CECILIA'S TRIUMPHS
The revolution in the conditions of English music--effected since its
first encouragement by the Victorian Court--illustrated by a contrast
between the social status of the musician to-day, and forty years ago.
Music always a tradition of the present dynasty. Handel. English
machinery for teaching music instituted under the Georgian era, and
perfected under the Victorian. Has English organization for musical
teaching outstripped English capacity for learning? Certain reforms
approved by high musical experts. Other individual agencies than those
of the Court favourable to Music during this century. Mendelssohn; his
encouragement of John Parry, the forerunner of Corney Grain, and
Arthur Cecil. Sir Charles Halle, Herr Joachim, Grove, Sullivan.
Anglo-German ladies. Crystal Palace Concerts.
The transformation, at once artistic and scientific, with which the Prince
Consort as the past representative of the Crown, and his descendents as
its present representatives, will always be chiefly associated, remains to
be glanced at. One need not have reached middle age to be able to realize
the revolution in the English capacity for the enjoyment as well as for
the performance of music, vocal or instrumental, that has taken place
since the Victorian age began. A dowdily dressed young woman, alighting
from an omnibus at the street corner, trailing after her a fragment of the
straw that littered the floor of her conveyance; her clothes, what was
then called shabby genteel. She carried under her arm a roll of papers or
a portfolio; she was insolently eyed by the servant who opened the door of
the house in Portland Place at which she timidly knocked, and
contemptuously motioned to take a seat in the hall until the drawing room
was ready for the music lesson to be given to the young lady of the
family. A hungry looking gentleman, of foreign aspect, and slightly French
or German accent, also descended from an omnibus in the same quarter; he
bore in his hand a black case which might be from its appearance a
sarcophagus for a deceased cat, but which might be identified by more
experienced observers as containing a fiddle. He was received by the
servant at the front door not more ceremoniously than the instructress of
a few hours earlier. This was the proprietor of a little orchestra which
attended private dances. A few hours after he might be accompanying with
his fiddle the wind instruments of his troupe, for Thackeray's Mrs Timmins
gave that very night her little dance. If the musician played well, and
pleased the head footman as well as the mistress of the house, he might as
a special favour be invited downstairs to help the servants finish the
cold chicken and the champagne heeltaps when the guests had gone.
To-day the lady who condescends to teach the art of pianoforte execution
to the young people in a popular London quarter drives up to the house in
her own victoria and would no more be kept waiting a minute for her
appointment than if she were a duchess in her own right. The accomplished
foreigner who plays the violin alights from a brougham drawn by a pair of
thoroughbreds. If he is to be induced to honour a friend in Grosvenor
Square with his company at dinner, the invitation must be given at least
three weeks beforehand. The 'master' must choose his own fellow guests,
and supervise the menu before it is finally decided on; the dinner itself
must be so arranged that to a moment it will occupy the time which the
great man prescribes. The conversation must be so contrived as to
coruscate with epigram, and to fascinate with anecdotes all warranted to
be new, lest the diner of the evening should have the slightest touch of
boredom. If these conditions are not satisfied, this arbiter of taste may
refuse to sit through the meal. He is the chartered libertine of the
dining rooms and drawing rooms of the great.
England has always possessed a considerable school of national composers.
These might have achieved the highest triumphs of genius without acquiring
a fraction of that social ascendancy for their art which it has gradually
won. Under the auspices of the Prince Consort first, the patronage of the
Court was secured for the art of St Cecilia. That day already mentioned on
which Lady Lyttelton first heard the Queen's husband playing on the organ
at Windsor was an eventful one for the social esteem of music in the
adopted country of the Royal executant. After this came the Prince's
directorship of the Ancient Concerts, and the arrangement of its
programmes on special occasions by himself. The club principle during the
married life of the Queen had in its popular illustration not gone beyond
infancy. Otherwise, one of the Royal Family would, as he has since done,
regularly have handled the conductor's baton; while for the special
amusement of another a series of smoking concerts might as to-day have
been arranged in Piccadilly palaces.
Music of course has always been a tradition of English Royalty. The Royal
Academy of Music now domiciled in Tenterden Street, Hanover Square, was
founded in 1822 with the King as patron. It was opened March 24, 1823,
with a small and precarious attendance of pupils seldom exceeding two or
three score, even at the date of its receiving the Royal charter, June 23,
1830. The number of students at Christmas 1896 was 500, all of whom were
regular in their visits. The Royal College of Music at Kensington Gore was
first founded as the National Training School in 1875. Its avowed motive
was to honour the Consort's memory. It was due partly to the efforts of
the Prince of Wales with a Committee of which the then Duke of Edinburgh
was chairman. He was also a most indefatigable promoter of the whole
scheme from the very first. Its first Principal was Dr, now Sir Arthur,
Sullivan. Some years later, again at the Heir Apparent's initiative, as a
result of a meeting held at St James's Palace, February 28, 1882, this
institution was re-formed. It was opened in the building formerly occupied
by the National Training School by the Prince and Princess of Wales, May
7, 1883. Of this Sir George Grove was the first director, holding the post
till Christmas 1894 when he was succeeded by Dr. C. H. H. Parry. The
Charter of the Royal College was obtained in 1883. It has to-day an
endowment of L130,000 which provides some 60 different scholarships. This,
too, in its existing shape was opened by the Prince Consort's descendants,
the Prince and Princess of Wales; it had at the Christmas of 1896, 300
regular pupils. A very important part of the institution consists of the
Donaldson museum of musical instruments; these were given to the College
by Mr G. Donaldson in 1894.
The Guildhall School of Music was founded in 1880 by that same Corporation
which has done more perhaps than any other single body since the Queen's
accession to promote the humanities of life. Its first Principal was Mr
Weist Hill; he was succeeded by Sir Joseph Barnby, who again in 1896 was
followed by Mr W. H. Cummings. This Guildhall School is undoubtedly the
most popular institution of the kind which we possess. Its pupils at the
Christmas of 1896 were 3,496. The other great metropolitan school of music
is Trinity College, London. This was incorporated in 1875 under the
Companies Act. Six years later, in 1881, it was reorganized upon a wider
basis. The number of pupils at Christmas 1896 shows a steady increase.
These and other institutions less important are only some of the national
monuments to the progress of the study of music as an art during the last
two or three decades.
The organization and the educational machinery of music have now, in the
opinion of those competent judges to whom the writer of these lines is
indebted, reached a point beyond which further development is neither
necessary nor desirable. Production and execution leave perhaps little to
be wished for. Appreciation, however, of musical excellence is not
universally proportionate to musical activity. Audiences more
intelligently critical and better trained are apparently the chief
_desiderata_, if composers and performers are to rise above mediocrity.
Instruction in the art now spoken of has, of course, shared in the
advantages incidental to the transformation of London from an insular into
a cosmopolitan capital. As a result, the best teachers from all countries
are available for the London learner.
Nor in this respect does England to-day, as thirty years ago it did,
compare disadvantageously with Leipsic, Paris, Berlin, Stuttgardt. There
seems however reason to fear that, like Gwendolen Harleth in _Daniel
Deronda_ before Klesmer, we fail in that important and indefinable
quality, style. The best critics complain that, when a student has been
through the regular course here, and has perhaps become a first rate
technical musician, he seldom seems to get any further; he never, in other
words, develops any individuality. To some extent this result follows the
collective teaching of all academies. The area of level mediocrity is,
however, it may be feared, larger here than in France or Germany. There is
more of delicacy and daintiness in the French student; there is more of
individual expansion and thoughtfulness in the German. Both are trained in
academies. The quicker intuition and more intelligent appreciation of
French and German audiences are in the opinion of unprejudiced critics
attributed to this cause. Hence the expert, if consulted by an English
student, probably would advise him to go abroad for a year or two when
his technical course has been finished in England. Unfortunately the
advice too often resembles that of a medical man who might prescribe a
generous diet and a glass of port wine to an invalid labourer, earning
less than L1 a week.
In respect of education, cheapness and free scholarships seem to have been
carried at least as far as is conducive to the real interest of learners
in this country. A reform, favoured by many good judges, is to make
payment for teaching universal with a few exceptions; then to give to
students of promise an allowance sufficient to enable them to go abroad
and complete their education. As it is, some risk is run of gratuitously
training mediocrities, launching them on professional careers which can
only land them in disappointment and poverty.
The late Prince Consort, though the most highly placed, is only one of
several individuals whose personal influence has conspicuously encouraged
the growth and the gratification of a musical taste more or less
cultivated. The discussion which agitated English taste in the eighteenth
century as to the merits of German and other music is summed up in a
familiar epigram as the difference between tweedledum and tweedledee:--
Some say, compared to Bononcini,
That Mynheer Handel's but a ninny;
Others aver that he to Handel
Is scarcely fit to hold a candle.
The commanding genius of the great German composer is enough to account
for the traditional complaint that native genius in England has been
eclipsed by foreign products. The Elector of Hanover had recognized
Handel's genius before he became George I. of England, but began his reign
by showing little favour to the composer, who had absented himself without
leave from his duties at the Electoral Court. Already in Queen Anne's
reign Handel's _Te Deum_ had celebrated in St Paul's Cathedral the
conclusion of the Peace of Utrecht. It was not till after his _Water
Music_ had procured his restoration to favour that the new English monarch
took him back into his service. Gradually, however, till in 1741 it was
confirmed by the _Messiah_ produced in Dublin and by his operas in London,
the triumph of the German over the Italian school thus advanced. Neither
then nor later did it involve neglect of the great English composer of the
seventeenth century, our own Henry Purcell,[78] organist at Westminster
Abbey at eighteen years of age, and author of a greater number of songs,
anthems, operas, glees and cantatas, at once famous and popular, than
probably any other musician whom England has produced. Felix Mendelssohn
of Hamburg, not less precocious than our own Purcell, also at eighteen
produced an opera. His personal influence in England was scarcely less
great than that of Handel, and of course tended towards the further
popularization of Teutonic art: he lived on terms of intimate friendship
during his different sojourns in this country with English musicians. The
popular and accomplished pianoforte improvisatore, John Parry, who was
familiar to the English public of this age from his connection with the
German-Reed company, 1860-9, the forerunner of the Corney Grain and Arthur
Cecil of a later day, might almost be called Mendelssohn's pupil. By
Mendelssohn, Parry was first encouraged to adopt music as a profession;
the present writer well remembers how he heard from John Parry himself the
account of Mendelssohn's listening during half a winter night to the piano
improvisations devised by the versatile genius of the then young man.
Charles Halle, born in Westphalia in 1819, and so just ten years younger
than Mendelssohn was driven from Paris to London by the Revolution of
1848, to which England was indebted for such an influx of foreign genius
of all kinds to her shores. Beethoven, like Handel, first became known in
Europe through a German Elector, him of Cologne. He died in 1827. Though
the charm and fame of Beethoven had been steadily growing upon English
critics and musicians first and upon the general public afterwards, to
Charles Halle[79] belongs the distinction of having done much towards
popularizing this great author of classical music with the English public.
The Musical Union which preceded the Popular Concerts was then directed by
John Ella, whose programmes included Beethoven's sonatas, played by Halle
with great applause.
The English public, if by voluntary culture it had not been disciplined
into a genuine admiration for Teutonic music, as interpreted by various
foreign executants, would have been wooed to its love by the educating
influences of the Hungarian violinist Herr Joachim, deservedly reverenced
by all circles of English society, ever receiving his homage with the
dignified modesty of great genius. This director of the Royal Academy of
Music at Berlin had, before that appointment, received the degree of
Doctor of Music at Cambridge. The bow with which he elicited entrancing
strains from his instrument was a social sceptre as well. When George
Eliot was writing _Daniel Deronda_, Herr Joachim's social and artistic
ascendancy had just reached its culminating point. A scientific musician
herself, George Eliot visited those circles where first-rate music was to
be heard. No writer more artistically found the suggestions of her
characters in real life. The Herr Joachim whom English society knew is
reflected so strikingly in the Herr Klesmer of whom the _Daniel Deronda_
public reads as to warrant the conjecture that the master before whom
Gwendolen Harleth trembled had been suggested by the violinist at whose
feet the aristocracy of birth, beauty, wit, intellect and wealth with
unfeigned admiration knelt down.
Other individuals deserve a place in the catalogue of those who have
helped on the musical movement of our times. Sir George Grove made a
substantial addition to the musical wealth of the world by contributing a
chapter to its musical romance; that which relates his discovery of the
lost scores of Schubert in a Vienna cupboard. His dictionary of music will
survive when the honourable record of his Directorship of the Royal
College of Music may be forgotten. Sir Arthur Sullivan has not only
illustrated with melodies, that have at once caught the ear of the town,
the fantastic conceptions of Mr W. S. Gilbert's intellect; he has used his
personal popularity on all levels of social London to diffuse improved
notions of musical taste. Agencies of the same kind, collective as well as
individual have not, during the Victorian age, been wanting.
The _personnel_ of upper middle class society in England has been
perceptibly affected by the entrance into it through the gate of marriage,
of ladies of German origin, of great taste and accomplishments generally,
and like all their nation, devoted to music. Hence among other things the
increased patronage of the Italian Opera, of all high-class concerts in
public as well as of musical artists in private by that well to do section
of the Queen's subjects which combines the tastes of culture and of birth
with the resources of trade. Its composition of the veritable materials of
Paxton's Glass House for the Great Exhibition is not the only respect in
which the Crystal Palace at Sydenham is connected with that enterprise of
the Prince Consort as a reformer of English taste. To mention only its
connection with the subject now being specially considered, the Crystal
Palace has maintained its full orchestra since 1854. These concerts have
been admittedly during near half a century prime instruments of
metropolitan and suburban civilization. They have practically
revolutionized the home life of tens of thousands of the prosperous
commercial class which fixes its household gods out of earshot of Bow
Bells. The impulse thus given to the study of the art on a basis wider and
deeper than anything formerly existing can scarcely be exaggerated. It is
of itself enough to explain why the number of English students of music in
the nineties is so vastly larger than it was during any of the preceding
decades.[80]