taken by Dwight was not that of the self-seeker; he had no gift for
turning his love for the art of music into financial results. He would not
lower the critical attitude of his journal for the sake of pleasing the
publishers of music; and he would not pretend to a love of those popular
forms of music which he held to be inferior in their character. It may be
he was not a great critic, certainly he had not the technical knowledge of
music which is desirable in its scientific expositor; but his whole soul
was in the art, and he gave it the devotion of his life. His preference
was for the older composers, and he did not yield a ready homage to those
of the newer schools. Of this he speaks in the closing number of his
journal: "Startling as the new composers are, and novel, curious,
brilliant, beautiful at times, they do not inspire us as we have been
inspired before, and do not bring us nearer heaven. We feel no inward call
to the proclaiming of the new gospel. We have tried to do justice to these
works as they have claimed our notice, and have omitted no intelligence of
them which came within the limits of our columns, but we lack motive for
entering their doubtful service; we are not ordained their prophet."
Dwight frankly admitted that the causes for the limited success of his
journal lay in himself, and said, truly, "We have long realized that we
were not made for the competitive, sharp enterprise of modern journalism.
The turn of mind which looks at the ideal rather than the practical, and
the native indolence of temperament which sometimes goes with it, have
made our movements slow. To be the first in the field with an
announcement, or a criticism, or an idea, was no part of our ambition; how
can one recognize competitors, or enter into competition, and at the same
time keep his eye on truth?"
The real value of Dwight's work in his _Journal of Music_ was expressed in
a letter sent him by Richard Grant White, when the closing number
appeared: "I regret very much this close of your valuable editorial
labors. You have done great work; and have that consciousness to be
sure--some comfort, but it should not be all. There is not a musician of
respectability in the country who is not your debtor." In the "Easy Chair"
Curtis gave a worthy account of the labors of his friend, and showed how
deserving he was of a far greater success than he had reached.
"In the midst of the great musical progress of the country," he wrote, "it
is a curious fact that the oldest, ablest, and most independent of musical
journals in the United States has just suspended publication, on the eve
of the completion of its thirtieth year, for want of adequate support. We
mean, of course, _Dwight's Journal of Music_, which ended with an
admirably manly, candid, and sagacious, but inevitably pathetic,
valedictory from its editor--veteran editor, we should say, if the
atmosphere of good music in which he has lived had not been an enchanted
air in which youth is perpetually renewed.... A more delightful
valedictory it would not be easy to find in the swan song of any
journal....
"Mr. Dwight does not say, what the history of music in this country will
show, that to no one more than to him are we indebted for the intelligent
taste which enjoys the best music. His lectures upon the works of the
great Germans at the time of their performance by the Boston Academy of
Music in the old Odeon forty years ago were a kind of manual for the
intelligent audience. They showed that an elaborate orchestral musical
composition might be as serious a work of art, as full of thought and
passion, and, in a word, of genius, as a great poem, and that no form of
art was more spiritually elevating. They lifted the performance of such
music from the category of mere amusement, and asserted for the authors a
dignity like that of the master poets. If to some hearers the exposition
seemed sometimes fanciful and remote, it was only as all criticism of
works of the imagination often seems so. If the spectator sometimes sees
in a picture more than the painter consciously intended, it is because the
higher power may work with unconscious hands, and because beauty cannot be
hidden from the eye made to see it. Beethoven, for instance, had never a
truer lover or a subtler interpreter than Dwight, and Dwight taught the
teachers, and largely shaped the intelligent appreciation of the
unapproached master.
"Those were memorable evenings at the old Odeon. Francis Beaumont did not
more pleasantly recall the things that he and Ben Jonson had seen done at
the Mermaid than an old Brook Farmer remembers the long walks, eight good
miles in and eight miles out, to see the tall, willowy Schmidt swaying
with his violin at the head of the orchestra, to hear the airy ripple of
Auber's 'Zanetta,' the swift passionate storm of Beethoven's 'Egmont,' the
symphonic murmur of woods and waters and summer fields in the limpid
'Pastorale,' or the solemn grandeur of sustained pathetic human feeling in
the 'Fifth Symphony.' The musical revival was all part of the new birth
of the Transcendental epoch, although none would have more promptly
disclaimed any taint of Transcendentalism than the excellent officers of
the Boston Academy of Music. The building itself, the Odeon, was the old
Federal Street Theatre, and had its interesting associations.... To all
there was now added, in the memory of the happy hearers, the association
of the symphony concerts.
"As the last sounds died away, the group of Brook Farmers, who had ventured
from the Arcadia of co-operation into the Gehenna of competition, gathered
up their unsoiled garments and departed. Out of the city, along the bare
Tremont road, through green Roxbury and bowery Jamaica Plain, into the
deeper and lonelier country, they trudged on, chatting and laughing and
singing, sharing the enthusiasm of Dwight, and unconsciously taught by him
that the evening had been greater than they knew. Brook Farm has long
since vanished. The bare Tremont road is bare no longer. Green Roxbury and
Jamaica Plain are almost city rather than suburbs. From the symphony
concerts dates much of the musical taste and cultivation of Boston. The
old Odeon is replaced by the stately Music Hall. The _Journal of Music_,
which sprang from the impulse of those days, now, after a generation, is
suspended; nor need we speculate why musical Boston, which demands the
Passion music of Bach, permits a journal of such character to expire. Amid
all these changes and disappearances two things have steadily
increased--the higher musical taste of the country, and the good name of
the critic whose work has most contributed to direct and elevate it. If,
as he says, it is sad that the little bark which the sympathetic
encouragement of a few has kept afloat so long goes down before reaching
the end of its thirtieth annual voyage, it does not take down with it the
name and fame of its editor, which have secured their place in the history
of music in America."
From the beginning Dwight was intimately connected with the Harvard
Musical Association, which has done so much to promote the interests of
music in Boston. He was its first vice-president and chairman of its board
of directors. He was active in providing its meetings with attractive
musical programmes; about 1844 he secured for it a series of chamber
concerts; he took part in procuring the building of Music Hall, and in
bringing to it the great organ which was for many years an attraction.
From 1855 to 1873 he continuously filled the position of vice-president of
the association; and in the latter year was elected president, which place
he held until his death. Beginning about 1850 he worked steadily for
securing a good musical library, that should be as nearly complete as
possible; and his desire was to make this a special feature in the
activities of the association. In 1867 a room was secured for it; and in
1869 a suite of rooms was rented for the gatherings, both social and
musical, of the members of the association. On his election as president,
Dwight went to live in those rooms, cared for the library, and received
the members and guests of the association whenever they chose to frequent
them. This was in Pemberton Square; but in 1886 there was a removal to
Park Square, and another in 1892 to West Cedar Street. Dwight's connection
of forty or fifty years with the Harvard Musical Association was most
intimate, so that he and the association came to be almost identical in
the minds of Boston people. Whatever it accomplished was through his
initiative or with his active cooperation.
In 1865 Dwight proposed the organization of a Philharmonic Society among
the members of the association, and also that a series of concerts be
undertaken. This suggestion was carried out, and the concerts were for
many years very successful. In time their place was taken by the concerts
of Theodore Thomas, and the Symphony Concerts generously sustained by Mr.
H.L. Higginson; but it must be recognized that Dwight and the Harvard
Musical Association taught the Boston public to appreciate only those
concerts at which the best music was produced.
One special object in the organization of the Harvard Musical Association
was the securing of a place for music in the curriculum of Harvard
College. That was an object very dear to the heart of Dwight, and one
which he brought forward frequently in the pages of his _Journal of
Music_. He maintained that music was not merely for amusement, but that it
is the most human and spiritual of all the arts, and must find its place
in any systematic effort to secure a full-rounded culture. In a few years
Harvard appointed an instructor in music. Mr. John K. Paine was called to
that position in 1862, and was made a professor in 1876.
Dwight gave a most generous welcome to all young musicians of promise as
they came forward. Such men as John C.D. Parker, John K. Paine, Benjamin
J. Lang, George W. Chadwick, Arthur Foote, and William F. Apthorp were
generously aided by him; and the _Journal of Music_ never failed to speak
an appreciative word for them. However Dwight might differ from some of
them, he could recognize their true merits, and did not fail to make them
known to the public. When Mr. Paine, who had been watched by Dwight with
appreciation and approval from the beginning of his musical career, was
made a professor of music in Harvard University, when his important
musical compositions were published, and when his works were given fit
interpretation in Cambridge and elsewhere, these events were welcomed by
him as true indications of the development of music in this country.
For many years John S. Dwight was the musical autocrat of Boston, and what
he approved was accepted as the best which could be obtained. His
knowledge of music was literary rather than technical, appreciative rather
than scientific; but his qualifications were such as to make him an
admirable interpreter of music to the cultivated public of Boston. What a
musical composition ought to mean to an intelligent person he could make
known in language of a fine literary texture, and with a rare spiritual
insight he voiced its poetic and aesthetic values. If the better-trained
musicians of more recent years look upon his musical judgments with
somewhat of disapproval, as not being sufficiently technical, they ought
not to forget that he prepared the way for them as no one else could have
done it, and that he had a fine skill in bringing educated persons to a
just appreciation of what music is as an art. As Mr. William F. Apthorp
has well said, "his musical instincts and perceptions were, in a certain
high respect, of the finest. He was irresistibly drawn towards what is
pure, noble, and beautiful, and felt these things with infinite keenness."
Dwight's last years were spent in furthering the interests of the Harvard
Musical Association, in writing about his beloved art, and in the society
of his many generous friends. He had a talent for friendship, and during
his lifetime he was intimately associated with almost every man and woman
of note in Boston. He was of a quiet, gentlemanly habit of life, took the
world in the way of one who appreciates it and desires to secure from it
the most of good, was warmly attached to the children of his friends and
found the keenest delight in their presence, loved all that is graceful
and beautiful, and devoted himself with unceasing ardor to the art for
which he did so much to secure a just appreciation.
On the occasion of his eightieth birthday his friends and admirers were
brought together in the rooms of the Harvard Musical Association. It was a
red-letter day in his life, and he greatly appreciated it. A few months
later, September 5, 1893, his life came to an end--a life that had been in
no way great, but that had been spent in the loving and faithful service
of his fellow-men. At his funeral, Mrs. Julia Ward Howe, an intimate
friend of many years, read this just and appreciative tribute:
"O Presence reverend and rare,
Art thou from earth withdrawn?
Thou passest as the sunshine flits
To light another dawn.
Surely among the symphonies
That praise the Ever-blest,
Some strophe of surpassing peace
Inviteth thee to rest.
Thine was the treasure of a life
Heart ripened from within,
Whose many lustres perfected
What youth did well begin.
The noble champions of thy day
Were thy companions meet,
In the great harvest of our race,
Bound with its priceless wheat.
Thy voice its silver cadence leaves
In truth's resistless court,
Whereof thy faithful services
Her heralds make report.
Here thou, a watchful sentinel,
Didst guard the gates of song,
That no unworthy note should pass
To do her temple wrong.
Dear are the traces of thy days
Mixed in these walks of ours;
Thy footsteps in our household ways
Are garlanded with flowers.
If we surrender, earth to earth,
The frame that's born to die,
Spirit with spirit doth ascend
To live immortally."
The letters contained in this volume give fullest indication of the
cordial and intimate relations which existed between Dwight and Curtis.
This may be seen more distinctly, perhaps, with the help of a few letters
not there given, including two or three written by Dwight to his friend.
In a letter to Christopher P. Cranch, the preacher, poet, and artist,
written at the time when he was starting his _Journal of Music_ on its
way, Dwight said: "If you see the Howadji, can you not enlist his active
sympathy a little in my cause? A letter now and then from him on music or
on art would be a feather in the cap of my enterprise. It is my last,
desperate (not very confident), grand _coup d'etat_ to try to get a
living; and I call on all good powers to help me launch the ship, or,
rather, little boat."
Curtis seconded his friend's efforts cordially, subscribed for the new
journal, persuaded a number of his friends to subscribe, and wrote
frequently for it. He wrote Dwight this letter of appreciation and advice:
"Your most welcome letter has been received, and its contents have been
submitted to the astute deliberations of the editorial conclave
[_Tribune_]. We are delighted at the prospect--but we do not love the
name. 1st. _Journal of Music_ is too indefinite and commonplace. It will
not be sufficiently distinguished from the _Musical Times_ and the
_Musical World_, being of the same general character. 2d. 'Side-glances'
is suspicious. It 'smells' Transcendentalism, as the French say, and, of
all things, any aspect of a clique is to be avoided.
"That is the negative result of our deliberations; the positive is, that
you should identify your name with the paper, and call it _Dwight's
Musical Journal_, and you might add, _sotto voce_, 'a paper of Art and
Literature.'
"Prepend: I shall be very glad to send you a sketch of our winter doings in
music, especially as I love Steffanone, although she says, 'I smoke, I
chew, I snoof, I drink, I am altogether vicious.' You shall have it Sunday
morning. Give my kindest regards to your wife. I wish she could sing in
your paper."
In a letter written in March, 1882, Dwight expressed to Curtis his
appreciation of the most friendly words which the "Easy Chair" had said of
him and his work as an editor, in making mention of the fact that the
_Journal of Music_ had come to the end of its career:
"My dear George,--With this I send you formal invitation, on the part of
the committee of arrangements, for the celebration of the anniversary of
the foundation, by Dr. Howe, of the Institution for the Blind.... We wish
to have an address--not long, say half an hour--partly historical; and we
all (committee, director, teachers, pupils) have set our hearts upon
having _you_ perform that service. It would delight us all; and I know
that you would find the occasion, the very sight of those sightless
children made so happy, most inspiring.... A more responsive audience than
the blind themselves cannot be found. Dear George, do think seriously of
it, and tell me you will come. Your own wishes in respect to the
arrangements and conditions shall in all respects be consulted. But come,
if you wish to have a good time, a memorable time, and make a good time
for us.
"George, how many times have I been on the point of writing to you since
that delightful week we spent at dear old Tweedy's. To me it was a sweet
renewal of good old days, and I came away feeling that it must have added
some time to my life. Then, too, I wished to thank you for your most
friendly, hearty, and delightful talk about me and my _Journal_ in the
'Easy Chair.' It was so like you, like the dear old George. I tell you, it
made me feel good, as if life wasn't all a failure. And now I am finding
laziness agreeing with me too--too well.... And if I were not so very,
very _old_, if it were not my fate to have been sent into the world so
long before my time, I verily believe I should confess myself over head
and ears in love! At any rate, I love _life_. Yet nearly all my old
friends seem to be dead or dying. When I write you again, I hope to be
able to say that I am well at work again; but how?--on what? Thank God, I
am not a 'critic!'"
IV
The winter of 1843-44 was spent by the Curtis brothers at their father's
house in New York. George studied somewhat, heard much music, and read
extensively. In the spring of 1844 they went to live in Concord for
purposes of study and recreation. They wished to know country life, and
they regarded it as a desirable part of education that they should become
acquainted with practical affairs, and especially with agriculture. That
tendency of the time which established Brook Farm and sent Thoreau into
the Concord woods, worked itself out in this desire of two young men to
find life at first hand. Colonel Higginson has said of the fresh life
started by the transcendental movement: "Under these combined motives I
find that I carefully made out, at one time, a project of going into the
cultivation of peaches, thus securing freedom for study and thought by
moderate labor of the hands. This was in 1843, two years before Thoreau
tried a similar project with beans at Walden Pond; and also before the
time when George and Burrill Curtis undertook to be farmers at Concord. A
like course was actually adopted and successfully pursued through life by
another Harvard man a few years older than myself, the late Marston
Watson, of Plymouth, Massachusetts. Such things were in the air, and even
those who were not swerved by 'the Newness' from their intended pursuits
were often greatly as to the way in which they were undertaken."
A letter written by Burrill Curtis, and printed in part by Mr. Cary, gives
the reasons for this experiment. He says it was "for the better
furtherance of our main and original end--the desire to unite in our own
persons the freedom of a country life with moderate out-door occupation,
and with intellectual cultivation and pursuits. At Concord we first took
up our residence in the family of an elderly farmer, recommended by Mr.
Emerson. We gave up half the day (except in hay-time, when we gave the
whole day) to sharing the farm-work indiscriminately with the
farm-laborers. The rest of the day we devoted to other pursuits, or to
social intercourse or correspondence; and we had a flat-bottomed
rowing-boat built for us, in which we spent very many afternoons on the
pretty little river. For our second season we removed to another farm and
farmer's house, near Mr. Emerson and Walden Pond, where we occupied only a
single room, making our own beds, and living in the very simplest and most
primitive style. A small piece of ground, which we hired of the farmer, we
cultivated for ourselves, raising vegetables only, and selling the
superfluous product, and distributing our time much as before."
It was to the house of Captain Nathan Barrett, one mile north of Concord
village, west of the river, and overlooking it and its meadows, that the
Curtis brothers went. Barrett was born in October, 1797, and was of the
seventh generation of his family in the town. His house on Punkatassett
Hill was pleasantly located, and the farm was large and well cultivated.
Judge John S. Keyes, in the sketch of Barrett's life printed in the second
series of the "Memoirs of Members of the Social Circle in Concord," says
of him: "His house was the resort of many of the connections of himself
and wife, who had there gay and jolly frolics. He was a captain of the
Light Infantry company of the town. He was naturally of an easy, somewhat
indolent disposition, so that he did little of the harder work of the
farm, but he looked after everything, and he became a thoroughly skilled,
practical farmer. His position as the principal man of his section of the
town, and his own good sense, made him the leading person in his
neighborhood. In person he was tall, nearly six feet, of large frame, and
good proportions, weighing two hundred pounds, had a frank, open face, a
high forehead, and a large head. He lived plainly but comfortably; drove a
poor horse but a good carriage to church and visiting; dressed like his
brother farmers about his work, but neatly and in good style when at
leisure. He loved good fruit, raised it in large amounts. Neither witty
nor humorous, he was slow to appreciate a joke, but he had a hearty laugh
when he did comprehend it. He was liberal in his habits, genial in his
temperament, and kindly in his disposition. He was very modest, though
firm and reliable; honest in every fibre, without guile and cunning;
thoroughly simple, and yet clear-headed, cool, and sensible. He was slow
in his mental processes, but no one doubted that he believed all that he
thought and said and did. His apples were not deaconed, his seeds were
sure and reliable, and his milk was never watered. He never made a mistake
in his accounts but once, and then it was against himself. Everybody knew
him and liked him and praised him, and was sorry when he died."
Captain Barrett had a farm of five hundred acres, the largest in the town.
He was a large raiser of sheep and milk. He was a deacon in the First
Parish Church, thoroughly honest, most neighborly and accommodating in his
ways, a loyal citizen, and a true-hearted man. He died in February, 1868,
and was lamented by every resident of the town. A typical farmer was
Captain Barrett, thoroughly human, loving life and all there is good in
it, hard-headed, practical, of sturdy common-sense, faithful to every
obligation as he understands it, of a kindly nature, enjoying the doing of
good in a plain, simple way, caring little for the supernatural, and yet
having a very sturdy faith in the few convictions of a rational religion,
without high spiritual insight, he lived his religion in a very honest
fashion.
It was quite in keeping with the character of Captain Barrett that he put
the Curtis brothers at the task of getting out manure, as almost the first
labor he required of them after their arrival on his farm. His idea was to
"test their metal," to find what stuff they were made of, and to what
extent they were in earnest in their expressed wish to become acquainted
with practical agriculture. He spoke of it with glee to his neighbors,
that he had put such refined gentlemen at that kind of work. It is
needless to say that they bore the test well. They were not domiciled in
the farm-house, but in a small cottage somewhat lower down the hill, yet
in the immediate neighborhood.