_Feb. 11, '80_.--At a good concert to-night in the foyer of the opera
house, Philadelphia--the band a small but first-rate one. Never
did music more sink into and soothe and fill me--never so prove its
soul-rousing power, its impossibility of statement. Especially in the
rendering of one of Beethoven's master septettes by the well-chosen and
perfectly-combined instruments (violins, viola, clarionet, horn, 'cello
and contrabass,) was I carried away, seeing, absorbing many wonders.
Dainty abandon, sometimes as if Nature laughing on a hillside in the
sunshine; serious and firm monotonies, as of winds; a horn sounding
through the tangle of the forest, and the dying echoes; soothing
floating of waves, but presently rising in surges, angrily lashing,
muttering, heavy; piercing peals of laughter, for interstices; now
and then weird, as Nature herself is in certain moods--but mainly
spontaneous, easy, careless--often the sentiment of the postures of
naked children playing or sleeping. It did me good even to watch the
violinists drawing their bows so masterly--every motion a study. I
allow'd myself, as I sometimes do, to wander out of myself. The conceit
came to me of a copious grove of singing birds, and in their midst
a simple harmonic duo, two human souls, steadily asserting their own
pensiveness, joyousness.