Astronomy, music, and architecture, are the floating topics of the day;
on the second of these heads we have thrown together a few hints, which
may, probably prove entertaining to our readers.
The English are not--you know, reflective public--a musical people; this
has been said over and over again in the musical and dramatic critiques
of the newspapers. True it is that we have no _national music_, like our
neighbours the Welsh, the Irish, or the Scotch; for our music, like out
language, is a mere _riccifamento_, stolen from every nation in Europe.
But our king (God bless him) is an excellent musician, and plays the
violoncello most delightfully; and we have an Academy of Music. Then we
have an Italian Theatre that burns the feet and fingers of all who
meddle with its management--witness, Mr. Ebers, who, by being "married"
to sweet sounds, lost the enormous sum of 47,000_l_.--it must be owned,
an unfortunate match, or as Dr. Franklin would have said, "paying rather
too dear for his whistle." We have too an _English Opera House_, where
scarcely any but _foreign_ music is heard, and which, to the
ever-lasting credit of its management, has transplanted from the warm
climes of the south to our ungenial atmosphere, some of the finest
compositions in the continental schools of modern music. Success has,
however, attended most of their enterprises; for the taste of the
English for foreign music is by no means a modern mania. From Pepys's
_Diary_ we learn that the first company of Italian singers came here in
the reign of Charles II.: they were brought by Killigrew from Venice,
about 1688; but they did not perform whole operas, only detached scenes
in recitative, and not in any public theatre, but in the houses of the
nobility. Thus, Italian music was loved and cultivated very early in
England, and London was the next capital, after Vienna, which
established and supported an Italian Opera. But, as we never do things
by halves, we had soon afterwards, two opposition houses. This proves
that the English have a _taste for music_; indeed they have much more
judgment than some of their neighbours, which makes it still more to be
regretted that nothing is done in England towards the advancement of
music as a science. Is the world of sound and the soul of song
exhausted? Why should we, who are marching in every other direction,
stand still in this? But no; what Orpheus did with _music_, we are
striving to accomplish by _steam_; what he effected by quietly touching
his lyre, we study with the atmospheres and condensers of high and low
pressure engines.
The writer of a delightful paper in the _Foreign Review_, No. 3, in
tracing the rise and progress of music, inquires what has become of "its
loftier pretensions, its celestial attributes, its moral and political
influence." He then facetiously observes, "How should we marvel to see
the Duke of Wellington, like another Epaminondas, take his flute out of
his pocket to still the clamour of the opposition, or Mr. Peel reply to
the arguments of Mr. Huskisson with an allegro on the fiddle."
The Greeks were not such grave people as some may be inclined to think
them. Among them, poetry and music were so intimately connected, that
they were in fact one and the same. It is not so with us; we have Byron
and Moore, in poetry; but where are their parallels in English music!
"Music," says Plutarch, "was the universal language of Greece, the
sacred vehicle of history, philosophy, laws, and morals;" but in England
it is little more than a mere amusement to while away the evening, or at
best, but a branch of _female_ education. Pianos are become articles of
furniture to be met with in almost every other genteel house; Miss and
her sisters sit down by turns, and screw themselves up to _Ah vous
dirai_, or "I'd be a butterfly"--till some handsome young fellow who has
stood behind her chair for six months, turned over her music, or
accompanied her through a few liquorish airs, vows his tender passion,
brings her the last new song, and at length swears to be her
accompaniment throughout life. The piano is then locked up, the music
sent to Bath or _Canterbury_, and the lady is married and cannot sing.
But the Greek poets sang their own verses: "Homer literally _sang_ the
wrath of Achilles, and the woes of Greece;" would it were so in England.
Then, my poetical public, we should have Anacreon Moore singing his
"Rich and rare were the gems she wore," in some such place as the
Quadrant, or Opera Colonnade; and Sir Walter Scott celebrating the Field
of Waterloo, not in the broad-margined octavos of Paternoster-row, but
about the purlieus of the Horse Guards. Wordsworth would be his own
Skylark. The laureate, Southey, would perch himself on the dome of the
New Palace. Campbell would step out of New Burlingtonstreet into the
Park; Miss Mitford would keep a Covent-Garden audience awake with her
own tragedies, and Planché would no longer entrust his rhymes to Paton
or Vestris. On the other hand, Braham would no longer be indebted to
Moore for his songs, Bishop would write, compose, and sing his own
operas, and all our vocalists enter, like Dryden's king and two
fiddlers, _solus_!
Could we but once become a musical people, we should no longer marvel at
the effect of music in ancient times; for who knows but that if an
Englishman were to play like Orpheus, the River Thames might cease to
flow; the disposal of Mr. Cross's menagerie be no longer a question,
since the animals might be allowed to ramble about the Strand; and
Snowdon or Cader Idris journey to the King's Theatre to listen to his
inspirations.
It is, however, impossible to calculate the benefits which this
acquisition of musical skill might prove to the English people. What
bloodshed and tribulation it would prevent. Weare, or Maria Marten, like
Stradella, might have disarmed their assassins; the Insolvent Act would
be obsolete, and duns defeated; since hundreds of improvident wights,
like Palma, might, by their strains, soften the hearts of their
creditors, and draw tears from sheriff's officers. Chancery-lane would
be depopulated, and Cursitor-street be left to the fowls of the air;
locks would fall 50 per cent, and Mr. Bramah might betake himself to Van
Dieman's Land. What a pleasant thing would a public dinner be; for,
instead of a gentleman in a dress coat singing as from the orchestra of
an oratorio, he would throw a more impassioned energy into his own
compositions than he could possibly impart to those of another, and
proportionally enhance the delight of his company. All the mechanism of
professional singing would then give way to "the feast of reason and the
flow of soul."
We know not how to have done with these pleasures of "linked
sweetness"--this "mosaic of the air," as Marvell quaintly calls it. We
have a decided aversion to the system of borrowing, which, in the
absence of our own musical resources, seems to be universally adopted.
Thus, as Charles Mathews says, "every footman whistles _Frieschutz_;"
and the barrel organ which does not play two or three of its airs may be
consigned to the brokers. A few months since every bachelor hummed or
whistled "_C'est l'amour_," and the French, to return the compliment,
have made our "Robin Adair," one of the claptraps of the music of their
_La Dame Blanche_. Next, when will Mr. Bishop's _Home, sweet home_, be
forgotten, although the original is a Sicilian air of considerable
antiquity. All the baker's and butcher's boys in London can go through
"_Di tanti pal_"--where they leave off, answer a question, and take up
the "_piti_," with the skill of a musician; and as readily fall into the
sympathetic melodies of "_Oh no we never mention her_," or the "_Light
Guitar_." But to atone for these vulgarisms, who that has heard the
syren strains of Stephens or Paton, or the Anglo-Italian style of
Braham, but has envied them the pleasurable monopoly of delighting
thousands, and sending them home with the favourite air still echoing in
their ears, and lulling them to soft slumbers! Who is there that has
enjoyed his circle of friends without regretting a thousand times that
he had not a fiftieth part of such talent to enliven the festive hour,
and lend a charm, however, fleeting, to what may be termed the poetry of
life.
As we have noticed the taste of the Greeks for music, it is but fair
that we should allude to that of their successors. In ancient Rome,
music was never popular. Combats of gladiators and wild beasts filled
their theatres with streams of blood, instead of their resounding with
music; and after the death of Nero,[1] that beautiful art was declared
infamous, and by a public decree, banished from the city. In our
theatres, however, heroes fight to music, from the Richard III. and
Richmond of Shakspeare to the "terrific combats" of modern melodrame.
[1] "When Nero exhibited himself as a singer and flute-player on
the stage at Naples, the musicians of that province assembled to
hear him; and Suetonius tells us that the emperor selected _five
thousand_ among the best to be his household musicians, and
clothed them in a rich and uniform dress."
Anything is, however, better than despair, and let us hope that
something may be done towards the amendment of our musical reputation.
We have too much of what Cobbett would call the "dead-weight" in us to
become adopted by Apollo as the "children of song;" but what with the
school of music in Tenterden-street, and numberless juvenile prodigies,
we may indulge the expectation of rising in the diatonic scale, and that
too at no very distant period. Burney and Crotch were remarkable
instances of precocious musical skill; and in the present day, children
from eight to twelve sing the most popular Italian airs on the English
stage, with remarkable accuracy.
Apropos, we hear of constitutions being set to music, for says the
_Foreign Review_, "during the short revolution at Naples, in 1820, a
Neapolitan was heard to swear that if the government intended that the
new constitution should be understood or accepted by the people, they
must first have it set to music by Rossini."
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