MUSIC.

March 1.

In the different branches of art, each artist thinks his own the

highest, and is filled with the idea of all its value and all its

capabilities which he understands best and has most largely studied and

developed. "But," says Dr. Chalmers, "we must take the testimony of each

man to the worth of that which he does know, and reject the testimony of

each to the comparative worthlessness of that which he does not know."

For it is not, generally speaking, that he overrates his own particular

walk of art from over enthusiasm, (no art, when considered separately,

as a means of human delight and improvement, _can_ be over-rated,) but

such a _one-sided_ artist, whose mind and powers have flowed in only one

direction, underrates from ignorance the walks of others which diverge

from his own.

Of all artists, musicians are most exclusive in devotion to their own

art, and in the want of sympathy, if not absolute contempt, for other

arts. A painter has more sympathies with a musician, than a musician

with a painter. Vernet used to bring his easel into Pergolesi's room, to

paint beside his harpsichord, and used to say that he owed some of his

finest skies to the inspired harmonies of his friend. Pergolesi never

felt, perhaps, any harmonies but those of his own delicious art.

"Aspasia, he who loves not music is a beast of one species, and he who

overloves it is a beast of another, whose brain is smaller than a

nightingale's, and his heart than that of a lizard!" I refer you for the

rest to a striking passage in Landor's "Pericles and Aspasia,"

containing a most severe philippic, not only against the professors, but

the _profession_, of music, and which concludes very aptly, "Panenus

said this: let us never believe a word of it!" It is too true that some

excellent musicians have been ignorant, and sensual, and dissipated; but

there are sufficient exceptions to the sweeping censure of Panenus to

show that "imprudence, intemperance, and gluttony" do not always, or

necessarily, "open their channels into the sacred stream of music."

Musicians are not selfish, careless, sensual, ignorant, because they are

musicians, but because, from a defective education, they are nothing

else. The German musicians are generally more moral and more

intellectual men than English or Italian musicians, and hence their

music has taken a higher flight, is more intellectual than the music of

other countries. Music as an art has not degraded them, but they have

elevated music.

The most accomplished and intellectual musician I ever met with is Felix

Mendelssohn. I do not recollect if it were himself or some one else who

told me of a letter which Carl von Weber had addressed to him, warning

him that he never could attain the highest honours in his profession

without cultivating the virtues and the decencies of life. "A great

artist," said Weber, "ought to be a good man."

While I am "i' the vein," I must give you a few more musical

reminiscences before my fingers are quite frozen.

I had once some conversation with Thalberg and Felix Mendelssohn, on the

unmeaning names which musicians often give to their works, as "Concerto

in F," "Concerto in B flat," "First Symphony," "Second Symphony," &c.

Mendelssohn said, that though in almost every case the composer might

have a leading idea, it would be often difficult, or even impossible, to

give any title sufficiently comprehensive to convey the same idea or

feeling to the mind of the hearer.

But music, except to musicians, can only give ideas, or rather raise

images, by association; it can give the pleasure which the just

accordance of musical sounds must give to sensitive ears, but the

associated ideas or images, if any, must be quite accidental. Haydn, we

are told, when he sat down to compose, used first to invent a story in

his own fancy--a regular succession of imaginary incidents and

feelings--to which he framed or suited the successive movements (motivi)

of his concerto. Would it not have been an advantage if Haydn could have

given to his composition such a title as would have pitched the

imagination of the listener at once upon the same key? Mendelssohn

himself has done this in the pieces which he has entitled "Overture to

Melusina," "Overture to the Hebrides," "Meeres Stille und Glueckliche

Fahrt," "The Brook," and others,--which is better surely than Sonata No.

1, Sonata No. 2. Take the Melusina, for example; is there not in the

sentiment of the music all the sentiment of the beautiful old fairy

tale?--first, in the flowing, intermingling harmony, we have the soft

elemental delicacy of the water nymph; then, the gushing of fountains,

the undulating waves; then the martial prowess of the knightly lover,

and the splendour of chivalry prevailing over the softer and more

ethereal nature; and then, at last, the dissolution of the charm; the

ebbing, fainting, and failing away into silence of the beautiful water

spirit. You will say it might answer just as well for Ondine; but this

signifies little, provided we have our fancy pitched to certain poetical

associations pre-existing in the composer's mind. Thus not only poems,

but pictures and statues, might be set to music. I suggested to Thalberg

as a subject the Aurora of Guido. It should begin with a slow, subdued,

and solemn movement, to express the slumbrous softness of that dewy hour

which precedes the coming of the day, and which in the picture broods

over the distant landscape, still wrapt in darkness and sleep; then the

stealing upwards of the gradual dawn; the brightening, the quickening of

all life; the awakening of the birds, the burst of the sun-light, the

rushing of the steeds of Hyperion through the sky, the aerial dance of

the Hours, and the whole concluding with a magnificent choral song of

triumph and rejoicing sent up from universal nature.

And then in the same spirit--no, in his own grander spirit--I would have

Mendelssohn improviser the Laocoon. There would be the pomp and

procession of the sacrifice on the seashore; the flowing in of the

waves; the two serpents which come gliding on their foamy crests,

wreathing, and rearing, and undulating; the horror, the lamentation, the

clash of confusion, the death struggle, and, after a deep pause, the

wail of lamentation, the funereal march;--the whole closing with a hymn

to Apollo. Can you not just imagine such a piece of music, and composed

by Mendelssohn? and can you not fancy the possibility of setting to

music in the same manner Raffaelle's Cupid and Psyche, or his Galatea,

or the group of the Niobe? Niobe would be a magnificent subject either

for a concerto, or for a kind of mythological oratorio.

* * * * *

March 2.

Turning over Boswell to-day, I came upon this passage: Johnson says, "I

do not commend a society where there is an agreement that what would not

otherwise be fair shall be fair; but I maintain that an individual of

any society who practises what is allowed is not dishonest."

What say you to this reasoning of our great moralist? does it not reduce

the whole moral law to something merely conventional?

In another place, Dr. Johnson asks, "What proportion does climate bear

to the complex system of human life." I shiver while I answer, "A good

deal, my dear Doctor, to some individuals, and yet more to whole races

of men."

He says afterwards, "I deal more in _notions_ than in facts." And so do

I, it seems.

He talks of "men being _held down_ in conversation by the presence of

women"--_held up_ rather, where moral feeling is concerned; and if held

down where intellect and social interests are concerned, then so much

the worse for such a state of society.

Johnson knew absolutely nothing about women. Witness that one assertion,

among others more insulting, that it is matter of indifference to a

woman whether her husband be faithful or not. He says, in another place,

"If we men require more perfection from women than from ourselves, it

is doing them honour."

Indeed! If, in exacting from us more perfection, you do not allow us the

higher and nobler nature, you do us not honour but gross injustice; and

if you do allow us the higher nature, and yet regard us as subject and

inferior, then the injustice is the greater. There, Doctor, is a dilemma

for you.

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March 8.

This relentless winter seems to stiffen and contract every nerve, and

the frost is of that fierceness and intensity, that it penetrates even

to the marrow of one's bones. One of the workmen told me yesterday, that

on taking hold of an iron bar it had taken the skin off his hand, as if

he had grasped it red hot: it is a favourite trick with the children to

persuade each other to touch with the tongue a piece of metal which has

been exposed to the open air; adhesion takes place immediately: even the

metal knobs on the doors of the room I carefully avoid touching--the

contact is worse than unpleasant.

Let but the spring come again, and I will take to myself wings and fly

off to the west!--But will spring _ever_ come? When I look out upon the

bleak, shrouded, changeless scene, there is something so awfully silent,

fixed, and immutable in its aspect, that it is enough to disturb one's

faith in the everlasting revolutions of the seasons. Green leaves and

flowers, and streams that murmur as they flow, soft summer airs, to

which we open the panting bosom--panting with too much life--shades

grateful for their coolness,--can such things be, or do they exist only

in poetry and Paradise?

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