We believe that we have heard a transfusion into music—not of
“Niagara,” which the audience seemed _bona–fide_ to expect, but of
the _pulses of a human heart at Niagara_. We had a prophetic
boding of the result of calling the piece vaguely “Niagara,”—the
listener furnished with no “argument” as a guide through the
wilderness of “treatment” to which the subject was open. This
mistake allowed, however, it must be said that Ole Bull has,
genius–like, refused to misinterpret the voice within him—refused
to play the charlatan, and “bring the house down”—_as he might
well have done by any kind of “uttermost,” from the drums and
trumpets of the orchestra_.
The emotion at Niagara is all but mute. It is a “small, still
voice” that replies within us to the thunder of waters. The
musical mission of the Norwegian was to represent the insensate
element _as it was to him_—to a human soul, stirred in its seldom
reached depths by the call of power. It was the _answer_ to
Niagara that he endeavored to render in music—not the _call_!
After his December concerts in New York Ole Bull returned to Boston,
where he gave several concerts, and revisited some of the New England
towns. He then returned to New York, to give his last concert in that
city for the season, at the Tabernacle, to an audience of 3500 people.
The criticisms from the papers of that date would be pronounced as
extravagant as Mrs. Child’s letters, while her accounts are more vividly
descriptive of the intense excitement which prevailed. Another quotation
from her is therefore given—from the letter dated December 24, 1844:—
You ask me for my impressions of Ole Bull’s “Niagara.”
It is like asking an Æolian harp to tell what the great organ of
Freyburg does. But since you are pleased to say that you value my
impressions because they are always my own, and not another
person’s—because they are spontaneous, disinterested, and
genuine,—I will give you the tones as they breathed through my
soul, without anxiety to have them pass for more than they are
worth....
Grand as I thought “Niagara” when I first heard it, it opened upon me
with increasing beauty when I heard it repeated. I then observed many
exquisite and graceful touches, which were lost in the magnitude of the
first impression. The multitudinous sounds are bewildering in their rich
variety.
“The cataracts blow their trumpets from the steep.”
“The whispering air
Sends inspiration from the rocky heights,
And dark recesses of the caverned rocks;
The little rills, and waters numberless,
Blend their notes with the loud streams.”
There is the pattering of water–drops, gurglings, twitterings, and
little gushes of song.
“The leaves in myriads jump and spring,
As if, with pipes and music rare,
Some ROBIN GOODFELLOW were there,
And all the leaves, in festive glee,
Were dancing to the minstrelsy.”
It reminded me of a sentence in the “Noctes Ambrosianæ,” beautifully
descriptive of its prevailing character: “It keeps up a bonnie wild
musical sough, like that o’ swarming bees, spring–startled birds, and
the voices of a hundred streams, some wimpling awa’ ower the Elysian
meadows, and ithers roaring at a distance frae the clefts.”
The sublime waterfall is ever present with its echoes, but present in a
calm, contemplative soul. One of the most poetic minds I know, after
listening to this music, said to me: “The first time I saw Niagara, I
came upon it through the woods, in the clear sunlight of a summer’s
morning; and these tones are a perfect transcript of my emotions!” In
truth, it seems to me a perfect disembodied poem; a most beautiful
mingling of natural sounds with the reflex of their impressions on a
refined and romantic mind. This serene grandeur, this pervading beauty,
which softens all the greatness, gave the composition its greatest charm
to those who love poetic expression in music; but it renders it less
captivating to the public in general than they had anticipated. Had it
been called a Pastorale composed within hearing of Niagara, their
preconceived ideas would have been more in accordance with its calm,
bright majesty.