(AN HOUR BEFORE THE PERFORMANCE.)
Saddle, as, of course, we are, under any very striking event, we find
ourselves bestridden, now and then, with a much wider occupancy than the
plumb-line of a newspaper column. Ole Bull possesses us over our
tea-table; he will possess us over our supper-table—his performance of
Niagara equi-distant between the two. We must think of him and his
violin for this coming hour. Let us take pen and ink into our
confidence.
The “origin of the harp” has been satisfactorily recorded. We shall not
pretend to put forward a credible story of the _origin of the violin_;
but we wish to name a circumstance in natural history. The house-cricket
that chirps upon our hearth, is well known as belonging to the genus
Pneumora. Its insect size consists almost entirely of a pellucid
abdomen, crossed with a number of transverse ridges. This, when
inflated, resembles a bladder, and upon its tightened ridges the insect
plays like a fiddler, by drawing its thin legs over them. The cricket
is, in fact, a _living violin_; and as a fiddler is “scarce himself”
without his violin, we may call the cricket a stray portion of a
fiddler.
Ole Bull “is himself” with his violin before him—but without it, the
commonest eye must remark that he is of the invariable build of the
restless searchers after something lost—the build of enthusiasts—that
is to say, chest enormous, and _stomach, if anything, rather wanting_!
The great musician of Scripture, it will be remembered, expressed his
mere mental affliction by calling out “My bowels! my bowels!” and, after
various experiments on twisted silk, smeared with the white of eggs, and
on single threads of the silk-worm, passed through heated oil, the
animal fibre of _cat-gut_ has proved to be the only string that answers
to the want of the musician. Without trying to reduce these natural
phenomena to a theory (except by suggesting that Ole Bull may very
properly take the cricket as an emblem of his instinctive pursuit), we
must yield to an ominous foreboding for this evening. The objection to
cat-gut as a musical string is its _sensibility to moisture_: and in a
damp atmosphere it is next to impossible to keep it in tune. The string
comes honestly enough by its sensitiveness (as any one will allow who
has seen a cat cross a street after a shower)—but, if _the_ cat of Ole
Bull’s violin had the least particle of imagination _in_ her, can what
is left of her be expected to discourse lovingly of her natural
antipathy—a _water_-fall?
But—before we draw on our gloves to go over to Palmo’s—a serious word
as what is to be attempted to-night.
Ole Bull is a great creature. He is fitted, if ever mortal man was, to
represent the attendant spirit in Milton, who
“Well knew to still the wild woods when they roared
And hush the moaning winds;”
but it seems to us that, without a printed programme, showing what he
intends to express _besides_ the mere sound of waters he is trusting far
too rashly to the comprehension of his audience and their power of
musical interpretation. He is to tell a story by music! Will it be
understood?
We remember being very much astonished, a year or two ago, at finding
ourself able to read the thoughts of a lady of this city, as she
expressed them in an admirable improvisation upon the piano. The delight
we experienced in this surprise induced us to look into the extent to
which musical _meaning_ had been perfected in Europe. We found it
recorded that a Mons. Sudre, a violinist of Paris, had once brought the
expression of his instrument to so nice a point that he “could convey
information to a stranger in another room,” and it is added that, upon
the evidence thus given of the capability of music, it was proposed to
the French government to educate military bands _in the expression of
orders and heroic encouragements in battle_! Hayden is criticised by a
writer on music as having failed in attempting (in his great composition
“The Seasons”) to express “the dawn of day,” “the husbandman’s
satisfaction,” “the rustling of leaves,” “the running of a brook,” “the
coming on of winter,” “thick fogs,” etc., etc. The same writer laughs at
a commentator on Mozart, who, by a “second violin quartette in D minor,”
imagines himself informed how a loving female felt on being abandoned,
and thought the music fully expressed that it was Dido! Beethoven
undertook to convey distinct pictures in his famous Pastoral Symphony,
but it was thought at the time that no one would have distinguished
between his musical sensations on visiting the country and his musical
sensations while sitting beside a river—unless previously told what was
coming!
Still, Ole Bull is of a primary order of genius, and he is not to wait
upon precedent. He has come to our country, an inspired wanderer from a
far away shore, and our greatest scenic feature has called on him for an
expression of its wonders in music. He may be inspired, however, and we,
who listen, still be disappointed. He may not have felt Niagara as we
did. He may have been subdued where a meaner spirit would be aroused—as
“Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.”
(Seven o’clock, and time to go.)
* * * * * * *
(after the performance.)
We believe that we have heard a transfusion into music—not of
“Niagara,” which the audience seemed bona-fide to expect, but—of the
_pulses of the human heart AT Niagara_. We had a prophetic boding of the
result of calling the piece vaguely “Niagara”—the listener furnished
with no “argument,” as a guide through the wilderness of “treatment” to
which the subject was open. This mistake allowed, however, it must be
said that Ole Bull has, genius-like, refused to misinterpret the voice
within him—refused to play the charlatan, and “bring the house
down”—as he _might well have done by any kind of “uttermost” from the
drums and trumpets of the orchestra._
The emotion at Niagara is all but mute. It is a “small, still voice”
that replies within us to the thunder of waters. The musical mission of
the Norwegian was to represent the insensate element _as it was to
him_—to a human soul, stirred in its seldom-reached depths by the call
of power. It was the _answer_ to Niagara that he endeavored to render in
music—not the _call_! We defer attempting to _read_ further, or
rightly, this musical composition till we have heard it again. It was
received by a crowded audience, in breathless silence, but with no
applause.