The quaint, picturesque old city of Bergen, surrounded by its “seven
mountains,” has been the birthplace of many famous Norsemen, among them
Holberg and Welhaven, names that have a more than national repute. In no
other city of the North has been preserved so much of the atmosphere of
the olden time and history.
All who know Bergen think of its seven mountains as shrouded in mist
most of the year; but where else can one find such brilliant, sunny
summer days, such pure, sweet air, fragrant with the breath of field
and _fjeld_? Or who can forget the harbor as seen from the deck of a
vessel slowly gliding in of a summer evening, when every tint of sunset
sky is caught and reflected by the sea and the rocky mountain tops, and
it seems the entrance to an enchanted land?
Its climate, as Jonas Lie has said, illustrates its folk–type; doubtless
because it has helped to form it. The people are animated, enthusiastic,
and practical, a curious combination of the prosaic and ideal; and all
this, it is claimed, has made the old town rich in men of genius. Her
children have been loyal; and the old mother, with her thousand years’
history, has had no more devoted son than Ole Bull.
He was born February 5, 1810. His paternal grandmother, Gedsken
Edvardine Storm, married to the apothecary and army surgeon, Ole
Bornemann Bull, was sister to the poet, Edvard Storm. His father, Johan
Storm Bull, like his father before him a physician and apothecary in
Bergen, was an accomplished man, and a chemist of unusual ability. He
had studied under Tromsdorf, and corresponded with the first German
specialists of his day. His mother, Anna Dorothea Bull, was of the old
Dutch family Geelmuyden. Her father, an able lawyer, died before the age
of forty, leaving his widow with several children to rear alone; and of
her four sons, two were captains in the army, one was a sea–captain, and
one, “Uncle Jens,” for some years a merchant, and afterwards the
publisher of the city’s first newspaper, which is still owned by the
family. The three leading professions were all represented by members of
the Bull and Geelmuyden families. Johan Randulf Bull, the brother of
Ole’s grandfather, had, beside other offices, filled that of governor of
the Bergen _stift_, or diocese, and had been noted for his generous
hospitality.
Ole Bull was the eldest of ten children, seven sons and three daughters,
nine of whom lived to the age of maturity, and six of whom survive him.
He was sent early to the Latin school, as the children of gentlemen
usually were at that time; but the promise he gave can be inferred from
the advice of his old rector, Mr. Winding, some years after: “Take to
your fiddle in earnest, boy, and don’t waste your time here.”
Both of Ole’s parents, and several members of the family on the mother’s
side, were musical. His father kept up the proverbial hospitality of the
family, and no gatherings were more enjoyable than Uncle Jens’s Tuesday
quartette evenings. Uncle Jens spent much time and money to gratify his
passion for music. On the quartette evenings Ole was several times
discovered, by an involuntary movement, under the table or sofa, or
behind a curtain, where, having crept from his bed, he had concealed
himself for hours, only to be ignominiously sent back again, after a
whipping for disobedience. But, stern as was the discipline of that day,
an exception was after a time made in his favor, through the
intercession of Uncle Jens. He thus became familiar, while very young,
with the quartettes of Krummer, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, and, as he
used to say, imbibed the rules of art unknowingly; for he did not
conceive the music as produced by players, but as proceeding from the
instruments played, jubilating, triumphing, quarreling, fighting, with a
life of their own,—a conception arising, no doubt, partly from the tales
his grandmother told him of the elves and gnomes, with which the popular
myths peopled forest and mountain. When, in early childhood, playing
alone in the meadow, he saw a delicate blue–bell gently moving in the
breeze, he fancied he heard the bell ring, and the grass accompany it
with most enrapturing fine voices; _he fancied he heard nature sing_,
and thus music revealed itself, or came to his consciousness as
something that might be reproduced.
The influence which the popular music and mythology must have had upon a
sensitive and imaginative child like Ole can hardly be understood by
those who have been born and bred in England and America, where
folk–songs and folk–lore are now almost unknown. Mr. Goldschmidt, in an
article on Ole Bull in “Macmillan’s Magazine,” remarks:—
When, on my visits to England, I had been some time in London, in
the eastern counties, in Surrey, in Kent, and in the Isle of
Wight, it struck me that in my strolls through streets and lanes,
high–roads and woods, I had never heard the people sing. I
certainly had heard, for instance, the black minstrels and such
other bands; but I do not call that a singing of the people, but a
more or less bad execution of individual compositions. The
people’s song descends from the air; it rushes forth from the
forests, the rivers, the mountains; it lives in tradition; it was
never composed, never taught man by man. I remember when once,
with a friend, passing over Tower Hill, hearing a plaintive sound
proceeding from a crowd. I asked him what was the matter, and on
being told, “A ballad singer,” I hastened to the spot to catch a
musical sound, however coarse, from the people of England. Alas,
it was only a poor, starving woman crying out for bread, and in
false rhythms offering printed ballads for sale. My thoughts
reverted to the time when I visited Norway, and when, having
crossed the Farn Tinn Lake and entered Vestfiorddal, Aagot, the
daughter of my host, at dusk took down the _langeley_ and sang.
Oh, for those sweet, simple lays of love and feuds, fragrant with
_naïve_ faith in a mysterious destiny, that selects the best
hearts, the loveliest girl, and the bravest lad for the greatest
joy and the deepest pain! As for the strain, the music itself, if
you were to ask Aagot who made it, she would not tell it to a
stranger; but perhaps later, when you had won her confidence and
made her trust you were no unbeliever, no “scorner of simple
folks,” she would tell you that her great–grandmother had the
melody from a man whose great–grandfather had learnt it of the
Fossekarl (the spirit of the waterfall), or from the Hulder, the
mysterious, ever–young shepherdess, who had fallen in love with
him! If, then, you asked Aagot whether she believed in the
existence of Fossekarl and Hulder, she would answer, “The parson
says such beings are not, but my grandmother knew a man who had
seen them.”
I have learnt from the papers that very superstitious people are
found in parts of England; so that, if superstition made music,
you should be a singing people still. The question, however, is,
Were you ever so? I feel assured you were; how else could your
country have been called “Merry England”? But since that time more
than two centuries have laid on you hard work and great cares; you
have become an industrious, laborious people; you truly earn your
bread in the sweat of your brow; the locomotive rattles on your
rails, the steam–engine pants in your factories, the steam–hammer
clangs. So when I see the people on a Saturday night pouring forth
from these workshops, and going to lay in their stock of
provisions for Sunday, I fully understand that song has left them,
and that their children have no leisure to learn the strains of
their great–grandmothers:—
“For they who kept us captives bade us sing;
But how could we sing?”
In Norway, at present, steam draws a broad furrow across the land.
It whistles on the railroad; it plies on the lakes; it knocks
thrice at the mountain, and the mountain–king, opening his gate,
admits the broad light of day, in which, according to the legends
of old, he must die. Already the lovers of song complain of its
retreat, and, following it to remote valleys, watch its dying lips
to set it down in notes. But meanwhile a great representative of
Nature’s music, of the people’s song, had gone forth to the wide
world,—Ole Bull.
Uncle Jens played the violoncello well, and had a collection of
instruments. He loved to amuse himself with little Ole’s extreme
susceptibility to music. When he was three years old, Jens often put him
in the violoncello case, and hired him with sweetmeats to stay there
while he played. But the candy could not keep him quiet long. The eyes
kindled, and the little feet began to beat time. At last his nervous
excitement prevented his staying longer in the case. The music was
dancing all through him, and he must give it utterance. Running home, he
would seize the yard–stick, and, with another small stick for a bow,
endeavor to imitate what his uncle had played. He heard it with his
inward ear; but, for fear his parents were not so pervaded with the
tune as he was, he would explain as he went along, telling how
beautifully the bass came in at such and such a place. Seeing the child
play this rustic and soundless fiddle, his uncle bought him, when he was
five years old, a violin “as yellow as a lemon.” He used to tell, later,
how he felt carried up to the third heaven when his own little hand
first brought out a tune from that yellow violin. He loved it and kissed
it; it seemed to him so beautiful, that little fiddle! To the surprise
of the family, he played well on it from the first, though he had
received no instruction. He would stand by his mother’s knee while she
turned the screws, which would not yield to his little hand; and the
tuning was not easily accomplished, since his ear made him very critical
even at that age. His uncle taught him his notes at the same time that
he was learning his primer.
His father would not permit him to play till study hours were over, and
he could not practice regularly, but made the violin rather his
recreation. Sometimes, however, he disobeyed, playing too much and
missing his lessons, for which his back had to smart both in school and
at home. It was a paternal rule that a whipping at school had to be
repeated at home. Still he managed to get through his elementary
studies, and when he reached the higher branches of knowledge he
surprised everybody by his remarkable quickness and penetration. In
mythology he had no peer in the school, and his imaginative, dreamy soul
reveled in all the weird stories about Odin, Thor, Balder, Frey, and the
whole race of gods, giants, norns, elves, and dwarfs that fill the old
Valhalla of the Norsemen. He was never happier than when he could
persuade his grandmothers to tell him strange ghost stories, and sing
the wild songs of the peasantry. The creative and imaginative cast of
his mind also gave him a profound sympathy with nature, and he was
fortunate in having a home in the midst of grand scenery.