"Hark! canst thou hear me? I will play the swan;
And die in music."
In all this there lurks not one particle of sober prose--one syllable of
truth. The most learned refutation of it may be found, in the Pseudodoxia
of Sir Thomas Browne, ii. 517, Lond. 1835.
In the "_Memoires de l'Academie des Inscriptions_," M. Morin discusses the
question very agreeably, why swans, that sang so delightfully, of old,
sing so miserably, at the present day. Tame swans, he observes, are mutes:
but the wild swan exerts its vocal powers, after a fashion of its own. He
introduces the observations of the Abbe Arnaud, upon the performances of a
couple of wild swans, which had located, upon the lagoons of Chantilly.
"One can hardly say," says the Abbe, "that the swans of Chantilly
sing--they cry; but their cries are truly and constantly modulated. Their
voice is not sweet; on the contrary, it is shrill, piercing, and rather
disagreeable; I could compare it to nothing better than the sound of a
clarionet, winded by a person unacquainted with the instrument." Nothing
surely savors less of melody than this. So thought Buffon--"_Des sons
bruyans de clarion, mais dont les tons aigus et peu diversifies sont
neanmoins tres--eloignes de la tendre melodie et de la variete douce et
brilliante du ramage de nos oiseaux chanteurs_." Nat. Hist. des Oisaux,
ix. 25.
In his exposition of this error, imposed upon mankind, by the poets,
Buffon expresses himself with singular beauty, in the concluding
paragraph--"Nulle fiction en Histoire Naturelle, nulle fable chez les
Anciens n'a ete plus celebree, plus repetee, plus accreditee; elle s'etoit
emparee de l'imagination vive et sensible des Grecs; poetes, orateurs,
philosophes meme l'ont adoptee, comme une verite trop agreable pour
vouloir en douter. Il faut bien leur pardonner leurs fables; elles etoient
aimables et touchantes; elles valoient bien de tristes, d'arides verites
c'etoient de doux emblemes pour les ames sensibles. Les cygnes, sans
doute, ne chantent point leur mort; mais toujours, en parlant du dernier
essor et de derniers elans d'un beau genie pret a s'eteindre, on
rappellera avec sentiment cette expression touchante--_c'est le chant du
cygne!_" Ibid. 28.
It is not surprising, that these celebrated naturalists, Buffon and Morin,
who discourse, so eloquently, of Grecian and Roman swans, should say
nothing of Swedish nightingales, for, between their time and the present,
numerous additions have been made to the catalogue of songsters.
The very thing, which the barber, Arkwright did, for all the spinning
Jennies, in Lancashire, some seventy years ago, has been done by Jenny
Lind, for all the singing Jennies upon earth, beside herself--they are
cast into the shade.
She came here with an irresistible prestige. A singing woman has been a
proverb, since the world began; and, of course, long before Ulysses
dropped in, upon the island of Ogygia, and listened to Calypso; or fell
into serious difficulty, among the Sirens. A singing woman, a Siren, has
been frequently accounted, and with great propriety, a singing bird of
evil omen. How grateful then must it be, to know, that, while lending
their ears and their eyes to this incomparable songstress, our wives, our
daughters, and our sisters have before them a pure, and virtuous, and
gentle, and generous creature, as free, as poor, human nature can well be
free, from life's alloy, and very much as she was, when created--_a little
lower than the angels_.
Among other mythological matters, Pausanias relates, that the three
Sirens, instigated by Juno, challenged the Muses to a trial of skill in
singing. They were beaten, of course, for the Muses, being nine in number,
there were three upon one. The victors, as the story goes, proceeded very
deliberately, to pluck the golden feathers, from the wings of the
vanquished, and converted them into crowns, for their own brows.
Now, it cannot be denied, that Jenny has vanquished us all, and made the
golden feathers fly abundantly. But this is not Jenny's fault; for,
whatever the wisdom or the folly, the affair was our own entirely. If, for
the sake of distinction, any one has seen fit to pluck every golden
feather from his back, and appear, like the featherless biped of Diogenes,
and give the golden feathers to Jenny, to make her a crown; we have
substantial facts, upon which to predict, that Jenny will make a better
use of those golden feathers, than to fool them away, for a song. If Jenny
plucks golden feathers, from the backs of the rich, she finds bare spots
enough, for a large part of them all, upon the backs of the poor: and, as
for the crown, for Jenny's brows, if she goes onward, as she has begun,
investing her treasure _in Heaven_, and selecting the Lord for her
paymaster, _there_ will be her coronation; and her crown a crown of Glory.
And, when she comes to lie down and die, let the two last lines of
Johnson's imperishable epitaph, on Philips, be inscribed upon her tomb--
"Rest undisturb'd, beneath this marble shrine,
Till angels wake thee, with a note like thine."
Orpheus was changed into a swan; Philomela into a nightingale; and Jenny,
in due time, will be changed into an angel. Indeed, it is the opinion of
some competent judges, that the metamorphosis has already commenced.
Music is such a delightful, soothing thing, that one grieves, to think its
professors and amateurs are frequently so excessively irritable.
The disputes, between Handel and Senesino, and their respective partisans,
disturbed all London, and finally broke up the Academy of Music, after it
had been established, for nine years. The quarrels of Handel and
Buononcini are said to have occasioned duels, among the amateurs; and the
nation was filled, by these musical geniuses, with discord and uproar.
Good humor was, in some degree, restored, by the following epigram, so
often ascribed to Swift, the two last lines of which, however, are alone
to be found in the editions of his works, by Nicholls, and Scott:
"Some say, that signor Buononcini,
Compar'd with Handel, is a ninny;
Others aver to him, that Handel
Does not deserve to hold a candle;
Strange, all this difference should be,
'Twixt tweedle dum and tweedle dee."
This epigram cannot be attributed to that contempt for music, which is
sometimes occasioned, by a constitutional inability to appreciate its
effect, upon the great mass of mankind. It undoubtedly sprang from a
desire to put an end, by the power of ridicule, to these unmusical
disturbances of the public peace.
Swift's musical pun, upon the accidental destruction of a fine Cremona
fiddle, which was thrown down by a lady's mantua, has always been highly
and deservedly commended; and recently, upon the very best authority,
pronounced the finest specimen extant of this species of wit--"Perhaps,"
says Sir Walter Scott, in his life of Swift, speaking of his puns, i. 467,
"the application of the line of Virgil to the lady, who threw down with
her mantua a Cremona fiddle, is the best ever made--
"Mantua vae miserae nimium vicina Cremonae!"
In every nation, and in every age, the power of music has been
acknowledged by mankind. Now and then, the negative idiosyncracies of
certain persons place this particular department of pleasure, beyond the
sphere of their comprehension, as effectually as utter blindness denies
the power of enjoying the finest specimens of the painter's art.
Occasionally, some pious divine, absolutely drunk with over-potent
draughts of orthodoxy, like the friar, before Boccaccio, shakes his holy
finger at this wicked world, and warns them to beware of the singing
woman!
The vocal power of music is ascribed to the angels in Heaven; and my own
personal knowledge has assured me, that it affords a melancholy solace, to
the slave in bonds.
I passed the winter of 1840-41 with an invalid daughter, in the island of
St. Croix. With a party of some six or eight, we devoted one delightful,
moonlight evening, to a ride, on horseback, among the sugar-loaf summits
of that beautiful speck amid the main. We were ascending the hills, in the
neighborhood of the Annelly plantation--the moon was at full, that night;
and the Caribbean Sea, far and wide, shone like a boundless prairie of
burnished silver. As we were slowly winding our way, to the summit, one of
our party called the attention of the rest to the sounds of music, coming
from the slave cabins, at a distance. As we advanced, slowly and silently,
towards the spot, the male and female voices were readily distinguished.
We drew near, unperceived, and, checking our horses, listened, for several
minutes, to the wild, simple notes of these children of bondage. "There is
melody in this"--said one of our party aloud, and all was hushed, in an
instant. We rode down to the cabins, and begged them to continue their
song--but our solicitations were in vain--even the offer of sundry five
stiver pieces, which operate, like a charm, upon many occasions, with the
_uncles_ and the _aunties_, was ineffectual then. "_No massa--b'lieve no
sing any more_"--were the only replies, and we went upon our way.
As we descended the Annelly hills, on the opposite side, after leaving the
negroes and their cabins, at some distance, we halted and listened--they
had recommenced--the same wild music was floating upon the breeze.
As we rode slowly along, my daughter asked me, if I could account for
their reluctance to comply with our request. I told her, I could not.
"Perhaps," said she, "they have a reason, somewhat like the reason of
those, who sat down, by the waters of Babylon, and wept, and who could not
sing one of the songs of Zion, in a strange land."
It might have been thus. "_They that carried us away captive, required of
us a song! They, that wasted us, required of us mirth!_"
No. CVI.
While pursuing his free inquiry into the origin of evil, I doubt, if Soame
Jenyns had as much pleasure, as Sir Joseph Banks enjoyed, in his famous
investigation, if fleas were the prototypes of lobsters.
These inquiries are immeasurably pleasant. When a boy, I well remember my
cogitations, what became of the old moons; and how joyously I accepted the
solution of my nurse, who had quite a turn for judicial astrology, that
they were unquestionably cut up, for stars.
It is truly delightful to look into these occult matters--_rerum
cognoscere causas_. There are subjects of deep interest, which lie
somewhat nearer the surface of the earth--the origin of certain usages and
undertakings, and the authorship of certain long-lived works, which appear
to be made of a species of literary everlasting, but whose original
proprietors have never been discovered. I have great respect, for those
antiquarians, whose researches have unlocked so many of these long hidden
mysteries; and, however bare-headed I may be, when the venerated names of
Speed, or Strype, or Stow, or Rushworth, or Wood, or Holinshed occurs to
my memory, I have an involuntary tendency to take off my hat.
It was, doubtless, in allusion to their grotesque and uncouth
versification, that the Earl of Rochester prepared his well-known
epigram--
"Sternhold and Hopkins had great qualms,
When they translated David's Psalms."
This version, which held its ground, for a century and a half, and, as
Chalmers says, slowly gave place to the translation, by Tate and Brady,
had an origin, of which, I presume, few individuals are apprized.
Thomas Sternhold lived to translate fifty-one only of the Psalms; and the
first edition was published in 1549, with this title--"_All such Psalms of
David as Thomas Sterneholde, late groome of the king's majestye's robes
did in his lyfetime drawe into Englyshe metre_."
About this period, the larger cities of the kingdom had become inundated
with obscene and blasphemous songs, to such a degree, that some powerful
expedient seemed to be required, for the removal of this insufferable
grievance. Accordingly, the felicitous idea occurred to Mr. Thomas
Sternhold, of substituting the Psalms of David, as versified by himself,
for the bacchanalian songs, then in use, throughout the realm. He
anticipated a practical illustration of the command of St. James--"_Is any
merry let him sing Psalms_."
Ostensibly prepared for the use of the churches, the moving consideration,
for this version, with Mr. Sternhold, was such as I have shown it to be.
The motive is plainly stated, in the title-page--"_Set forth and allowed
to be sung in churches of the people together, before and after evening
prayer, as also before and after sermon; and moreover, in private houses,
for their godly solace and comfort, laying apart all ungodly songs and
ballads, which tend only to the nourishment of vice and the corrupting of
youth_."
Wood, in his Athenae Oxonienses, i. 183, Lond: 1813, says of
Sternhold--"Being a most zealous reformer and a very strict liver, he
became so scandalized, at the amorous and obscene songs used in the court,
that he, forsooth turned into English metre fifty-one of David's Psalms,
and caused musical notes to be set to them, thinking thereby, that the
courtiers would sing them, instead of their sonnets, but did not, only
some few excepted."
How cheerfully would I go, undieted, for a long summer's day, to know who
was the author of "Jonny Armstrong's Last Good Night;" and for a much
longer term, to ascertain the writer of Chevy Chase, of which Ben Jonson
used to say, he had rather have been the author of it, than of all his
works. The words of Sir Philip Sidney, in his Discourse on Poetry, are
quoted, by Addison, in No. 70 of the Spectator--"_I never heard the old
song of Percy and Douglas, that I found not my heart more moved than with
a trumpet_." The ballad of Chevy Chase was founded upon the battle of
Otterburn, which was fought in 1388, and of which a brief account will be
found in the fourteenth chapter of Sir Walter's first series of the
Grandfathers Tales.
The author of those songs for children, which have been lisped, by the
tongues of millions, shall never be forgotten, while dogs delight to bark
and bite--but who was the author of Hush-a-bye baby--Now we go up, up,
up--Cock Robin--or Dickory Dock, no human tongue can tell!
Poor Andre, we know, was the author of the Cow Chace; but the composer of
our national air is utterly unknown. Who would not give more of the
_siller_, to know to whose immortal mind we are indebted for Yankee
Doodle, than to ascertain the authorship of the Letters of Junius?
Both France and England have been more fortunate, in respect to the
origin and authorship of their most popular, national songs. Speaking of
Barbaroux and the Marseillois, Sir Walter Scott, in his Life of Napoleon,
observes--"Besides the advantage of this enthusiastic leader, the
Marseillois marched to the air of the finest hymn, to which Liberty or the
Revolution had yet given birth."
I am aware that something like doubt or obscurity hangs over the reputed
authorship of the Hymn of the Marseillais. But in respect to the national
air of Great Britain--_God save the King_--the authorship appears to be
more satisfactorily, if not perfectly, indicated.
It is certainly worthy of note, that this celebrated air, in which _John
Bull_ has taken so much delight, ever since it came into existence, is by
some persons supposed to have been the production of JOHN BULL himself, a
celebrated composer of his day. An engraving of him may be found, in the
History of Music, by Hawkins. There is an original painting of him, by J.
W. Childe, in the Music School, at Oxford, which was engraved by Illman,
with the words below--"John Bull, Mus. Doct. Cantab. Instaur. Oxon.
MDXCII." A portrait of Dr. Bull will also be found, in Richard Clarke's
_Account of the National Anthem, God save the King_, 8vo. Lond. 1822.
The account of Bull, by Wood, in his Fasti, i. 235, Lond. 1815, is
somewhat amusing--"1586, July 9.--John Bull, who had practised the fac. of
music for 14 years, was then admitted batch, of music. This person, who
had a most prodigious hand on the organ, and was famous, throughout the
religious world, for his church music, had been trained up under an
excellent master, named Blitheman, organist of Qu. Elizabeth's chappel,
who died much lamented, in 1591. This Blitheman perceiving that he had a
natural geny to the faculty, spared neither time nor labor to advance it
to the utmost. So that in short time, he being more than master of it,
which he showed by his most admirable compositions, played and sung in
many churches beyond the seas, as well as at home, he took occasion to go
incognito, into France and Germany. At length, hearing of a famous
musician, belonging to a certain cathedral, (at St. Omers, as I have
heard,) he applied himself, as a novice, to learn something of his
faculty, and to see and admire his works. This musician, after some
discourse had passed between them, conducted Bull to a vestry, or music
school, joyning to the cathedral, and shew'd him a lesson, or song of
forty parts, and then made a vaunting challenge to any person in the world
to add one more part to them, supposing it to be so compleat and full,
that it was impossible for any mortal man to correct or add to it. Bull
thereupon desiring the use of ink and rul'd paper (such as we call musical
paper) prayed the musician to lock him up in the said school for 2 or 3
hours; which being done, not without great disdain by the musician, Bull,
in that time or less, added forty more parts to the said lesson or song.
The musician thereupon being called in, he viewed it, try'd it and retry'd
it. At length he burst out into great ecstacy, and swore by the great God,
that he that added those 40 parts must either be the Devil or Dr. Bull,
&c. Whereupon Bull making himself known, the musician fell down and adored
him."
Of music it may be said, as of most other matters--_the fashion of these
things passeth away_. So great was the fame of Bull in his day, and such
tempting offers of preferment were made him, by the Emperor, and by the
Kings of France and Spain, that Queen Elizabeth commanded him home. It is
stated, in the Biographical History of England, ii. 167, that the famous
Dr. Pepusch preferred some of the lessons in Bull's Partheniae, to the
productions of most of the composers of that time. Yet Dr. Burney says of
these lessons--"_They may be heard, by a lover of music, with as little
emotion as the clapper of a sawmill, or the rumbling of a post-chaise_."
Musicians are a sensitive and jealous generation. "Handel," says Chalmers,
"despised the pedantry of Pepusch; and Pepusch, in return, refused to
join, in the general chorus of Handel's praise."
Handel, when a stripling at Hamburgh, laid claim to the first harpsichord,
against a master, greatly his superior, in point of years, and the matter,
upon trial, was decided in Handel's favor, which so incensed the other,
that he drew, and made a thrust, at his young rival, whose life, according
to Dr. Burney's version, was saved, by a fortunate contact, between the
point of the rapier and a metal button.
The principles, which govern, in all mutual admiration societies, are
deeply laid in the nature of man. If Handel had borne the pedantry of Dr.
Pepusch, with forbearance, or common civility, the Doctor would have,
doubtless, afforded Handel the advantage of his highest commendation.
The managers of musical matters act wisely, in tendering, to every
conductor of a public journal, the