Sir,—Understanding that your present visit to this country is not
made with any professional purpose, we take occasion to state
that it would give us sincere gratification to be afforded an
opportunity to witness a display of your peculiar powers in that
art in which, by acknowledgment of the world, you are allowed to
be a master. We wish to express the hope that you may find it
convenient to give a public concert, during the course of your
stay in Washington, in such manner and at such time and place as
you may choose to indicate.
Very respectfully, your obedient servants,
James Shields,
R. M. T. Hunter,
Chas. T. James,
Hamilton Fish,
Geo. W. Jones,
S. P. Chase,
John J. McRae,
Richard Brodhead,
Pierre Soule,
J. W. Bradbury,
H. Clay,
A. P. Butler,
Wm. M. Gwin,
S. R. Mallory,
Chas. Sumner,
J. D. Bright,
J. M. Mason,
S. U. Downs,
Thomas G. Pratt,
H. Hamlin,
Thomas J. Rusk,
M. Norris,
James C. Jones,
Jackson Morton,
W. P. Mangum,
Lewis Cass,
John Davis,
S. A. Douglas,
Truman Smith,
John H. Clarke,
Wm. H. Seward.
The undersigned unite cordially in the foregoing request, and hope
that it may be convenient and agreeable to gratify us:
Daniel Webster,
J. J. Crittenden,
A. H. H. Stuart,
Wm. A. Graham,
Thomas Corwin,
Winfield Scott,
A. De Bodisco,
Sartiges,
John T. Crampton,
F. Testa,
A. Calderon de la Barca,
Fr. V. Gerolt,
Marcoleta,
F. Molina,
De Bosch Spencer,
G. Sibbern,
De Sodre.
In accordance with this invitation, Ole Bull gave a concert in
Washington on the 26th of March. He had visited the city to learn
more about the inducements and advantages offered emigrants to go
to the Western States. He had now a better opportunity than ever
of studying and understanding the government of this country,
because of personal acquaintance with such men as Webster, Clay,
and Sumner. Minister Sibbern, the resident Swedish ambassador at
that time, was a friend of Ole Bull, and did everything in his
power to make his stay pleasant.
He now performed by invitation in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New
York. The following notice of one of his concerts at this time (in
the New York _Tribune_ of May 24, 1852) is from the pen of Mr.
George William Curtis:—
Nine years ago Ole Bull, then little known in America, made his
début at the old Park Theatre. Those who remember the glowing
enthusiasm of that evening, and the triumphal career of which it
was the prelude, will understand the interest with which the news
of his recent arrival among us was received, and the eager
curiosity to know if he was again to witch our world. On Saturday
evening that curiosity was satisfied by the re–appearance of the
great violinist, and the revelation of undiminished power. The
audience was in itself a triumph, on Saturday evening, in the
midst of the present musical excitement attendant upon Madame
Goldschmidt’s farewell series. To gather three thousand people in
Metropolitan Hall was an evidence of cordial and admiring
remembrance, and of genuine homage to genius of which any artist
might be justly proud. Since Ole Bull played here before, our
musical experience is enlarged and deepened. Our audience is no
longer unused to fine performance. It has heard much of the best,
and its approbation is more discriminating, and therefore more
flattering. That Ole Bull’s success on Saturday evening was very
great, it is unnecessary to say; for no audience (except the
French), however critical and severe, can escape the electrical
touch of his genius. One word, one glance, one sweep, if it is
informed with magnetic power, leaves all rules in the rear, and
asserts its own supremacy. Here is the characteristic and charm of
Ole Bull. Like Paganini, he is an exceptional person. Like every
man of remarkable and pronounced genius, he is a phenomenon. He is
his own standard; he makes his own rules. It is useless to pursue
him with the traditional rules. His orbit will not be prescribed
or prophesied, for it is eccentric. In all that he does, the
traditional temperament of genius betrays itself. He is tremulous
and tender, but also rugged and stern, and strong as his native
mountains. He is no unapt type of his Norway, with its sunny but
breezy heights, with its dark and solemn depths, and, over all,
the clear, blue heaven. In his mien and manner, in his music and
his playing, the same thing is constantly felt. They are all
wonderfully suggestive, but mainly of bold and melancholy
outlines. For the pathos which inheres in air Northern story and
character permeates all that he does, not as lachrymose sentiment,
but as a genuine minor tone of feeling. It will not be difficult
to infer the impression of his music and of his performance. It is
all subjugated to himself. It is all means of expression for his
own individuality. He aims not so much at a pure representation of
the subject treated by his music, as at his own peculiarity of
perception in regarding it. The hearer must know it as it struck
him, and in the way he chooses, and all tends to impress upon that
hearer the individuality of the artist. Hence Ole Bull stands in
direct opposition to the “classical” school, of which the
peculiarity is to subdue the artist to the music. He is
essentially romantic. His performance, beyond any we have ever
heard, is picturesque. He uses music as color, and it matters
nothing to him if the treatment be more or less elaborate, or
rhythmical, or detailed, if it succeed in striking the hearer with
the vivid impression sought. It is unavoidable, therefore, that he
is called a charlatan. It is natural that the classical artists
are amazed at this bold buccaneer roving the great sea of musical
approbation and capturing the costliest prizes of applause. But
these prizes are never permanently held by weakness. They
surrender only to majestic power. Hence we have the strange
spectacle of an immense and miscellaneous audience hanging
enchanted upon this wondrous bow, through performances of a length
which, in itself, would be enough to wreck most success. Like the
voice of an orator speaking for a people its hopes, its
indignation, its pity and sorrow, so this violin sings for those
who listen their own shifting, wild, and vague fancies. It is
because the artist magnetizes them, for the time, and they think
and dream as he chooses.
Ole Bull’s mastery of his violin is imperial. The proud majesty of
his person imparts itself in feeling to his command of the
instrument; and artist, orchestra, and performance only magnify
the man. We can, of course, have no quarrel with those who do not
like it. If the hearer regrets the want of subtle musical
elaboration in the composition; if he complains of its ponderous
_physique_; if he is angry at the submission of the author to the
virtuoso, we have nothing to say but that certainly he has reason,
and that, if without these there were no beauty, no grandeur, no
long–haunting imagery in the mind, then there would be little hope
for our artist. But every man like Ole Bull shows that these are
not essentials; he shows that the heart and imagination yield
against all wishes and precedents and rules. Ole Bull is precisely
“an irrefragable fact,” against which criticism may dash its head
at leisure. The public heart will follow him and applaud, because
he plays upon its strings as deftly as upon those of his violin.
Possessed of a nature whose moods sympathize with those of the
mass of men, and that in broad and striking reaches,—not too
finely spun,—not of a Chopin–like dreaminess, which is rather the
preternatural state of a feeble and excited organization, but of a
broad humanity in his lights and shades, so full of life and
overflowing vigor that he must impart that sympathy, and will
scorn all rules in burning and branding it upon his audience; it
is no marvel that this eccentric artist sways his hearer as he
will, and is as secure of victory as Napoleon. If we turn more
directly to his performance, we find a purity, a firmness, a
sweetness, and breadth of tone which is unprecedented. The violin
has no secrets from him. It waits upon him as Ariel upon Prospero.
There is no fiddle left in it. It sings and shouts and weeps as he
wills. It is an orchestra or a flute or an Æolian harp, as the
mood seizes him. The brilliancy, the incredible articulation, and
the rapidity of his execution—upon one string or four strings—with
all kinds of marvelous effects and whims, with the intensity and
precision of his bowing, are in harmony with all the rest. They
are called tricks, but they are only such tricks as the wind and
clouds play; they are only such tricks as an artist of his
organization, who loves the sounds and capacities of his
instrument for their own sake, must necessarily display. He
rejoices in this bewitching of the strings with a kind of physical
delight, and he uses that witchery so well, with such richness and
lavishness, that the susceptible listener does not long resist. We
have left ourselves no space to follow the performance in detail,
which we shall do upon occasion of the next concert, at which, in
the “Carnival of Venice,” his supreme mastery of the violin will
be dazzlingly displayed.