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CARDINAL NEWMAN
AS A MUSICIAN.
BY
EDWARD BELLASIS,
_Author of "Cherubini: Memorials Illustrative of his Life."_
[Illustration]
LONDON:
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUeBNER, AND CO.
1892.
REPRINTED (WITH ADDITIONS AND MUSICAL EXAMPLES) FROM
"THE MONTH" OF SEPTEMBER, 1891.
ROEHAMPTON: PRINTED BY JAMES STANLEY.
Music's ethereal fire was given
Not to dissolve our clay,
But draw Promethean beams from Heaven,
And purge the dross away.
J.H.N.
_Cardinal Newman as a Musician._
It is a remark of St. Philip Neri's latest biographer that, "Our Saint
was profoundly convinced that there is in music and in song a
mysterious and a mighty power to stir the heart with high and noble
emotion, and an especial fitness to raise it above sense to the love
of heavenly things."[1] In like manner the Saint's illustrious son,
Cardinal Newman, has spoken of "the emotion which some gentle,
peaceful strain excites in us," and "how soul and body are rapt and
carried away captive by the concord of musical sounds where the ear is
open to their power;"[2] how, too, "music is the expression of ideas
greater and more profound than any in the visible world, ideas which
centre, indeed, in Him whom Catholicism manifests, who is the seat of
all beauty, order, and perfection whatever."[3] Music, then, to him
was no "mere ingenuity or trick of art like some game or fashion of
the day without meaning."[4] For him man "sweeps the strings and they
thrill with an ecstatic meaning."[5] "Is it possible," he asks, "that
that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so
simple, so intricate yet so regulated, so various yet so majestic,
should be a mere sound which is gone and perishes? Can it be that
those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange
yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know
not whence, should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and
comes and goes, and begins and ends in itself. It is not so; it cannot
be. No; they have escaped from some higher sphere; they are the
outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound; they
are echoes from our home; they are the voice of angels, or the
_Magnificat_ of saints, or the living laws of Divine governance, or
the Divine attributes, something are they beside themselves, which we
cannot compass, which we cannot utter."[6] And with him, as with St.
Philip, may we not say that music held "a foremost place in his
thoughts and plans"?[7] True, out of its place, he will but allow that
"playing musical instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to
the idle."[8] Music and "stuffing birds"[9] were no conceivable
substitutes for education properly so called, any more than a
"Tamworth Reading-Room" system could be the panacea for every ill; but
so long as an art in any given case did not tend to displace the more
serious business of life; should it become for such an one an "aid to
reflection," or, _per contra_, profitably distract him; in brief, if
it anywise helped a soul on to her journey's end, then welcome the
"good and perfect gift."
[Footnote 1: Cardinal Capecelatro's _Life of St. Philip Neri_,
translated by the Rev. Thomas Alder Pope, of the Oratory, vol. ii. p.
83.]
[Footnote 2: _Discourses to Mixed Congregations_, p. 297, Fourth Edit.
1871.]
[Footnote 3: _Idea of a University_, dis. iv. p. 80, Sixth Edit.
1886.]
[Footnote 4: _Oxford University Sermons_, p. 346, Edit. 1884.]
[Footnote 5: _Idea_, dis. ix. 230. Dr. Chalmers writes to Blanco
White: "You speak in your letter of the relief you have found in
music.... I am no musician and want a good ear, and yet I am conscious
of a power in music which I want words to describe. It touches chords,
reaches depths in the soul which lie beyond all other influences....
Nothing in my experience is more mysterious, more inexplicable."
(Blanco White's _Life and Correspondence_, edited by Thom, 1845, vol.
iii. p. 195.)]
[Footnote 6: _Oxford University Sermons_, pp. 346, 347. Writing to her
brother about the passage on music, partly cited above, beginning:
"There are seven notes in the scale, make them fourteen; yet what a
slender outfit for so vast an enterprise! What science brings so much
out of so little! Out of what poor element does some great master in
it create his new world!" Mrs. J. Mozley says, "We are pleased at your
tribute to music, but what do you mean by fourteen notes? Do you mean
the twelve semitones, as some suggest? I am indignant at the idea. I
think you knew what you were saying. Please tell me when you write."
(Mozley, _Corr._ ii. p. 411.) He replies: "I had already been both
amused and provoked to find my gross blunder about the 'fourteen.' But
do not, pray, suppose I _doubled_ the notes for semitones, though it
looks very like it. The truth is, I had a most stupid idea in my head
there were fifteen semi tones, and I took off one for the octave. On
reading it over when published, I saw the absurdity. I have a great
dislike to publishing hot bread, and this is one proof of the
inconvenience." (_Ibid._) The Second Edition has "thirteen notes,"
which is correct, if the octave be included, but later editions go
back to "fourteen."]
[Footnote 7: Pope, _Capecelatro_, ii. 82.]
[Footnote 8: _Idea_, dis. vi. p. 144.]
[Footnote 9: _Ibid._]
Thus, of a pupil's violin playing, September, 1865: "There are more
important things, and I had some fear that he might be neglecting his
proper studies. Now since he has not been, his music is all gain....
To my mind music is an important part of education, where boys have a
turn for it. It is a great resource when they are thrown on the world,
it is a social amusement perfectly innocent, and, what is so great a
point, employs their thoughts. Drawing does not do this. It is often a
great point for a boy to escape from himself, and music enables him.
He cannot be playing difficult passages on the violin, and thinking of
anything else." Perhaps he was speaking from experience, for he told
us in September, 1875: "I began the violin when I was ten years old,"
and his two brothers used to accompany him in trios, Frank playing
"the bass." On going to Oxford he kept up his music. Thus in February,
1820: "Our music club at St. John's has been offered, and has
accepted, the music-room, for our weekly private concerts;" and later:
"I went to the R's to play the difficult first violin to Haydn,
Mozart, &c.;"[10] and in June, 1820: "I was asked by a man yesterday
to go to his rooms for a _little_ music at seven o'clock. I went. An
old Don--a very good-natured man but too fond of music--played bass,
and through his enthusiasm I was kept playing quartets on a heavy
tenor from seven to twelve. Oh, my poor eyes and head and back."[11]
When the news arrived of his success at Oriel he was practising
music. "The Provost's butler--to whom it fell by usage to take the
news to the fortunate candidate--made his way to Mr. Newman's lodgings
in Broad Street, and found him playing the violin. This in itself
disconcerted the messenger, who did not associate such an
accomplishment with a candidateship for the Oriel Common-Room, but his
perplexity was increased when on his delivering what may be considered
to have been his usual form of speech on such occasions, that 'he had,
he feared, disagreeable news to announce, viz., that Mr. Newman was
elected Fellow of Oriel, and that his immediate presence was required
there,' the person addressed merely answered, 'Very well,' and went on
fiddling. This led the man to ask whether, perhaps, he had not gone to
the wrong person, to which Mr. Newman replied that it was all right.
But, as may be imagined, no sooner had the man left than he flung down
his instrument and dashed downstairs."[12] And again, "With a
half-malicious intent of frightening them (his electors at Oriel), it
was told them that Mr. Newman had for years belonged to a club of
instrumental music, and had himself taken part in its public
performances, a diversion, innocent in itself, but scarcely in
keeping, or in sympathy with an intellectual Common-Room, or promising
a satisfactory career to a nascent Fellow of Oriel."[13] So thought
the _quidnuncs_; nevertheless, Mr. Newman "went on fiddling." His
pupil, F. Rogers (the late Lord Blachford), joined him herein, and
writes, January, 1834: "Your sermons ... and Beethoven are most
satisfactory. I wish I could hope to join you in the last in any
moderate time. However, I do expect you will take me to Rose Hill to
hear some of it again, if it were only to remind me of those evenings
I used to spend with you when at Iffley. I am afraid you will have
enough of my bass to satisfy you without Beethoven in the course of
next term." N.B.--"He was to be in Froude's room over my
head,--J.H.N."[14] Mr. Bowden also played the violoncello, and Newman
was further supported by one who was a musician, and a deal more
besides. "Mr. Blanco White," he writes, November, 1826, "plays the
violin, and has an exquisite ear."[15] "I have only one sister alive
now," he said sadly in September, 1875, "and she is old, but plays
Beethoven very well.[16] She has an old-fashioned, energetic style of
playing; but one person, I remember, played Beethoven as no one else,
Blanco White. I don't know how he learned the violin, but he would
seem to have inherited a tradition as to the method of playing him."
"Both were violinists," writes Mr. T. Mozley of Blanco White and Mr.
Newman, "but with different instruments. Blanco White's was very
small.... Poor gentleman! Night after night anyone walking in the
silence of Merton Lane might hear his continual attempts to surmount
some little difficulty, returning to it again and again like Philomel
to her vain regrets.[17] With Reinagle ... Newman and Blanco White had
frequent (trios) at the latter's lodgings, where I was all the
audience.... Most interesting was it to contrast Blanco White's
excited and indeed agitated countenance with Newman's sphinx-like
immobility, as the latter drew long rich notes with a steady
hand."[18] Dr. Newman was still "bowing" forty years later, by which
time the alleged "sphinx-like immobility" had made way for an
ever-varying expression upon his face as strains alternated between
grave and gay. Producing his violin from an old green baize bag,[19]
bending forward, and holding his violin against his chest, instead of
under the chin in the modern fashion, most particular about his
instrument being in perfect tune, in execution awkward yet vigorous,
painstaking rather than brilliant, he would often attend at the
Oratory School Sunday practices between two and four of an afternoon,
Father Ryder and Father Norris sometimes coming to play also. For many
years Dr. Newman had given up the violin,[20] but finding some of the
school taking to the strings, he took it up again by way of
encouraging them to persevere in what he deemed to be so good a thing
for his boys. And he quietly inculcated a lesson in self-effacement
too, for albeit he had begun the violin very long before our time, he
invariably took second fiddle. He had no high opinion of his own
performances. Answering the Liverpool anti-Popery spouter's summons to
battle, he relied rather on his friends' estimate of his powers than
upon his own. "Canon M'Neill's well-known talents as a finished orator
would make such a public controversy an unfair trial of strength
between them, because he himself was no orator. He had in fact no
practice in public speaking. _His friends, however, told him_ that he
was no mean performer on the violin, and if he agreed to meet Canon
M'Neill, he would only make one condition, that the Canon should open
the meeting, and say all he had to say, after which he (Mr. Newman)
would conclude with a tune on the violin. The public would then be
able to judge which was the better man."[21] With mere fiddling, a
fluency void of expression he had little patience, and when, at a term
"break-up," a youth's bow cleverly capered about on a violoncello, he
uttered no compliment when the boy had concluded his flourishes. It
was a mere display for executive skill, without feeling.
[Footnote 10: Mozley, _Correspondence_, i. p. 52.]
[Footnote 11: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 12: Mozley, _Corr._ i. p. 71. On one occasion (between
1860-70) two Oratory boys went up to his room to make a complaint, and
hearing only "fiddling" the other side of the door, made bold to
enter, but their visit was ill-timed. "Every Englishman's house is his
castle," said the Father, and he "went on fiddling." This term,
"Father," is what every one in the house called Dr. Newman, and
correctly, as being Father Superior of the Oratory. It is the name (it
need scarcely be added) that he liked to be called by.]
[Footnote 13: _Ibid._ i. p. 104: Provost Hawkins, at this time a
Fellow, and ultimately succeeding Copleston, had no love for music,
and rather despised such a thing as being "a sign of an effeminate (or
frivolous) mind." He used one or other of these terms, or _both_.]
[Footnote 14: Mozley, _Corr._ ii. p. 22.]
[Footnote 15: _Ibid._ i. p. 146.]
[Footnote 16: She writes in July, 1843: "Now I do so wish, John, you
would pay us a visit. I will practise hard to get up some Beethoven."
(Mozley, _Corr._ ii. 415.)]
[Footnote 17: With this difference, however, Philomel had not to learn
her regrets: she knew them already.]
[Footnote 18: _Reminiscences_, i. pp. 247, 248, Second Edition, 1882.
Of statements in this work the Cardinal humorously observed: "When a
thing won't stand on three legs, Tom supplies a fourth." The Father
played the viola a good deal, which is larger than the violin; hence
Mr. Mozley's "different instruments," &c.]
[Footnote 19: One of the boys was once lent this aged green baize bag,
and losing it, never heard the end of it. Whenever there was question
of lending him anything else, the Father would say very quietly: "I
think I lent you a green baize bag." Nor would he allow that it was
lost: "You mean mislaid."]
[Footnote 20: A friend remembers Father Whitty, S.J., bringing to
Maryvale Mr. McCarthy and Mr. M'Quoin, young converts and subsequently
priests (the former is still living in Jersey). Both played the
violin, so an instrumental quartet was essayed (a rare event in the
community), the executants being the two named, and Fathers Newman and
Bowles (violoncello).]
[Footnote 21: Father Lockhart, in the _Paternoster Review_ for
September, 1890.]
Readers will remember here the passage in _Loss and Gain_: "Bateman:
'If you attempt more, it's like taxing a musical instrument beyond its
powers.' Reding: 'You but try, Bateman, to make a bass play
quadrilles, and you will see what is meant by taxing an instrument.'
Bateman: 'Well, I have heard Lindley play all sorts of quick tunes on
his bass, and most wonderful it is.' Reding: 'Wonderful is the right
word, it is very wonderful. You say, "How _can_ he manage it? It's
very wonderful for a bass;" but it is not pleasant in itself. In like
manner, I have always felt a disgust when Mr. So-and-so comes forward
to make his sweet flute bleat and bray like a haut-bois; it's forcing
the poor thing to do what it was never made for.'"[22]
[Footnote 22: _Loss and Gain_, p. 284, Sixth Edition, 1874.]
In the same mood, when a quartet of Schubert was played to him in
March, 1878, the sole remark he let fall was, "Very harmonious and
clever, but it does not touch the heart."
In March, 1883, he observed that he missed the minor key in
Palestrina, and on our adding that, perhaps, Mendelssohn had too much
of it, he went on, "It cuts me to the heart that minor," and so he
liked the mixed mode to the Psalm _In exitu Israel_, and was much
affected by the slow movements in Beethoven's Ninth Quartet and C
minor Symphony, and the Allegretto of the Symphony in A.
I cannot of that music rightly say,
Whether I hear or touch or taste the tones,
Oh, what a heart-subduing melody![23]
[Footnote 23: _The Dream of Gerontius._]
There was just that human element about it, so "deeply pathetic,"
which in the same way made him prefer Euripides to Sophocles, for all
the latter's "sweet composure, melodious fulness, majesty and
grace."[24] And here we may add, that as late as January, 1890,
_apropos_ of a Greek play for his school, he was as keen and eager as
ever about the merits of Euripides, expressed himself as being at a
loss to understand the critics invariably preferring Sophocles to the
other two, and evidently placed Euripides and AEschylus first and
second respectively. A frequently true and natural feeling, whether
displayed by the author of the _Bacchae_, or by the composer of
_Fidelio_, evidently almost atoned, in his estimation, for every
deficiency.
[Footnote 24: _Essays_, i. 7, Fifth Edit.]
He writes to his sister, October, 1834: "There is a lady here" (at
Tunbridge Wells), "who plays most beautifully. I think I never heard
such a touch--why, I cannot make out, for she has not long fingers to
be brilliant. So you must set yourself to rival her. It would be
interesting to _examine_ the causes of expression, which you might
easily do. _Strength_ of finger is one thing certainly. This lady is
not brilliant in the common sense--that is, smart and rattling--but
every note is so full-toned, so perfect, that one requires nothing
beyond itself. This in Beethoven's effective passages produces a
surprising effect. I accompanied her last night and am to do so again
to-night."[25] He wrote in September, 1865, of a certain boy's
progress with the violin: "He plays fluently, so to say; by fluency I
mean in time, in tune, and with execution. This is stage one; stage
two is eloquence, by which I mean grace, delicacy, and expression. To
gain this nothing is better than to accompany his sisters. A boy who
always is first fiddle is in danger of artistic faults parallel to
those which are implied in the metaphorical sense of the words. When
he comes back I think he has had enough of the music-master, and I
shall try to make him turn his thoughts to a higher school of music
than is suitable to a beginner, but I cannot tell whether he is old
enough to take to it. I recollect how slow I was as a boy to like the
school of music which afterwards so possessed me that I have to come
to think Haydn, in spite of his genius, almost vulgar." And just as
Blanco White would seem to have thoroughly initiated Mr. Newman into
the mysteries of Beethoven, so did Dr. Newman lead on his boys (as
they would say) "to swear by" that master. They might start with
Corelli, and go on to Romberg, Haydn, and Mozart: their ultimate goal
was Beethoven, and round would come the "Father Superior" with ancient
copies of the quintet version of the celebrated septet, and
arrangements from the symphonies; nor were the first ten quartets, the
instrumental trios, the violin sonatas, and the overtures forgotten.
The "Dutchman," with his force and depth, his tenderness and
sweetness, was the Cardinal's prime favourite. "We were at the
concert," Mrs. Newman writes to him at school, "and fascinated with
the Dutchman" (the name he had given to Beethoven to tease his
music-master because of the _van_ to his name), "and thought of you
and your musical party frequently."[26] "They tell me," he said in
May, 1876, on occasion of hearing at the Latin Play, the _scherzo_ and
_finale_ of the Second Symphony, "that these first two symphonies of
Beethoven are not in his style; to me they are Beethoven all over.
There is no mistaking that _scherzo_." And again in October, 1877,
after a rendering of the _allegretto_ of the Eighth Symphony, on our
observing that it was like the giant at play, he said: "It is curious
you should say that. I used to call him the gigantic nightingale. He
is like a great bird singing. My sister remembers my using the
expression long ago." And although he betrayed a little doubt as to
Beethoven's tone being essentially religious, he was unwilling to hear
anything said against him.[27] The late Father Caswall, once
distracted, while singing High Mass, with Beethoven's Mass in C,
half-humorously vented his wrath at recreation against the _Credo_.
Said he: "I think that's a condemnable _Credo_." "Oh, I rather liked
it," was Father Newman's rejoinder. "More dramatic than reverent," had
been the remark made to the latter in September, 1882, by the then
Warden of Keble, after the conclusion of the _Mount of Olives_ at the
Birmingham Festival. The Cardinal said little or nothing at the time,
but his affection for Beethoven came out subsequently. "When you come
to Beethoven," said he, "I don't say anything about good taste, but he
has such wonderful bits here and there." And in the department of
_cadenza_ and variation he deemed him without an equal.
[Footnote 25: Mozley, _Corr._ ii. 67.]
[Footnote 26: Mozley, _Corr._ i. 19.]
[Footnote 27: The late Canon Mozley said that Chopin was "certainly a
Manichean; he did not believe in God; he believed in some spirit, not
in God;" while "the moral grandeur of Beethoven's genius was always
present to him, as, with less force, was also Mendelssohn's: 'They
believed in God--their music showed it.'" (_Letters_, p. 353, Edit.
1885.)]
Distrusting their talent lest it should run away with them, and they
neglect the rubrics, Dr. Newman was sensitive over musicians of the
day setting to work upon liturgy. Of sorts of liberty taken we have
modern examples in Gounod's _Mors et Vita_ Oratorio, where _O felix
culpa_, &c., is planted in the middle of the _Dies Irae_, and in his
_Messe Solennelle_, where _Domine, non sum dignus_, &c., figures as a
solo in the _Agnus Dei_ (a less objectionable case, the treatment
being fortunately devotional). Berlioz, too, in his _Requiem_,
introduces before the _Tuba mirum_ the words, _Et iterum venturus est
judicare vivos et mortuos_. And in a passage where he would appear to
be depicting Beethoven's power, after alluding to "the marvellous
development which musical science has undergone in the last century,"
Dr. Newman continues: "Doubtless, here, too, the highest genius may be
made subservient to religion," but "it is certain that religion must
be alive and on the defensive, for if its servant sleep a potent
enchantment will steal over it.... If, then, a great master in this
mysterious science ... throws himself on his own gifts, trusts its
inspirations and absorbs himself in those thoughts which, though they
come to him in the way of nature belong to things above nature, it is
obvious he will neglect everything else. Rising in his strength he
will break through the trammels of words; he will scatter human
voices, even the sweetest, to the winds; he will be borne upon nothing
else than the fullest flood of sounds which art has enabled him to
draw from mechanical contrivances; he will go forth as a giant, as far
as ever his instruments can reach, starting from their secret depths
fresh and fresh elements of beauty and grandeur as he goes, and
pouring them together into still more marvellous and rapturous
combinations; and well indeed, and lawfully, while he keeps to that
line which is his own; but should he happen to be attracted, as he
well may, by the sublimity, so congenial to him, of the Catholic
doctrine and ritual, should he engage in sacred themes, should he
resolve by means of his art to do honour to the Mass, or the Divine
Office--(he cannot have a more pious, a better purpose, and religion
will gracefully accept what he gracefully offers; but) is it not
certain from the circumstances of the case, that he will be carried on
rather to use religion than to minister to it, unless religion is
strong on its own ground, and reminds him that if he would do honour
to the highest of subjects, he must make himself its scholar, must
humbly follow the thoughts given him, and must aim at the glory, not
of his own gift, but of the Great Giver."[28] How entirely is this
spirit in accord with the Congregation of Rites; with the sentiments,
indeed, of every lover of true church-music. He was thus very slow to
take (if he ever really took) to new-comers on the field of sacred
music. And holding, as he did, that no good work could be adequately
adjudged without a thorough knowledge of it, he was disinclined to be
introduced to fresh musical names at all, on the bare chance, that
might never occur, of what had been a casual acquaintanceship ripening
into intimate friendship. He had in early days found time and
opportunity to comprehend certain masters, Corelli, Handel, Haydn,
Romberg, Mozart, and Beethoven, but Schubert, Schumann, Wagner ("I
cannot recollect all the fellows' names"[29]); who were these
strangers, intruding somewhat late in the evening upon a dear old
family party? Thus, writing of Mendelssohn's chief sacred work in
March, 1871, which he had been reluctantly induced to go and listen
to, and which he never got to hear again: "I was very much
disappointed the one time that I heard the _Elijah_, not to meet with
a beautiful melody from beginning to end. What can be more beautiful
than Handel's, Mozart's, and Beethoven's melodies?" Now, of course,
there is plenty of melody in the _Elijah_, though it may be conceded
that Mendelssohn's melodious gift is less _copious_ than that of
Mozart, but the fact was, Cardinal Newman never got to know the
_Elijah_, doubtless deemed it long, and felt content to feed upon the
musical _pabulum_ that he had so long found satisfying. And underlying
this particular form of the _gravamen_ against Mendelssohn, we should
say that there existed a species of irritation with some of the modern
oratorio. Was it not very possibly in his eyes a kind of Protestant
rejuvenescence of an eighteenth century Biblical institution, all
quietly founded, without acknowledgment, on St. Philip's own Catholic
creation,[30] and nowadays bidding fair to do duty at convenient
intervals for proper religious worship with large numbers alike of
church-goers and of people who never go to church? Better oratorio
here, it may be said, than nothing at all, and that may be conceded;
but we have an impression that the Cardinal looked jealously at the
use of Scripture for general musical performances in concert-halls. He
was a little put out, too, by librettists interlarding Holy Writ with
their own "copy." Scripture was good, and Gounod, for example, might
be good, but both together in literary collaboration were--well, not
so good. While allowing that there was something of interest in the
history of the latter's _Redemption_ Oratorio, insomuch as when first
conceived long ago its composer had entertained thoughts of embracing
the religious state, he could with difficulty be induced to go and
hear it, at its first production in Birmingham on the last day of
August, 1882. Nor could he be got to say anything about it by way of a
compliment. "As the work of a man of genius one does not like to
criticize it," was what he let fall, and he was rather troubled by its
"March to Calvary," which he likened in private to "the bombardment of
Alexandria." At the 1876 Festival, Wagner's _Supper of the Apostles_
was to his ear "sound and fury," and Brahms' _Triumphlied_ fared no
better in 1882. We happened to be with him at the Friday morning
performance, September 1. A certain party came in late, and talked
away behind us all through the G minor Symphony of Mozart, whose
"exuberant inventiveness"[31] excited our wonder. When the din of the
_Triumphlied_ came on, her voice was quite drowned, and the Cardinal
whispered: "Brahms is a match for her."[32]
[Footnote 28: _Idea_, dis. iv. 80, 81. In a Bull of 1749, Pope
Benedict the Fourteenth lays great stress on the words being heard and
understood, "Curandum est ut verba quae cantantur plane perfecteque
intelligantur," and this is best secured in the unaccompanied chant.
In an interesting article of the _Dublin Review_ (New Series, vol. ii.
January-April, 1864), the effect of official pronouncements on the
questions affecting the plain chant and concerted music is thus
succinctly summed up: "1. That music, properly so called, may be
admitted as well as plain chant. 2. That the music of the church is to
possess a certain gravity and to minister to devotion. 3. That
instrumental music may be allowed, under certain restrictions."]
[Footnote 29: _Discussions and Arguments_, p. 343, Fourth Edit. 1882.]
[Footnote 30: We have it, however, on good authority that a Jesuit
Father told a Mr. Okely that "one of our Fathers received him
(Mendelssohn) into the Church shortly before his death." Our informant
thinks the occurrence took place in Switzerland. If so, the fact ought
to be better known than it is. Moreover, he adds, that the late Father
W. Maher, S.J., on one occasion, previous to Mendelssohn's _Lauda
Sion_ being done at Farm Street, addressed the congregation: "Perhaps
you would like to know that the author of the music we are about to
hear died a Catholic."]
[Footnote 31: _Oxford University Sermons_, p. 346.]
[Footnote 32: She subsequently resumed talk, trying to draw him out
about Ireland and Gounod, but all in vain. It was nearly 3 p.m. ere
this _morning_ concert came to an end, when a second lady, introduced
by a noble lord, appeared on the scene, and detained him upon
questions relative to the state of the soul after death, what St.
Thomas had said, &c. Meanwhile sweepers, uninterested in this
ill-timed discussion, were pursuing their avocation in the emptying
hall, and stewards were set wondering as to when His Eminence would be
released.]
He got to know fairly well Mendelssohn's canzonet quartet and
Schumann's pianoforte quintet Op. 44; but we recall no musical works
heard by him for the first time in very late life making any
particular impression on the Father, with one notable exception;
Cherubini's First Requiem in C minor, done at the Festival, August 29,
1879. We were to have gone with him, but a Father who accompanied him
wrote to us instead next day: "The Father was quite overcome by it,
and that is the fact. He kept on saying, 'beautiful, wonderful,' and
such-like exclamations. At the _Mors stupebit_ he was shaking his head
in his solemn way, and muttering, 'beautiful, beautiful.' He admired
the fugue _Quam olim_ very much, but the part which struck him most by
far, and which he spoke of afterwards as we drove home, is the ending
of the _Agnus Dei_--he could not get over it--the lovely note C which
keeps recurring as the 'requiem' approaches eternity." When it was
done twice in its true home, the church, later, on the 2nd and 13th
November, 1886, he said, "It is magnificent music." "That is a
beautiful Mass" (adding, with a touch of pathos), "but when you get as
old as I am, it comes rather too home." A diary noting the service on
All Souls' day, says: "His Eminence was at the throne in his purple
robes. I was in the gallery at the end of the nave, and the dim-lit
sanctuary (with the Cardinal's _zucchetto_ the only bit of bright
colour in the gloom), the sublime music, all had a most impressive
effect." On November 13, 1885, he heard in the church and for the
first time, the Florentine's Second Requiem in D minor, for male
voices; and thought it beautiful and devotional, and in no way lacking
in effect through the absence of _soprani_ and _contralti_, which he
had not missed. He was most struck with the _piano_ passage in canon
beginning with the words _Solvet saeclum_. On September 1, 1882, he
heard at the Festival the same composer's Mass in C, and characterized
as "beautiful" the fugue at the end of the _Gloria_, the part in the
Offertory where the chorus enters in support of the soprano solo, and
the conclusion of the _Dona_. It came as a relief to him after Brahms,
who was not understood at a first hearing, and this inability in
general to grasp good music at once is exhibited in his Italian
correspondence. "This last week," he writes from Rome in April, 1833,
"we have heard the celebrated _Miserere_, or rather the two
_Misereres_, for there are two compositions by Allegri and Boii [it
should be Bai, and a third is now added, composed by Father Baini] so
like each other that the performers themselves can scarcely tell the
difference between them. One is performed on the Thursday and the
other on Good Friday. The voices are certainly very surprising; there
is no instrument to support them, but they have the art of continuing
their notes so long and equally that the effect is as if an organ were
playing, or rather an organ of violin strings, for the notes are
clearer, more subtle and piercing, and more impassioned (so to say)
than those of an organ. The music itself is doubtless very fine, as
everyone says, but I found myself unable to understand all parts of
it. Here and there it was extremely fine, but it is impossible to
understand such a composition on once or twice hearing. In its style
it is more like Corelli's music than any other I know (though very
different too). And this is not wonderful, as Corelli was Master of
the Pope's Chapel, and so educated in the school of Allegri,
Palestrina, and the rest. These are the only services we have been to
during the week."[33]
[Footnote 33: Mozley, _Corr._ i. 380. We do not think that Corelli
ever was Papal choirmaster. For some years, however, he led the
orchestra of the Roman Opera, and was a great friend of Cardinal
Ottoboni. How different the _Tenebrae_ music at St. Peter's can be from
that at the Sixtine chapel, is seen by the three _Misereres_ at the
former being by Basili, Guglielmi, and Zingarelli, all composers of
light opera.]
For good operatic music Cardinal Newman had, we believe, more of a
liking than for the more modern oratorio. Rossini, as a religious
composer, was, we fear, in his bad books, yet when the choice had to
be made at the 1879 Festival as to what performance he would attend,
he at first said, "I shall go once, and I choose _Mose in Egitto_." He
was, he continued, fond of operatic music, and heard very little of
it. "However," he added to two of the Fathers, "there's no reason why
you shouldn't go to all." Perhaps there was one reason against that
course; it would be expensive. There is an amusing notice of Rossini
in the Anglican Letters of Mr. Newman. "Bowden tells me," he wrote in
March, 1824, "that Sola, his sister's music-master, brought Rossini to
dine in Grosvenor Place not long since; and that as far as they could
judge (for he does not speak English) he is as unassuming and obliging
a man as ever breathed. He seemed highly pleased with everything, and
anxious to make himself agreeable. Labouring, indeed, under a severe
cold, he did not sing, but accompanied two or three of his own songs
in the most brilliant manner.... As he came in a private, not a
professional, way, Bowden called on him, and found him surrounded, in
a low, dark room, by about eight or nine Italians, all talking as fast
as possible, who, with the assistance of a great screaming _macaw_,
and of Madame Rossini in a dirty gown and her hair in curl papers,
made such a clamour that he was glad to escape as fast as he
could."[34]
[Footnote 34: Mozley, _Corr._ i. 83.]
The revised Latin play, and music in conjunction, and all played by
the boys themselves, were two striking traditions (not, we trust, to
die out) of the Oratory School in our time, and they were institutions
introduced by Dr. Newman there, and rooted in his affections from
boyhood's associations. "Music was a family taste and pursuit," writes
the late Miss Mozley, "Mr. Newman, the father, encouraged it in his
children. In those early days they could get up performances among
themselves, operatic or simply dramatic."[35] At Ealing School he took
the parts of Davus in the _Andria_, Cyrus in the _Adelphi_, and
Pythias in the _Eunuchus_, as he told us himself; a varied
_repertoire_, _i.e._ the confidential family servant, the young man
about town, and the maid of all work! We see not only plays, and then
music, and lastly the two together, but original composition also,
early engaging his attention. He tells us, "In the year 1812 I think
I wrote a mock drama of some kind.... And at one time I wrote a
dramatic piece in which Augustus comes on. Again, I wrote a burlesque
opera in 1815, composing tunes for the songs."[36]
[Footnote 35: _Ibid._ i. 19.]
[Footnote 36: Mozley, _Corr._ i. 19.]
As to composing, he writes to his mother in March, 1821: "I am glad to
be able to inform you that Signor Giovanni Enrico Neandrini has
finished his first composition. The melody is light and airy, and is
well supported by the harmony."[37] We may add that Mr. Newman, Mr.
Walker (afterwards Canon of Westminster), and Mr. Bowles, played
together at Littlemore instrumental trios written by the Cardinal
himself, and which Father Bowles once told us were "most pleasing."
What has become of them?[38] On our showing the Father in 1869 an
original song to his words "The Haven,"[39] he pointed to the second
chord, exclaiming, "Ah, a diminished seventh!" We had no notion at
that time what perpetrated iniquity that might be, but two years later
he wrote: "Every beginner deals in diminished sevenths. At least, I
did as a boy. I first learnt the chord from the overture to
_Zauberfloete_; and henceforth it figured with powerful effect in my
compositions. You must try to make a melody. Without it you cannot
compose. Perhaps, however, it is that which makes a musical genius."
If you have no ideas, in fact, go in _con amore_, for the chord of the
diminished seventh.
[Footnote 37: _Ibid._ p. 61.]
[Footnote 38: Mrs. J. Mozley to J.H.N., December 1, 1842: "I suppose
you are able to make use of your violin now you are at Littlemore. I
have been practising hard lately, and wish you could come, that I
might turn my practice to good account." (Mozley, _Corr._ ii. 405.)
Father Lockhart, too, refers to Newman's playing at Littlemore
"exquisite sonatas of Beethoven." (_Paternoster Review_, Sept. 1890.)
Father Coffin, afterwards Bishop of Southwark, assisted at the musical
performances.]
[Footnote 39: _Verses on Various Occasions_, p. 86, Edit. 1888.]
On receiving a march, written by a pupil in 1873, he gently indicated
faults while giving encouragement, and wrote in July, "It shows you
are marching in your accomplishments. It is a very promising
beginning.... On reading it, I thought I had found some grammatical
faults, but perhaps more is discovered in the province of discords,
concords, and coincidences of notes than when I was a boy." And in
September of the same year, "Thank you for your new edition of _St.
Magnus_. On what occasion did he march? I know Bishops were warlike in
the middle ages. However, whenever it was, his march is very popular
here, and it went off with great _eclat_." Then he wrote to his
correspondent in April, 1880, who talked about not being "skilled,"
"Why should you not qualify yourself to deserve the title of a
'skilled musician?' 'Skilled' is another word for 'grammatical' or
'scholarlike.'"
When an Oratory organist in the early days was shown a hymn with tune
and accompaniment all composed by Dr. Newman himself (for insertion in
the printed Birmingham Oratory Hymn Book), unaware of the authorship
he at once corrected some of the chords. The Father Superior noticed
this, and asked him why he had made the changes. The organist
proceeded to advert to some consecutive fifths in the harmony. But,
urged the Father, Beethoven and others make use of them. "Ah," came
the answer, "it's all very well for those great men to do as they
like, but that don't make it right for ordinary folk to do as they
like." Dr. Newman therefore learned that musically he was only an
ordinary folk, and he would have been the first to laugh down the
notion that he was anything else; for a modest estimate of himself in
many things was a very marked characteristic with him, and made him
call his beautiful verse "ephemeral effusions" to Badeley, and write
in May, 1835, _apropos_ of a suggested uniform edition of his revised
Latin plays, "I have not that confidence in my own performance to
think I can compete with a classical Jesuit" (_i.e._ Father Jouvency).
In 1828 he had contemplated writing an article on music for the
_London Review_, along with one on poetry. The latter, in the event,
alone saw the day; the former "seems to have remained an idea
only."[40] He is apologetic in the _Idea of a University_, when about
to descant so eloquently upon music: "If I may speak," he says, "of
matters which seem to lie beyond my own province;"[41] but in very
early Oratory days at Edgbaston, he essayed some lectures on music to
some of the community in the practice-room. And at the opening of the
new organ there in August, 1877, he "preached a most beautiful
discourse [taken down at the time], upon the event of the day; and on
music, first as a great natural gift, then as an instrument in the
hands of the Church; its special prominence in the history of St.
Philip and the Oratory; the part played by music in the history of
God's dealings with man from first to last, from the thunders of Mount
Sinai to the trumpets of the Judgment; the mysterious and intimate
connection with the unseen world established by music, as it were the
unknown language of another state. Its quasi-sacramental efficacy,
_e.g._, in driving away the evil spirit in Saul and in bringing upon
Eliseus the spirit of prophecy; the grand pre-eminence of the organ in
that it gave the nearest representation of the voice of God, while the
sound of strings might be taken as more fitted to express the varying
emotions of man's state here on earth."[42]
[Footnote 40: _Essays_, i. Fifth Edit. 1881; Mozley, _Corr._ i. 194.]
[Footnote 41: _Idea_, dis. iv. 80.]
[Footnote 42: _Tablet_, 25 Aug. 1877.]
At Oxford, in his time, he said, there were none of the facilities for
music that now form part of the institutions of the place; there was
little to encourage individual musical talent. At St. Clement's we
only learn, "I had a dispute with my singers in May, which ended in
their leaving the church, and we now sing _en masse_,"[43] and in June
still, "My singers are quite mute."[44] At St. Mary's, Mr. Bennett,
who was killed on his way to Worcester Festival by the upsetting of a
coach,[45] and after him Mr. Elvey, elder brother of Sir George Elvey,
sometime organist at St. George's Chapel, Windsor, were Mr. Newman's
organists. "I shall never forget," writes a hearer, "the charm it was
to hear Elvey play the organ for the hymn at Newman's afternoon
parochial service at St. Mary's on a Sunday. The method was to play
the tune completely through on the organ before the voices took it up,
and the way he did it was simply perfect."
[Footnote 43: Mozley, _Corr._ i. 97.]
[Footnote 44: _Ibid._]
[Footnote 45: "There is a chant of his composing," writes a friend,
"which was reckoned at the time a stroke of genius--quite a new idea.
I have it in a Collection made by his father, who was organist of
Chichester Cathedral," and Bennett's elder brother "was my master at
Chichester in 1842. He used to speak of his brother's genius, and what
a loss he was to music."]
Still the Anglican service, taken as a whole, was scarcely then
calculated to stir artistic fervour, and this listener, so delighted
with Elvey at St. Mary's, went home to his village parish church only
to hear the hymn murdered, or if it were Advent, Christmas, or Easter,
a tradesman shout from the gallery, "We will now sing to the praise
and glory of God a _h_anthem!" when a motet would be sacrificed to
incompetency with every circumstance of barbarity attending the
execution. Mr. Newman in language of appalling force, written a year
after his conversion, has described the Anglican service as "a ritual
dashed upon the ground, trodden on, and broken piecemeal; prayers
clipped, pieced, torn, shuffled about at pleasure, until the meaning
of the composition perished, and offices which had been poetry were no
longer even good prose; antiphons, hymns, benedictions, invocations,
shovelled away; Scripture lessons turned into chapters; heaviness,
feebleness, unwieldiness, where the Catholic rites had had the
lightness and airiness of a spirit; vestments chucked off, lights
quenched, jewels stolen, the pomp and circumstances of worship
annihilated; a dreariness which could be felt, and which seemed the
token of an incipient Socinianism, forcing itself upon the eye, the
ear, the nostrils of the worshipper; a smell of dust and damp, not of
incense; a sound of ministers preaching Catholic prayers, and parish
clerks droning out Catholic canticles; the royal arms for the
crucifix; huge ugly boxes of wood, sacred to preachers, frowning on
the congregation in the place of the mysterious altar; and long
cathedral aisles unused, railed off, like the tombs (as they were) of
what had been and was not; and for orthodoxy, a frigid, unelastic,
inconsistent, dull, helpless dogmatic, which could give no just
account of itself, yet was intolerant of all teaching which contained
a doctrine more or a doctrine less, and resented every attempt to give
it a meaning."[46] The Catholic Church's ritual he found very
different.
[Footnote 46: _Essays_, ii. pp. 443, 444.]
"What are her ordinances and practices," he asks, "but the regulated
expression of keen, or deep, or turbid feeling, and thus a 'cleansing'
as Aristotle would word it, of the sick soul? She is the poet of her
children; full of music to soothe the sad, and control the
wayward--wonderful in story for the imagination of the romantic; rich
in symbol and imagery, so that gentle and delicate feelings, which
will not bear words, may in silence intimate their presence, or
commune with themselves. Her very being is poetry; every psalm, every
petition, every collect, every versicle, the cross, the mitre, the
thurible, is a fulfillment of some dream of childhood, or aspiration
of youth. Such poets as are born under her shadow, she takes into her
service, she sets them to write hymns, or to compose chants, or to
embellish shrines, or to determine ceremonies, or to marshal
processions; nay, she can even make schoolmen of them, as she made St.
Thomas, till logic becomes poetical."[47]
[Footnote 47: _Ibid._ 442, 443.]
And, of course, as the Catholic poet that he now was, he duly set
about to "write hymns" and "to compose chants." Since 1834, it will be
found, his original muse, amid the "encircling gloom," had been
entirely silent, but once emerging into the light of the true faith,
it struck the lyre again with those most lovely notes of
"Candlemas"--
The Angel-lights of Christmas-morn,
Which shot across the sky,
Away they pass at Candlemas,
They sparkle and they die.[48]
[Footnote 48: _Verses on Various Occasions_, p. 279, Edit. 1888. The
well-known tune to this was adapted by him, for the Birmingham Oratory
Congregation, from Reinagle's hymn tunes, brought out by subscription
at Oxford, and to which he subscribed.]
In 1849 appeared his most original and pathetic "Pilgrim Queen," or
No. 38, _Regina Apostolorum_, in the Hymn Book, the sweet music
thereto being his own composition, (or in part adaptation?)
[Music:
There sat a Lady all on the ground,
Rays of the morning circled her round;
Save thee, and hail to thee, gracious and fair,
In the chill twilight what wouldst thou there?]
In 1850 came two more exquisite hymns in honour of the Mother of God,
_i.e._, the "Month of Mary," and the "Queen of Seasons," both headed
_Rosa Mystica_ in the hymn-book. The hymns and tunes of two others, of
No. 51. "Regulars and St. Philip," (an expressive melody),
[Music:
The holy monks conceal'd from men
In midnight choir or studious cell,
In sultry field or wintry glen,
The holy monks, I love them well,
In sultry field or wintry glen,
The holy monks, I love them well.]
and No. 81, "Night" ("The red sun is gone," from the Breviary),
[Music:
The red sun is gone,
Thou light of the heart,
Blessed Three Holy One,
To Thy servants a sun
Everlasting impart.]