. . . Concerning the bagwigs of composers. Handel's was not a bagwig,
which was simply so named from the little stuffed black silk watch-pocket
that hung down behind the back of the wearer. Such were Haydn's and
Mozart's--much less influential on the character: much less ostentatious
in themselves: not towering so high, nor rolling down in following curls
so low as to overlay the nature of the brain within. But Handel wore the
Sir Godfrey Kneller wig: greatest of wigs: one of which some great
General of the day used to take off his head after the fatigue of the
battle, and hand over to his valet to have the bullets combed out of it.
Such a wig was a fugue in itself. I don't understand your theory about
trumpets, which have always been so little spiritual _in use_, that they
have been the provocatives and celebrators of physical force from the
beginning of the world. '_Power_,' whether spiritual or physical, is the
meaning of the trumpet: and so, well used, as you say, by Handel in his
approaches to the Deity. The fugue in the overture to the Messiah
expresses perhaps the thorny wandering ways of the world before the voice
of the one in the wilderness, and before 'Comfort ye my people, etc.'
Mozart, I agree with you, is the most universal musical genius: Beethoven
has been too analytical and erudite: but his inspiration is nevertheless
true. I have just read his Life by Moscheles: well worth reading. He
shewed no very decided preference for music when a child, though he was
the son of a composer: and I think that he was, strictly speaking, more
of a thinker than a musician. A great genius he was somehow. He was
very fond of reading: Plutarch and Shakespeare his great favourites. He
tried to think in music: almost to reason in music: whereas perhaps we
should be contented with _feeling_ in it. It can never speak very
definitely. There is that famous 'Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, etc.,'
in Handel: nothing can sound more simple and devotional: but it is only
lately adapted to these words, being originally (I believe) a love song
in Rodelinda. Well, lovers adore their mistresses more than their God.
Then the famous music of 'He layeth the beams of his chambers in the
waters, etc.,' was originally fitted to an Italian pastoral song--'Nasce
al bosco in rozza cuna, un felice pastorello, etc.' That part which
seems so well to describe 'and walketh on the wings of the wind' falls
happily in with 'e con l'aura di fortuna' with which this pastorello
sailed along. The character of the music is ease and largeness: as the
shepherd lived, so God Almighty walked on the wind. The music breathes
ease: but words must tell us who takes it easy. Beethoven's Sonata--Op.
14--is meant to express the discord and gradual atonement of two lovers,
or a man and his wife: and he was disgusted that every one did not see
what was meant: in truth, it expresses any resistance gradually
overcome--Dobson shaving with a blunt razor, for instance. Music is so
far the most universal language, that any one piece in a particular
strain symbolizes all the analogous phenomena spiritual or material--if
you can talk of spiritual phenomena. The Eroica symphony describes the
battle of the passions as well as of armed men. This is long and muddy
discourse: but the walls of Charlotte Street present little else,
especially during this last week of Lent, to twaddle about. The
Cambridge Dons have been up in town for the Easter vacation: so we have
smoked and talked over Peacock, Whewell, etc. Alfred is busy preparing a
new volume for the press: full of doubts, troubles, etc. The reviewers
will doubtless be at him: and with justice for many things: but some of
the poems will outlive the reviewers. Trench, Wordsworth, Campbell, and
Taylor, also appear in new volumes this Spring, and Milnes, I hear, talks
of publishing a popular edition of his poems. He means, a cheap one.
Nothing has been heard of Spedding: {114a} but we all conclude, from the
nature of the case, that he has not been scalped.
_To W. F. Pollock_. {114b}
BOULGE HALL, _May_ 11/42.