began to try his thin voice just after 
 the moulting season of his ciders, and before they all 
 took flight. His song was in \ time, and in the key 
 of F: 
 
 '^|i^Jrl/-^j r/;Vr;/2.J 
 
 It will be seen that the second motif in this young 
 bird's song was the same as the third motif in my fa- 
 vorite's prelude (No. II). 
 
A Woodland Tenor. 159 
 
 One of the occasional singers of that summer seemed 
 to be a close friend of my thrush ; they often sang 
 together, and their manner of singing struck me al- 
 most with awe, not only from the resemblance of their 
 ducts to two-part canons, but because they appeared 
 to sing together, not by accident, but with deliberate, 
 even intellectual, intention. They never sang dis- 
 cordantly together those two harmonies, the chords of 
 the tonic, and of the ninth, on which thrush melody, 
 I find, is based ; they always sang their tonic, or ninth 
 melodies together, thus, it appeared to me, demonstrat- 
 ing that the birds possessed an artistic instinct or in- 
 telligence, only limited by their natural means (physi- 
 cal and mental) for harmony as well as melody. For 
 if my beloved thrush began one moment after his 
 distant friend commenced, he omitted one of his own 
 ' usual repetitions in order to arrive at the same time as 
 his companion did, at the succeeding motif or melody 
 based on another harmony ; the same rule was adhered 
 to by our visitor, even in the briefest snatches of their 
 songs together. 
 
 That beautiful summer fled ; humming-birds mur- 
 mured in rose and lily cups— one even confidentially 
 entering the house and giving me an opportunity of 
 more than once observing that distance had by no 
 means added enchantment to the brilliancy of his 
 beauty; still the thoughtless oriole, after our brown 
 friend had flown away, blew whiffs of song from his 
 
j6o a Woodland Tenor. 
 
 usual perch on a chimney top, as indifferent as a school 
 boy on a holiday ; the yellow-birds almost buried them- 
 selves in the great disks of the sunflowers, of which 
 I had had an entire hedge prepared for their especial 
 delectation: and even in winter our oasis was not dis- 
 dained by the winged brotherhood, for the richly- 
 feathered snowbirds sometimes hung in soft brown 
 clouds on the dry-leaved, icicle-laden honeysuckles, 
 feasting on ungathered berries, while the majestic crow- 
 caravan came and went daily, from its haunt on the 
 Fishkill heights to its fishing grounds on the Hudson. 
 
 And then came Spring ! Spring and early Summer ; 
 we waited impatiently for the well known voice of our 
 woodland mystery-lover, and winged druid ; vines and 
 violets bloomed and withered ; " wild hawthorn and 
 the pastoral eglantine " ; early roses budded ; but his 
 song celebrated them not. What irresistible lovci 
 what fatal destiny, in the north or in the south, parted 
 him from the steadfast expectation of his human 
 friends? 
 
 While listening for his voice, I heard, at the begin- 
 ning of July, a thrush, apparently a young one, prac- 
 ticing, in a clear and brilliant voice, a melody, not yet 
 old enough to be original, but rather monotonous: 
 
A Woodland Tenor. i6i 
 
 In B flat, and in f time, yet it bore a family resem- 
 blance to the chief melody of my chief friend's song. 
 But, though so brief, it was as remarkable as the lay of 
 any more consummate songster of his kind, in the 
 fact that it contained a melodic sketch of the chords 
 of the tonic and the seventh of the key in which it 
 was sung. 
 
 One evening soon after hearing this, a heavy thunder 
 cloud, brooding sultrily all the afternoon, — had broken 
 over us in a burst of short-lived power, succeeded by an 
 hour of matchless radiance, cheery freshness, softest 
 flower sighs, most delicate tints on earth and in heaven. 
 Suddenly, from the top of the rain-washed maple, our 
 favorite's voice, vibrating with its unmistakable heart- 
 tones, resounded. How rejoiced' he seemed ! How 
 overjoyed I was ! He had not, then, flown after the 
 vanished shadows, silenced echoes ! He was yet alive. 
 More than that, he could be depended on, like some 
 true, unchanging friend ! He had not forgotten his 
 former haunts, his protecting admirers ! And what a 
 peal of triumph sounded in his deep, fall, matchless 
 strain ! 
 
 Alas, it was too deep, too full, that matchless song ! 
 We overlooked, in our joy, the possibility that " envy, 
 hatred, malice and alluncharitableness," may exist even 
 among winged poet-artists. Two or three thrushes 
 that had been settled in the neighborhood all summer, 
 and as many robins, apparently felt the splendor of his 
 
1 62 A Woodland Tenor. 
 
 song only as making their own imperfections more 
 apparent, for they rushed towards him, screaming in- 
 sults rather than singing or chirping ; an unfair tourna- 
 ment ensued under the shade of the thick-leaved, 
 wildly-tossed boughs, until the vanquished hero fled 
 from the rustling tree, the usurpers behind chattering 
 vivaciously, slandering him, of course. Then we heard 
 him at a distance, softly complaining, bidding an un- 
 willing farewell. 
 
 But next summer he came very early — with narcis- 
 sus and valley-lily — to take possession of his old home ; 
 he kept nearer the house than formerly, announcing 
 dawn from the chimney top, or saluting sunset thence 
 while we listened below, and often serenading his mate 
 from a spruce tree beside the study window, with a 
 voice in which throbbed all the meaning of B6ranger's 
 
 lines 
 
 " Passedons 
 Pour seuls dans 
 Simple toit, portes closes, 
 L'amour. des chante, des roses, 
 El la paix d'un reclus, — 
 Rien de plus." 
 
 I thought more of the song, of which I have given 
 a few variations above, than we had ever done at first; 
 for one summer's intermezzo, and study of other 
 thrushes' song had taught me how exceptional was his 
 by comparison, not to speak of his exceptional confi- 
 dence in us. One morning, a loud tumult among the 
 birds awakened us earlier than usual ; the sparrows even 
 
A Woodland Tenor. 163 
 
 joining in and almost overpowering the principal com- 
 batants with noisier clamor than may have been that 
 of a chorus of Greek citizens in a tragedy. Little sus- 
 pecting that our favorite thrush was the hero and victim 
 of this pitched battle, we came upon his little body 
 unawares, a few hours later, finding it motionless in 
 the grass under the study window. There he had been 
 slain, — by pirate hawk, greedy owl, avaricious robin, or 
 jealous rival thrush, apparently by one blow on the 
 head, for although his glazed and open eyes were up- 
 turned as if in agony or supplication, not a feather was 
 ruffled, not a wound visible to mar his beauty. He 
 had become for us a lovely memory, an echo of his 
 own strains, to be none the less dearly remembered for 
 the touch of pathos — indeed of tragedy — which had 
 silenced them forever. 
 
 Audubon says the natural food of the brown thrush 
 is insects, birds, berries, fruits. It loves ripe pears and 
 figs, also dry sumach, holly, dogwood berries, and dried 
 wild grapes. 
 
PAINTERS AND MUSIC. 
 
PAINTERS AND MUSIC. 
 
 A predilection for music is so general among paint- 
 ers, a fancy for painting is so usual among musicians, 
 that those few practicians of music and painting who 
 are indifferent to the sister art, can only be regarded as 
 exceptions proving the rule. Music and painting are 
 counterparts. Music is active, painting passive. Music 
 is elementary in its force ; in its material one of the 
 original factors of existence, it deals — so far as mortals 
 yet understand it — with the inward, subjective, spiritual 
 essence ; painting deals with life's outward, sensuous, 
 objective, often also transitory and worldly, forms. 
 Music is nature herself (nay, it would be true to say, 
 the supernatural) ; painting is but nature's partial pre- 
 sentment. The painter's labor is as silent as its re- 
 sults, hence painters, yearning for the animations of 
 tone, often of mere sound, are talkative ; the creative 
 musician, the composer, labors in silence also, it is 
 true ; but his imagination surrounds him with floods of 
 tone as he dips his pen in the rainbow-hued palette of 
 the orchestra ; even the merely reproductive musician, 
 the conductor, the player, the singer, awakens tone 
 with every wave of his wand, every movement of his 
 finger, every breath of her lips. Therefore the ordi- 
 nary fault of musicians, is the counterpart or opposite 
 
i68 Painters and Music. 
 
 — of that of the painter ; he is almost too meditative; 
 dreamy, silent, even absent minded — for his true speech 
 is that of infinitude. The painter's gossip is often 
 more entertaining than his picture ; the musician's 
 works are often more interesting than his conversation. 
 The painter is attracted to an art that offers him the 
 animation yet spirituality, the musician to one that 
 promises the silence yet superficiality, that he finds not 
 in his own. 
 
 We meet with more good amateur musicians among 
 painters, than amateur painters among musicians ; even 
 the composer must be a manual performer to a certain 
 extent, the conductor must study score, the mere 
 player must practice musical gymnastics for some hours 
 daily ; therefore the technics of his own art leave him 
 little time to employ in practicing the technique of 
 painting, yet, although music appears to be, on the 
 whole, more satisfactory than painting to its professor, 
 the musician, if seldom a painter, is almost invariably 
 a warmer admirer of painting than of any other art 
 not his own. If musicians .were always wealthy, the 
 finest private galleries of pictures would be theirs ; not 
 merely because their taste is superior to that of most 
 purchasers of paintings, but also because they repose, 
 they delight to forget their individuality in an art that 
 is so different from, and yet so closely related to their 
 own. Among distinguished musical lovers of pictorial 
 art, Geminiani, a famous violinist of the last century, 
 
Painters and Music. 169 
 
 was so enthusiastic a connoisseur, that he neglected the 
 study and practice of his own art, and involved him- 
 self in pecuniary difficulties in order to purchase costly 
 pictures which he was continually obliged to sell again. 
 Handel's favorite recreation was to frequent picture 
 exhibitions, and the chiefest of his few intimate friends 
 was the painter Goupy. The Paris Louvre owes an 
 admirable collection of paintings to the excellent 
 violinist Sauvageot ; and M. Marmontel, whose judg- 
 ment as to color often manifests itself when he writes 
 on his own art, is one of the best known amateurs and 
 collectors, especially of drawings and aquarelles, in 
 France. His collections include such names as those 
 of Barye, Bellang^, Boucher, Corot, Delacroix, Frago- 
 nard, Ingres, Claude Lorraine, Meissonnier, Millet, 
 Prudhon, Regnault, Rembrandt, Rousseau, Troyon, 
 etc., etc., and yet, picture-fanatics are exceptions among 
 musicians. But many painters, not satisfied with col- 
 lecting musical libraries, have become good musicians, 
 and besides making bosom friends of musicians, have 
 often married singers, — like Vanloo, whose wife was an 
 Italian prima donna. Not a few have been professional 
 musicians for a time ; some as much musician as 
 painter— especially in former days, when painters were 
 by no means mere specialists ; while in our time a few 
 have won double crowns. Lover the singer and author 
 was also a miniature painter; Angelica Kaufmann was 
 an excellent musician ; Carolus Duran sings arias and 
 
170 Painters and Music. 
 
 Lieder, plays organ, piano, guitar, can extemporize, 
 and write about music ; Leighton is a good musical 
 amateur ; Dord was even more, and signalized his 
 musical taste by having a musical measure inscribed 
 over the door of his villa, containing the notes, do mi 
 si la do re, — " domicile a Dor6." Wagner, too, ap- 
 preciated painting in a sarcastic way. When he rented 
 a villa at Mendon, he discovered, by the countless num- 
 ber of pictures which the house contained, that his 
 landlord was a painter. " Fearful as were these pic- 
 tures " he says, he felt reassured, just having left noisy 
 Paris, in regard to the quiet nature of his host's pro- 
 fession. " For there is nothing disturbing about pic- 
 tures, so long as one does not look at them !" Wagner 
 only cared for what he termed the " living arts," and 
 very little for landscape painting only, outside of those. 
 
 Liszt loved every branch of art, and held that music 
 and painting completed each other. He avowed that 
 some of his compositions had been suggested by pic- 
 tures; and an early unrealized dream of his, was to 
 give concerts in the galleries of the Louvre. 
 
 Gainsborough, dissipated and unreasonable in almost 
 everything but painting, was extravagantly fond of 
 music. He wasted time in trying to master difficult 
 musical gymnastics, neglected appointments to go in 
 search of some rare musical instrument for his collec- 
 tion, and thought nothing of exchsinging one of his 
 best pictures for the mere repetition of a song or a 
 
Painters and Music. 171 
 
 piece of music that pleased him, or ot leaving a portrait 
 unfinished in order to take preparatory lessons on some 
 new instrument. Yet Gainsborough's pictures are un- 
 impassioned ; it is only in his powerful and harmonious 
 coloring that we may discover any trace of a musically 
 constituted mind. Notwithstanding his Ipve of music, 
 Gainsborough very reluctantly accepted the manifesta- 
 tion of a similar taste in his daughter Mary, when she 
 married Fischer, a great hautboy player, and composer 
 of a famous minuet to which Mozart wrote varrations ; 
 for Fischer was nearly as old as Gainsborough. That 
 fine musician and worthy man, William Jackson of 
 Exeter, composer of the famous Te Deum, in F., and 
 many lovely canzonets, gave his friendship to Gains- 
 borough, over whose unbalanced character his own 
 fine one exercised a favorable influence. Jackson was 
 one of the few exceptions among musicians of re- 
 markable practical talent for painting ; though he never 
 studied that art, and though his manual dexterity was 
 the mere result of observation and patience, some of 
 his pictures were bought by titled amateurs in the be- 
 lief that they were, by Wilson, and one of them, which 
 belonged to Gainsborough, was sold at the latter's sale, 
 with many complimentary guesses as to who had 
 painted it. Jackson says excellent things of painting, 
 in his reminiscences of Sir Joshua Reynolds and Gains- 
 borough. 
 
 Jackson was one of Gainsborough's contemporaries. 
 
172 Painters and Music. 
 
 William Blake, the poet-painter, is said to have pos- 
 sessed a fine voice, and often chanted his own verses to 
 music which he improvised, thereby producing a deep 
 effect on his listeners. In spite of this tradition, and 
 though Blake undoubtedly heard spiritual voices in his 
 art, which more material voices drowned to other 
 artists of that day, his poems, great in meaning, lame 
 in form, have always seemed, to me, wanting in the 
 fluid, rhythmical, musical element. There was a time 
 in his life when his Ossianic poetic genius and his lofty 
 pictorial faculties seemed moving with equal step ; but 
 the latter gained the victory. This fervid, magnificent 
 illustrator of biblical prose saw sublime visions, but 
 they were voiceless, those of a seer as distinguished 
 from those of a prophet. To give an instance of this 
 in his poetry: — the sight of the throbbing stars almost 
 always awakens, in musically constituted minds, a 
 consciousness of the vibration and rhythm existing in 
 the universe, a sense that lies at the foundation of the 
 musical faculties. In Blake's charming lin^s to the 
 evening star, this feeling does not manifest itself. He 
 says, — exquisitely, pictorially, but not musically, — 
 
 " Speak silence with thy glimmering eyes, 
 
 And wash the dusk with silver." 
 
 Rossetti has truly said that Blake's lyrics possess 
 
 the same " play of color " as many of the Elizabethan 
 
 songs ; but in spite of their brilliant fire and frequent 
 
 flame of inspiration, I, as a musician, cannot feel that 
 
 they possess the melodious flow of most of the lyrics 
 
Painters and Music. 1 73 
 
 of Shakespeare and of his contemporaries and fol- 
 lowers. 
 
 Among the friendships that have existed between 
 painters and musicians, the affection felt by Delacroix 
 for Chopin has been celebrated by the pens of Heine, 
 George Sand, Liszt, and others ; and many passages 
 written by Delacroix bear witness to his love of music, 
 and his warm appreciation of his friend's supremacy 
 in that art. In one of his published letters, addressed 
 from the country to a friend in Paris, Delacroix re- 
 quests that Pleyel may be directed to take away the 
 pianoforte that had been used by Chopin in the 
 painter's own studio. How much, yet how much less 
 than the reality, may not imagination build on that re- 
 quest ! The studio of Delacroix, the painter working 
 at some of his finest pictures, the great composer and 
 great improviser, at the piano ; what hours of intel- 
 lectual communion, of artistic inspiration, must have 
 passed in delightful interchange of thought, in dis- 
 interested comradeship ! 
 
 But although Delacroix considered music so power- 
 ful a mental stimulus, though he loved it with such 
 sincerity and judgment, though he almost worshipped 
 the genius of Chopin, and though his own pictures have 
 been so often written of as producing " a quasi musi- 
 cal effect," Chopin admired Ingres, as a painter; more 
 than Delacroix. Why? Chopin is regarded as an 
 ultra-romanticist, Ingres was a conservative classicist, 
 and, a very cold one ; but Chopin was of so exquisitely 
 
1 74 Painters and Music. ^ 
 
 refined a nature, so perfect a master of form, and so 
 fastidious in taste, spite of profound passion and an 
 extraordinary overflow of power in expressing it, that 
 he may possibly have preferred, in other arts and artists, 
 correct beauty with little expression, to the excess of 
 expression that sometimes regards beauty as an un- 
 necessary adjunct. Ingres, too, was a still better ama- 
 teur musician than Delacroix. While yet a boy, he 
 was able to perform a Viotti concerto in public, his 
 father, a musician and painter, having made him an 
 excellent violinist before the youth determined to de- 
 vote all his time to painting. Mendelssohn often 
 played trios of chamber music with Ingres, who took 
 the violin part. Ingres once advised the French com- 
 poser Gounod, when the latter was studying at Rome, 
 to devote all his time to the color art ; and as late as 
 1841, Gounod was still dividing his time between com- 
 position and the painting of landscapes. 
 
 Joseph Vernet, the French marine painter, loved 
 music passionately, and played the guitar like an artist. 
 He was so warm a friend of the composer Pergolesi, 
 that some of his biographers have given this friendship 
 as the reason why he lived for twenty years in Italy ; 
 after Pergolesi's death he could not hear his friend's 
 name mentioned without expressing passionate regret, 
 often shedding tears that he vainly attempted to re- 
 strain. The painter kept an instrument at his studio 
 for Pergolesi to play on and compose by ; the com- 
 
Painters and Music. 175 
 
 poser had an easel and palettes in his music room, for 
 Vernet's convenience; one composed, played, or sang, ' 
 while the other painted. Vernet told Pitra that these 
 hours had been the richest in inspiration, the happiest 
 in feeling, of any hours of labor in his life, and that 
 the music of Pergolesi had always produced on his 
 mind the same enlivening yet softening effect as the 
 view of a fine natural landscape. " Often," he said, 
 " my best coloring has been the result of listening to 
 my friend's deep and serious harmony." Vernet thus 
 observed the creation of Pergolesi's " Stabat Mater " 
 and " La Serva Padrona." The opera was successful, 
 but the " Stabat Mater " was not so at first ; Pergolesi 
 wrote this for a religious establishment where his sister 
 was soeur tonriire. Vernet was disappointed at the ill 
 success of a work which he considered a masterpiece ; 
 but the modest Pergolesi, who had only thought of 
 pleasing the nuns, teased Vernet on account of his 
 friendly vexation about himself. The painter then in- 
 vited a party of dillettanti, qualified by taste, knowl- 
 edge, and cultivation, to listen to such a work with ap- 
 preciation. Its beauty was at once recognized by these 
 amateurs, and next by the public ; and we owe it to 
 Joseph Vernet's friendship for Pergolesi, that this 
 elegant and artistic chef-d-ceuvre was not buried for- 
 ever amidst the dusty manuscripts of a convent library. 
 Perhaps the friendship and the influence of Joseph 
 Vernet had also something to do with the enthusiasm 
 
1/6 Painters and Music. 
 
 that greeted the public performance of Pergolesi's works 
 some years after — and after the composer's death — in 
 Paris, when Vernet was residing there. Musical taste 
 was apparently hereditary in the artistic dynasty of the 
 Vernets, for Horace, the grandson of Pergolesi's friend 
 Joseph, was also a lover of the tone-art, and fond of 
 selecting his intimate friends from among its professors. 
 Charming must have been those evenings at the Villa 
 Medici, when some of the party recited the verses of 
 Byron, or some other poet, while Horace Vernet, who 
 was a very expressive pantomimist, would pose in illus- 
 tration of the strophes, to which the musicians present 
 improvised descriptive music. Sometimes Horace Ver- 
 net — picturesque, elegant and graceful as a painter al- 
 ways should be, but very seldom is, danced national 
 dances with the handsome Mdlle. Vernet, whose 
 brother, rather than father, he appeared to be. In one 
 of Mendelssohn's letters, he terms Vernet's brown 
 complexion, dark eyes, long beard and marked features, 
 as even more oriental than the Eastern costume he 
 wore at home ; and Hector Berlioz wrote from Rome 
 in 1832, that he passed all his evenings with Horace 
 Vernet, " who is more of a young man, and his daugh- 
 ter prettier than ever." Malibran, too, was one of the 
 Vernets' frequent visitors, and once sung the " Casta- 
 Diva " for them, standing on the marble steps of the 
 fountain in the villa Pamphili garden, Hesse, a painter 
 whose picture entitled " Les fiangailles de Titien " 
 
Painters and Music. 177 
 
 made a sensation at Paris in 1833, taught painting to 
 Malibran (then Mdlle. Garcia). She was passionately 
 fond of color — so much so, that during her later days 
 of celebrity, she refused to sing in Venice unless she 
 could have her gondola painted green, instead of the 
 conventional black ; still, the advantage she derived 
 from Hesse's lessons is doubtful. Her father, however, 
 instructed Hesse in return, and not only made the 
 painter a good musician, but something rarer, — one of 
 the most genuinely well-informed musical amateurs of 
 his day. 
 
 Three great Italians, Leonardo da Vinci, Benvenuto 
 Cellini, and Salvator Rosa, were all excellent (profes- 
 sional) musicians. Cellini, though at one time court 
 musician to pope Clement the VHth, was the least 
 gifted musically ; Leonardo was a very accomplished 
 musician and improviser, his salary in this capacity at 
 the court of the duke of Milan amounting to 500 
 ducats, no small sum for the end of the iSth and the 
 beginning of the i6th centuries. He invented a novel 
 species of viol (that ancestor of the violin) with a silver 
 head ; this invention of his has been exaggerated by 
 some of his biographers into " a silver harp, shaped 
 like the head of a horse !" Ehlert has compared the 
 pictures and interesting character of some of Schu- 
 mann's songs to the smile of Leonardo's Mona Lisa, 
 and the comparison is a subtle one, for the works of 
 this brooding, modern-minded painter, the profound 
 
1/8 Painters and Music. 
 
 idealist who so continually studied the fleeting and 
 mysterious smile of woman, the musically fluid move- 
 ment of water, are often as suggestive as music itself. 
 Indeed, it is said that the rare expression in the face of 
 Madonna Lisa (la Gioconda), that masterpiece among 
 portraits, was prolonged in the face of the lady by the 
 continual performance of music during her sittings. 
 And as to Leonardo's comprehension of the splendors 
 and rhythms of water, — " they say," somewhat mythi- 
 cally, of this universally gifted man, that the laurels 
 of an explored and pre-Columbian are possibly his 
 due ; at least, obscurity and uncertainty cover the 
 years of his life (1480 to '84) during which he was ab- 
 sent from Italy on a visit to " Babylon " as the orient 
 was then termed, and over seas yet more remote, 
 possibly. 
 
 Salvator Rosa, by turns actor, brigand, engraver, 
 poet, painter, revolutionist, satirist, and theologian, 
 was a musician also, and even a creative one, a com- 
 poser whose cantatas and madrigals would have been 
 considered sufficient in his time, to entitle an artist 
 whose sole vocation was music, to distinction and 
 celebrity. Two or three of his arias are still favorites 
 on the modern concert stage. These small composi- 
 tions — and I have one especially in view, of which he 
 also wrote the words, full of as much character as his 
 paintings,^ — -may have been written at some adventurous 
 period of his life, perhaps during hig sojourn among 
 
Painters and Music. 1 79 
 
 the banditti of the Apulian and Calabrian mountains, 
 his pictorial recollections of which he embodied in his 
 wild and rugged landscapes, enlivened by figures of 
 bandits, shepherds and soldiers. But though we may 
 discern, in this aria, strong traces of the bold and 
 fiery spirit that so powerfully affects us in his pictures, 
 all is clear, orderly, self-poised, in the form and har- 
 mony of the composition. According to the received 
 idea of Salvator Rosa, we should rather expect to find 
 him out-Wagnerising Wagner, — after the manner of his 
 own epoch, — than remaining within the limitations of 
 the school of his day. It may be that his technical 
 mastery of musical material was not sufificient to en- 
 able him to throw rules aside, and, exceptionally, to 
 revolutionize the world of music in his compositions ; 
 but turn, for a partial reply to this question, to a cer- 
 tain portrait of Rosa, painted by himself, with which 
 his scholarly modesty, firm musical style is completely 
 in harmony. The portrait appears to be that of an 
 intellectual gentleman. Puritanical but for the lurk- 
 ing spirit of mischief in his eye, and, did we not know 
 it to be that of an artist in the act, apparently, of dis- 
 cussing art, we might say it was the portrait of an art 
 iconoclast, for beholds a figurino in his hand, concern- 
 ing which he appears to converse in a critical, mocking 
 sort of way. This is scarcely the face we expect as 
 that of the romantic dare-devil its original is commonly 
 supposed to have been. But, in studying that face, we 
 
i8o Painters and Music. 
 
 better understand the classic form and clear balance of 
 
 Rosa's songs and cantatas, and the anger, almost that 
 
 of a Puritan idealist, which led him to exclaim, in his 
 
 satire against the abuse of church music : 
 
 " Oud 'k, che ognun si scandalizza, e tedia, 
 Cantarfa la Ciacconne il miserere !" 
 
 We are almost inclined to believe that the brain be- 
 hind that face adopted so wild a choice of subjects in 
 landscape painting, not from inborn romanticism, or 
 from eccentricity of taste, but from cool calculation, 
 because the painter felt that the novelty of his sub- 
 jects would obtain for him more notoriety than he 
 could expect from obediently following classic models ; 
 and that he is therefore more truly himself in his 
 music, than in his pictures. Or, perhaps, his may have 
 been a double nature, like that of many other great 
 artists, and he could be classic and romantic by turns, 
 in two arts, with equal sincerity ; for, in spite of some 
 apparently insincere, possibly calculating, and certainly 
 satirical features of his character, he praised music in 
 very noble poetic accents, and was undoubtedly an 
 able musician. Like Robert Reinick, the German 
 poet-painter, Salvator Rosa might have sung, 
 
 I roam the wide world at my ease, 
 
 All hearts, all houses, ope to me ; 
 Those who my pictures do not please, 
 
 Can take my merry minstrelsy ; 
 
 but with the difference, that while Rosa's great fame 
 as a painter has probably rendered the fame of his 
 
Painters and Music. 
 
 181 
 
 songs more lasting than it otherwise would have been. 
 Reinict's lyrical poems have cast his achievements as a 
 painter into comparative shade, although he regarded 
 painting as his regular profession. 
 
 Robert Reinict was not a technically cultured mu- 
 sician, but we must number him among musical paint- 
 ers, partly on account of the lyrical nature of his 
 poetic genius, partly because his poems, especially 
 fitted for music, have received such distinguished musi- 
 cal illustration. A few of Robert Reinict's lyrics, 
 such as his ■' Oh, Sunshine !" have become favorites on 
 account of their fine settings by Schumann, Brahms, 
 Lachner, Gordigiani, Spohr, and others, among English 
 speaking amateurs who scarcely know even the name 
 of the artist whose verses they sing, and who, perhaps, 
 have never seen any of his fresh and idyllic pictures, 
 or read his poetic illustrations to Rethels' " Dance of 
 Death," or to his own "Songs of a Painter, with mar- 
 ginal drawings by his friends." I will give a transla- 
 tion of one of the simple, healthy, lyrico-pictorial songs 
 of this pleasing poet-painter, a sort of lesser Burns, 
 who looked at, and listened to music and nature, all his 
 life long, with the receptive spirit, the candid, loving 
 eyes and ears of a child and a genuine, simple-minded 
 artist. 
 
1 82 Painters and Music. 
 
 SINGERS AND PAINTERS. 
 
 The beauty green earth displays, 
 All birds of the forest know ; 
 They hymn it with joy swift winging 
 Through azure and gold, loud singing 
 
 That beauty in grateful lays. 
 
 The beauty green earth displays, 
 All rivers and brooklets know ; 
 They paint it, on tablets blending 
 Grove, palace, and cliffs o'erbending 
 
 Cloud, tempest, dawn, sunset rays. 
 
 The beauty green earth displays. 
 All singers and painters know ; 
 Sing on then her sounding story, 
 Paint on then her blooming glory, 
 
 Glad brothers in love and praise ! 
 
 As SO many painters have been more than fairly good 
 practical musicians, it is remarkable that so ffew can be 
 cited as technically correct in the delineation of instru- 
 mental playing. And, strange to say, this is especially 
 true of modern painters (save a few — Alma Tadema 
 and Dante Rossetti among them), and of representa- 
 tions of violinists ; I have known many violinists, good 
 amateurs of painting, launch many a shaft of wit in 
 ridicule of such grammatical errors as we see in Gal- 
 lait's otherwise so fine " Art et Libert^," etc. A bril- 
 liant exception may be found in Sir David Wilkie's 
 " Blind Fiddler." In this figure all is correct, — pose, 
 head, hands, violin, bow. Jacopo da Ponte, too, in his 
 " Marriage of Cana " has given us a perfectly well- 
 drawn violin. Pieter van Lano, the deformed Dutch 
 genre painter (nicknamed Bambrecio) ought to have 
 
Painters and Music. 183 
 
 given, of all painters, thoroughly reliable reproductions 
 of violin playing, for he was a remarkable violinist and 
 an excellent musician. Among well-informed artists of 
 other dajs, who never could have given us nymphs 
 playing the guitar with the left hand, and Beethoven, 
 playing the pianoforte with one finger, as some of our 
 contemporaries do. Orcagna, in his wall-painting in 
 the Campo Santo at Pisa, made so careful a representa- 
 tion of the old instrument the Hackbrett, that musi- 
 cians have been able, through its means, to compare 
 the system of tuning this instrument with that of its 
 Arabian original, the Kanun. Albrecht Diirer, in his 
 magnificent " Triumphal chariots of the Emperor 
 Maximilian " (15 17), has given us two players on the 
 German Ribeban (the antique violoncello); their anxious 
 precise, and careful air inspires us with as much confi- 
 dence in the correctness of their attitudes as does the 
 ability and character of the artist who drew them. 
 
 An affected use of musical terms is one of the fa- 
 vorite mannnerisms of picture reviewers. " Harmony 
 — monochord — chromatic — tone — symphony — discord 
 and concord " — etc., etc., are words continually used, 
 while many others more technically musical, puzzle the 
 reader as to the real value and meaning ot some " im- 
 pression " recorded with brush and pencil, and described 
 with the pen. Perhaps journalists and magazinists are 
 not to blame for original bad taste, but simply follow the 
 lead of the painters, who^baptize as nocturns, harmon- 
 
1 84 Painters and Music. 
 
 ies, and symphonies, works that would not only please 
 more, but would also be better understood, were they 
 named " a wash in greys," " a sketch in blue and 
 lilac," " a combination of mauve and purple," etc. The 
 oddest misnomer of this kind that I ever encountered, 
 was a blurry sketch of a cabbage field in a mist, termed 
 " A Chopin impromptu !" But when great painters 
 write of music, when great musicians write of paint- 
 ing, making use of the sister art as a means of what I 
 may term comparative criticism, how instructive, how 
 lucent, how charming the effect ! Dies, the landscape 
 painter, wrote some very good biographical notes 
 about Haydn. As a fine example of this I will trans- 
 late a few passages in which Fromentin, the painter: 
 author (whose literary style is surface painting of the 
 choicest and most delicate type, and whose criticisms 
 evince genuine musical sensibility), sums up the grand 
 qualities of Rubens : — " Did you ever close your eyes 
 during the execution of a brilliant piece of music ? 
 Sounds seemed to flow from everything and every- 
 where. It appears to bound from one instrument to 
 another, and as it is very tumultuous in spite of the 
 perfect accord of the ensembles, it leads us to think 
 that everything is agitated, that hands are trembling, 
 that the same musical frenzy has seized the instruments 
 and the hands that hold them, and because the execu- 
 tants deeply thrill the listeners, it seems impossible to 
 believe that they can be calmly sitting before their 
 
Painters and Music. 185 
 
 desks ; therefore on opening one's eyes, one feels sur- 
 prised to see them peaceful, collected, following with 
 scholarly attention the movements of the ebony wand 
 that sustains, directs, dictates to each one what he 
 ought to do, and which, itself, is only the agent of its 
 conductor's watchful spirit and knowledge. We find 
 all this in Ruben's execution of his work ; the ebony 
 wand, watchful, conducting, commanding, and the same 
 imperturbable will, the master faculty that directs 
 obedient instruments, — that is, the auxiliary faculties. 
 * * * Extreme sonority obtained with few instru- 
 ments, a key-board of which he neglects at least three- 
 quarters, but which he runs over, skipping many keys, 
 and touching its two extremes whenever he wishes ; 
 such is the manner, — described in language borrowed 
 from music, — of this great practician. * * * All this 
 leads us to a still more complete definition, to a word 
 that expresses everything ; Rubens is a lyrist, the most 
 lyrical of all painters. His imaginative promptitude, 
 the intensity of his style, his sonorous and progressive 
 rhythm, the compass and vertiginary course of this 
 rhythm, — call it lyricism, and you will at least ap- 
 proach the truth. Great things have been written about 
 music by the great men of modern days as well as by 
 the philosophers of antiquity ; by men like Mazzini, 
 Darwin, Schopenhauer, Newman and others ; but sel- 
 dom have I found anything more fine and true from 
 an aesthetic point of view than the following descrip- 
 
1 86 Painters and Music. 
 
 tion of music, by the poet-artist, Story, and which 
 (spoken forty years ago in an address now out of print) 
 I take pleasure in giving my readers the benefit of. 
 Mr. Story says : 
 
 " In attempting to condense into words tlie thoughts 
 and feelings which have long haunted me concerning 
 music, I feel myself as a child, who, standing upon the 
 sands, beholds the ocean stretching before him with- 
 out visible shore, yet who would fain enclasp it within 
 the circle of his hands. So nearly impossible does it 
 seem to comprehend within the reach of language, the 
 boundless spirit of music, that every word that I speak 
 only seems to limit what in its essence is illimitable, 
 and to chain and fetter that which is as free as air. It 
 seems to me like that cloudy pillar which led the 
 Israelites of old, which rested on the earth and buried 
 its head in the heavens, which fore-ran their wander- 
 ings, which guided their steps, which no hand could 
 reach, and yet which was a visible presence whereon 
 was impressed the finger of God. Music is in its es- 
 sence the principal of all the arts. So soon as the soul 
 assumes the garb of art, so soon is perceptible the 
 shadow of music ; in the rhythm of poetry, the modu- 
 lation of prose, the flowing outline of sculpture, the 
 harmonies of color, the ' frozen music ' of architecture, 
 the varying intonation of oratory, in the smile, and in 
 grace, — which is musical motion, — in nature, which is 
 the music of God., Music is not so much one thing as 
 
Painters and Music. \ 87 
 
 the essence of all things. It is an art embodying the 
 highest and noblest cravings of our nature, and de- 
 manding, for its development, not the chance efforts of 
 leisure hours, but the steady pursuit of a whole life ; 
 an art whose labyrinth it is permitted only master 
 spirits to tread ; a height from which the low interests 
 and ofifices of every-day business, soiled as they are by 
 falsehood, meanness and servility, only look the meaner 
 and more dwarfish ; a universal language, which pene- 
 trates the dimmest chambers of the spirit, evokes the 
 recollections of the past and the hopes of the future ; 
 awakens high resolutions, earnest wishes, and noble 
 desires ; speaks with a divine voice, ,and yet is the 
 nearest language to the soul of man !" 
 
 I will hazard a supposition ; that the love of painters 
 for music, so much more general than that of musi- 
 cians for painting, has its source in a physical cause. 
 When we close our eyes on receiving a physical shock, 
 we become aware of a multitudinous, multicolored ex- 
 plosion — or apparition — of sparks, the origin of which 
 is inward, from the brain. That is to say, motion, vi- 
 bration (the primal element of music), awakens, if it 
 does not actually create, light and color. Are tints, 
 then, the satellites of tone, luminous vibrations called 
 into being by sonorous ones; or are the visual and 
 auditory nervous centres so closely connected, that re- 
 flections and echoes, mentally seen and heard, cause 
 this phenomenon ? It seems certain that the ear is a 
 
1 88 Painters and Music. 
 
 more perfect organ than the eye ; the ear can disen- 
 tangle the simultaneously sounded tones of a chord, 
 and their separate sounding by twenty different instru- 
 ments, though the eye can only perceive one effect in 
 a composite color ; the ear seizes more than twelve 
 octaves of tone ; the eye grasps less than one octave 
 of color. I have never yet heard of a person who per- 
 ceived melodies, or even tones, while he looked on 
 colors ; but a double perception, called color-hearing, 
 has been carefully studied by Bleuler, Lehmann, Nuss- 
 baume, and others, who assert that the power of per- 
 ceiving certain colors as the satellites of certain tones, 
 has been found often, and even as an inherited percep- 
 tion, in a few families of highly organized musicians. 
 Zedrono, the opthomatologist, found in his experi- 
 ments, that persons so gifted inwardly saw very acute 
 tones as silver grey, increasing to dazzling white light 
 in proportion to the intensity of the tone. I once 
 asked a great artist (painter), — but one, I should add, 
 more distinguished in design and composition than by 
 luxuriant genius for color, — whether music had ever 
 awakened in his mind any additional feeling of color? 
 On the contrary, he said, the masterworksof symphonic 
 art always produced on him the effect of being trans- 
 lated to a purer atmosphere at a great height, vividly 
 illuminated but entirely colorless ; and in this way the 
 hearing of great music always had the effect of puri- 
 fying his mental palette. Among the few examples of 
 
Painters and Music. 189 
 
 genuine musical criticism existing — for this is a new 
 branch of literature, and its masters, themselves mu- 
 sicians, may be counted on the fingers — there are two 
 descriptions of the same work, the introduction to 
 " Lohengrin," which coincide, in a remarkable degree, 
 when describing the effect, as of intense light, awakened 
 in the mind by this music. One is by the poet and 
 subtle analyst, Charles Baudelaire. I translate a part 
 of it, he says : 
 
 " I experienced the same sensations as those felt by 
 a man who abandons himself to reverie in absolute 
 solitude, but solitude accompanied by an immense 
 horizon, and covered with great, diffused light ; 
 shining immensity without any scenic decoration ; but 
 I soon became aware of greater charms, of an in- 
 tensity of light, increasing with such rapidity, that no 
 shade of expression that the dictionary affords, would 
 sufifice to discribe this continuous growth of whiteness 
 and ardor. Then I fully comprehended the idea of a 
 soul, liberated from the bonds of matter, floating in a 
 luminous medium, in an ecstacy of spiritual delight, 
 far away from, far above the world of human con- 
 sciousness." 
 
 The other description is by Liszt and therefore more 
 precise ; but, except in one passage, where he says — 
 " dazzling splendor of color, as if, in this unique in- 
 stant, the sacred edifice rose and shone before our 
 blinded vision, in all its rainbow radiance and luminous 
 
igo Painters and Music. 
 
 magnificence," the impression conveyed is similar to 
 that conveyed by Baudelaire, of intense light, felt in 
 " an expanse of, vaporous ether — light gradually in- 
 creased to the excess of the sun itself — celestial, trans- 
 parent iridescence," etc. I was reminded of these 
 descriptions in lately hearing the experience of a man 
 of noble life and education, snatched, by a hair's 
 breadth, from the embrace of death. As he lost 
 consciousness (in an accident) he said he became 
 aware of an immensity of unimaginable, iridescent 
 light, rapidly vibrating to incessant and exquisite tone ; 
 of this sea he seemed to be a drop, a spark, and the 
 ecstacy of this existence was such, that he regretted 
 his recall to grosser life. 
 
 When Washington Irving was in Spain, he listened 
 to David Wilkie's discussion of the Spanish school of 
 painting, and then exclaimed, " why, all this applies as 
 much to books as to pictures !" In a similar spirit, 
 Goethe avowed that the master works of sculpture and 
 painting first revealed to him the full meaning of style 
 in literature. So, in an art lecture, I heard Professor 
 Weir, of Yale college declare that his understanding 
 of the form and structure that underlies his own, and 
 all tone art, grew clearer, as he listened to such mighty 
 intellectual combinations as may be found in the heaven- 
 ly compositions of Mozart, the second and fifth sympho- 
 nies of Beethoven. But, interdependent as are all the 
 arts, each must' use different means in imitating, in- 
 
Painters and Music. 191 
 
 terpreting, or departing from nature. The charm of 
 each lies in its own peculiar, individual method of ex- 
 pression. A " literary " picture is less true and attract- 
 ive than one painted at the dictate of pictorial imagina- 
 tion alone ; descriptive music stands on a lower place 
 than that which merely expresses the ideal aspiration 
 of a musically gifted mind ; — no poet can paint in verse 
 the magical, atmosphere, the obscure fluidity, the rich 
 and sombre molten gold of Rembrandt in such a way 
 that the mind's eye of one who has never seen the 
 picture, may see it as it really exists ; — none may carve 
 in stone the joyful, dewy, pastoral morning sweetness 
 the Paradisaical freshness of Mozart's, Haydn's Per- 
 golises' melodies. Yet, as Sir Joshua Reynolds has 
 truly said, " It is by the analogy that one art bears to 
 another, that many things are ascertained, which either 
 were but faintly seen, or perhaps would not have been 
 discovered at all, if the inventor had not received the 
 first hints from the practice of a sister art on a similar 
 occasion. The frequent allusions which any man who 
 treats of any art is obliged to make to others, suf- 
 ficiently prove their near connection and inseparable 
 relation."