The unparalleled enthusiasm awakened by him everywhere and his
popularity in every city were most remarkable.
He gave his first concert in New York in the Park Theatre, and the
house was crowded; with the same success he gave six more in the
same hall. Then by the advice of his friends he went to the
Tabernacle, which seats 4000 people, and here too he had a full
house. On one occasion he played to 7000 people for the American
Institute in Niblo’s Garden.
From New York, Ole Bull traveled through the United States and Canada
and a part of the West Indies, and everywhere called forth the same
tremendous enthusiasm and overwhelming joy. He traveled in these
countries more than 100,000 miles, and played in every city of
importance. From his first landing till his departure he gave over 200
concerts, of which some netted him only $200, while others, as for
instance those in New York, netted him over $3000. Estimating them as
low as $400 on the average, his concerts must have given him a profit of
$80,000. Besides he contributed more than $20,000 by concerts to
charitable institutions, and to artists who assisted him he paid
$15,000.
No artist has ever visited our country and received so many honors.
Poems by the hundred have been written to him; gold vases, jewels,
medals, etc., have been presented to him by various corporations. His
whole remarkable appearance in this country is really unexampled in
glory and fame. He came from Norway, the most northern country of
Europe, the birthplace of Odin, and inspired all America. His tender
farewell composition in New York made the tears come to many eyes....
After having thus for over two years won triumph upon triumph and an
abundance of gold and fame in the New World, Ole Bull left on December
3d for Havre, whence he intended to go to Paris....
Mrs. Child’s and Mrs. Botta’s good–byes seem most fitting to close this
account of Ole Bull’s first American trip. The former is as follows:—
Where on this planet is a place so sublimely appropriate as the
rocky coast of Norway, to the newly–invented Æolian sea–signals?
Metal pipes, attached to floating buoys, are placed among the
breakers, and through these do the winds lift their warning
voices, louder and louder, as the sea rages more and more
fiercely. Here is a magnificent storm–organ, on which to play,
“Wind of the winter night, whence comest thou?”
On this coast has Ole Bull, from childhood, heard the waves roar
their mighty bass to the shrill soprano of the winds, and has seen
it all subside into sun–flecked, rippling silence. There, in view
of lofty mountains, sea–circled shores, and calm, deep, blue
fjords, shut in by black precipices and tall green forests, has he
listened to “the fresh mighty throbbings of the heart of Nature.”
Had he lived in the sunny regions of Greece or Italy, instead of
sea–girt Norway, with its piled–up mountains, and thundering
avalanches, and roaring waterfalls, and glancing auroras, and the
shrill whispering of the northern wind through broad forests of
pines, I doubt whether his violin could ever have discoursed such
tumultuous life, or lulled itself to rest with such deep–breathing
tenderness.
I know not what significance the Nordmen have in the world’s
spiritual history; but it must be deep. Our much boasted
Anglo–Saxon blood is but a rivulet from the great Scandinavian
sea. The Teutonic language, “with its powerful primeval words—keys
to the being of things”—is said by the learned to have come from
the East, the source from which both light and truth dawned upon
the world. This language has everywhere mixed itself with modern
tongues, and forms the bone and nerve of our own. To these
Nordmen, with their deep reverence, their strong simplicity, their
wild, struggle–loving will, we owe the invention of the organ, and
of Gothic architecture. In these modern times, they have sent us
Swedenborg, that deep in–seeing prophet, as yet imperfectly
understood, either by disciples or opponents; and Frederika
Bremer, gliding like sun–warmth into the hearts of many nations;
and Thorwaldsen, with his serene power and majestic grace; and
Beethoven, with aspirations that leap forth beyond the “flaming
bounds of time and space;” and Ole Bull, with the primeval
harmonies of creation vibrating through his soul in infinite
variations. Reverence to the Nordmen; for assuredly their strong
free utterance comes to us from the very _heart_ of things....
Wordsworth thus describes the young maiden, to whom Nature was
“both law and impulse:”—
“She shall lean her ear
In many a secret place,
Where rivulets dance their wayward round,
And Beauty, born of murmuring sound,
Shall pass into her face.”
The engraved likeness of Ole Bull often reminds me of these lines.
It seems listening to one of his own sweet strains of melody,
passing away, away,—and vanishing into the common air, fine as the
mist scattered afar by the fountains. The effect, thus transmitted
in form by the artist, reproduces its cause again; for, as I look
upon it, a whirling spray of sound goes dancing through my memory,
to the clink of fairy castanets. When I look at Domenichino’s
“Cumæan Sibyl,” and Allston’s wonderful picture of the “Lady
Hearing Music,” my soul involuntarily listens, and sometimes hears
faint, wandering strains of melody....
This spiritual expression of music is heard in very different
degrees by different people, and by some not at all. One man
remarked, as he left Ole Bull’s concert, “Well, there is no such
thing as getting a dollar’s worth of music out of a fiddle, in
three hours.” Of the same concert, a man of thorough musical
science, and deep feeling for his musical art, writes to me thus:
“Ole Bull has certainly impressed me as no man ever impressed me
before. The most glorious sensation I ever had was to sit in one
of his audiences, and feel that all were elevated to the same
pitch with myself. My impulse was to speak to every one as to an
intimate friend. The most indifferent person was a living soul to
me. The most remote or proud I did not fear or despise. In that
element they were all accessible, nay, all worth reaching. This
surely was the highest testimony to his great art and his great
soul.”
An eloquent writer, who publishes under the fictitious signature
of “John Waters,” describes his first impressions of Liszt’s
piano–playing, with an enthusiasm that would doubtless seem very
ridiculous to many who listened to the same sounds. He says that,
“with blow after blow upon the instrument with his whole force, he
planted large columnar masses of sound, like the Giant’s Causeway.
The instrument rained, hailed, thundered, moaned, whistled,
shrieked round those basaltic columns, in every cry that the
tempest can utter in its wildest paroxysms of wrath.... Then we
were borne along, through countless beauties of rock and sky and
foliage, to a grotto, by the side of which was a fountain that
seemed one of the Eyes of the Earth, so large and darkly brilliant
was it, so deep and so serene. Here we listened to the voices
rather than the songs of birds, when the music by degrees
diminished and ceased.”
A lady to whom he spoke of the concert acknowledged that the
sounds had brought up very similar pictures to her soul; but
probably not ten of the large audience listened in such a spirit.
That it was thus received by _any_, shows that it was _in_ the
music, whether the composer was aware of it or not; and genius
only can produce those magical effects, even on a few.
To Him who made the ear a medium of pleasure to the soul, I am
humbly grateful for delight in sweet sounds; and still more deeply
am I grateful that the spiritual sense of music is more and more
opened to me. I have joy in the consciousness of growth, as I can
imagine a flower might be pleased to feel itself unfolding and
expanding to the sunlight. This _expressiveness_ of music no man
ever revealed to me like Ole Bull, and therefore, in my joy and
gratitude, I strive, like a delighted child, to bring all manner
of garlands and jewels wherewith to crown his genius.