CROTCHETS. From Temple Bar. My friend P. would always have it that the rulers of men do not care for music, that Napoleon only knew one air which he hummed as he jumped into his carriage for his last great campaign in Belgium, "Malbrook s'èn va-t-en guerre, miraton, ton ton, ton taine." Others have urged Gambetta as another instance of this deficiency, who, when some delicious music was impending, urged Rossini, of all men, to come into the next room and take a hand at billiards, so little cared he for the crown of all the arts. I have wondered whether there was anything in this charge against the completeness of great men, and whether harmony in a man's character disqualified him for the mastery of his fellow-creatures, or whether after all there is nothing in it and that some rulers of men have liked music and others not, and have only reckoned it as a "measured malice" as Lamb calls it. I have sat through an Italian opera, till, for sheer pain and inexplicable anguish, I have rushed out into the noisiest places of the crowded streets to solace myself with sounds which I was not obliged to follow... I take refuge in the unpretending assemblage of honest common life sounds; and the purgatory of Hogarth's "Enraged Musician" becomes my paradise. Thus Charles Lamb, who employed his time at an oratorio, watching its effect on the faces of the audiences, and contrasting their seriousness with Hogarth's laughing audience. Talfourd in his "Memorials of Lamb" (Why is there not a Charles Lamb society?), remarks that that exquisite hu morist was entirely destitute of what is commonly called a taste for music. A few old tunes ran in his head, now and then the expression of a sentiment, though never of song, touched him with rare and exquisite delight. .. but usually music only confused him, and an opera was to him a maze of sound in which he almost lost his wits. Whatever Lamb thought of music, his friend Coleridge said that good music never tired him. "I feel physically refreshed and strengthened by it, as Milton says he did." He liked Beethoven and Mozart, but loved Purcell, and was, I suppose, a melodist rather than a harmonist. Mr. Fitzpatrick found in the Morning Chronicle of August 16, 1816, a paragraph which he wisely embalmed in that great storehouse of literary facts, Notes and Queries, in reference to Dr. Johnson:— A lady, after performing with the most in the presence of Dr. Johnson, turning to the brilliant execution a sonata on the piano-forte philosopher, took the liberty of asking him if he was fond of music. No, madam," replied the doctor; but of all noises, I think music the least disagreeable. But men may be unable to appreciate the more difficult music, and to sympathize with the symphonies of Beethoven, who yet enjoy a melody. When one of the symphonies, or maybe some abstruser work than these, was being performed on an occasion when Rogers was present, some one said to Rogers that the piece was a very difficult one, to which he replied, "I wish it had been impossible." I think Mr. Haweis somewhere says that music in England is divided between Handel and " Champagne Charley” (a bold antithesis reminding one of the equally strong antithetical images of two Jews spoken of by Coleridge, viz., "Isaiah with Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth!' and Levi of Holywell Street with Old Clothes '"); let us say between the real lover of music and the mere lover of noise, for the masses are not even yet far removed from the Indian's love of tomtoms; and I remember how, in the forties, of Balfe's, "I dreamt that I dwelt in marpeople went mad with that odious song ble halls." But Mr. Haweis's description is a little too sharp a descent. A man may love a great deal of what is beautiful and melodious in music, and detest the music-hall song as well as Balfe's song and yet have no appreciation of complicated har monies. Tom Moore, whose "Irish Melodies" will always keep him alive, said "music is the true interpreter of the religious; nothing written or spoken is equal to it; and Dean Hook is reported to have said that Handel's "Messiah" had turned more even to righteousness than all the sermons that ever were preached. Yet the dean himself knew only two airs, "God save the Queen,' and the other," he observes, "I don't remember." The enjoyment of music is unevenly bestowed, and many people of high culti vation, and even of the highest faculty, have been unable to see in music anything more than a disagreeable noise. Moore mentions in his diary that whilst a quintet was being performed at Lord Bel haven's, Lord Carnarvon confessed to him that he saw no difference between this and any other kind of noise ;" and Forsyth, the Italian traveller, put music and perfumery on a level, whilst the late Lord Holland said that music gave him absolute pain. Lord Chesterfield, writing to his son (April 19, 1749), says: — If you love music, hear it, go to operas, concerts, and pay fiddlers to play to you, but I insist on your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivoious, contemptible light. Few things would mortify me more than to see you bearing a part in a concert with a fiddle under your chin, or a pipe in your mouth. Yet Frederick, Prince of Wales, played on the violoncello, and in these days his Royal Highness of Edinburgh conde scendeth to the fiddle. Lord Eldon, when a trial was going on of Taylor v. Waters, publicly declared that he would not give a farthing to hear Madame Catalani. Lord Holland's dislike of music should not astonish us, for Moore remarked that he had no ear for the music of verse; but that such an eloquent speaker with such modulations of voice as Gambetta had, should not care for music is singular, yet Doro writing two years ago an interesting account of Gambetta for the Pall Mall Gazette, mentions that as soon as music commenced Gambetta went into an adjoining room and played billiards. Charles James Fox had a positive aversion to music, and when Mrs. Fox sang or played he took to his Homer. But Fox was fond of paradox, and expressed a dislike to Milton as well as to music. The man who could not appreciate the "L'Allegro" or who could be blind to the beauties of the hymn of nativity, “Il Penseroso," might be expected to be dull to the music of Beethoven and the melody of Mozart. Fox thought that the music of the ancient world must have been as superior to ours as their sculpture and painting, but he seems to overlook that whilst the marbles and pigments were ready to the hands of Phidias and Praxiteles, musical instruments were comparatively in their infancy. But there was no saying what opinion Fox could not maintain. He thought Russia would be a free nation before England. Yet he lived in an England which was even in his youth, that is a century ago, freer than Russia is to-day. It is extraordinary that a man who loved poetry as Fox did, should positively dislike music. He thought "that men first found out that they had minds by making and tasting poetry." It must have been the substance in poems rather than the form which pleased him, for it seems to be impossible that the same man should be alive to rhythm and dead to music. Grattan, the orator, on the contrary, was wont to say that if he were rich he would have bands of music. "I love music.' Music and horses. "I love to go fast. I would cut the air." Kant speaks of the enervating effects of plaintive and languishing airs. Is there something in this sensuous art which minds of great energy recognize as an enemy to action, and do these refuse to lap themselves in soft Lydian airs? But the true answer to this is that music is not all soft Lydian airs. If the appeal in much music is made mostly to the senses, Beethoven, and all the greater composers, appeal to the mind, and some of these profoundly stir the spirit. It may almost be said that every phase of human thought and feeling has its cause pleaded by music. Charles Kingsley cried, when he heard the strolling fiddlers playing under his windows: “Who knows,” he says, “what sweet thoughts his own sweet music stirs within him, though he eat in pot-houses and sleep in barns." When Kingsley was in California, he told the students of the Berkeley University that he trusted that music would reach the dignity of a science in the university. "Music," he said, "was necessary to the rounding and finishing of the perfect character." Mrs. Houstoun has given us a graphic account of a Saturday evening at Theodore Hook's, where Tom Moore sang: I can see him before my mind's eye now . . a little man, with a head, as it appeared to me, slightly too large for his body. To describe the effect of his soft warbling voice as the words of his own sweet melodies thrilled from his lips would be impossible. It was music spoken (for "voice" in the received acceptation of the word he had, as is well known, but little), and the whispered balm " penetrated with magic power to every heart that possessed the power to sympathize and to feel. 66 The song he chose was that exquisite melody, “I saw from the beach," and when he came to the third verse, beginning: that was too heavy to be borne; and the remaining lines of the well-known stanza: Give me back, give me back, the wild freshness of morning, Her clouds and her tears are worth evening's best light. Napoleon had no ear for music, his voice was unmusical, at least so Miss Balcombe says, who frequently heard him sing at St. Helena. Yet he liked songs, and simple melodies, and would often hum his favorite air "Vive Henri Quatre." Paisiello's music pleased him, "because," he said, "it did not interrupt his thoughts." Frederick the Great played on the flute, possibly more to his own than to his subjects' content. But he really was fond of music, and would have a concert whenever he could after his dinner. Quantz would get up an entertainment for him where the great king would help to perform pieces of his own composition as well as music, which may have given more delight to his audience than his own. Fasch says that of all the performers he had heard, his friend Bach, Benda, and the king, produced the most pathetic adagio. We will set Frederick the Great against Napoleon, and if that is not considered a sufficient reply to those who will have it that rulers of men are despisers of music, we bring Oliver Cromwell as an instance to the contrary. Oliver Cromwell and Frederick the Great were certainly rulers of men, and may fairly be cited on one side against Napoleon on the other. "Oliver Cromwell," says Wood, "loved a good voice and instrumental music," and, says Mr. Leslie Stephen, Wood goes on to tell the story of "a senior student of Christ Church, expelled by the visitors, whom Cromwell restored to his studentship in return for the pleasure which his singing had given him." Bismarck, certainly one of the rulers of men, is said to delight in Beethoven, and generally with the highest order of music. He would listen with zest to Joachim on the violin. In a letter to his wife he speaks of himself as "well but suffering from homesickness, yearning for forest, ocean, desert, you, and the children, all mixed up with sunset and Beethoven." The Duke of Wellington, as is well known, was devoted to music. His father, the Earl of Mornington, was a composer, whose reputation one would imagine was known to the son, but the following anec dote, if true, shows how true it is that no man is a prophet in his own country: | 66 1847 of which the duke was director, the Earl of Mornington's name appears to the glee Here in cool grot." The duke, on seeing the name, said to Sir Henry, "Ah. my worthy father! Could he compose?" "Yes," replied the conductor; "he has composed music which any professor would be proud to claim." "Ah, indeed!" rejoined the duke, "I am glad to hear it.” George III. was exceedingly fond of music. To him as to Saul it came as a comfort in trouble; the one king it soothed in time of madness, and the other got a short suspense by it from his troubles with the priesthood. It is curious that the last piece selected by George III. for the sacred concerts, prior to his final attack of insanity, comprised Handel's famous passages descriptive of madness and blindness. So fond of music was King George III. that he would always urge attendance on the Concerts of Ancient Music upon his courtiers, and the king was particularly pressing on one occasion with Lord North, who cared very little about music, reminding him that his brother always attended the concerts. "Ah," replied Lord North, "but your Majesty forgets that my brother is deaf." When a meeting was held to decide upon a monument to Dean Stanley, Lord Granville observed: I believe the dean had no appreciation whatever of music, and it is perhaps the one art which with most difficulty fits in with the individual life of man. The dean told me he was very little influenced by music, but he had much greater pleasure, from historical association, in listening to a hymn of Luther or of Charles Wesley, than to the most exquisite harmony of Mozart or Beethoven. While this was the case with the Dean of Westminster, Stanley's great friend Thirlwall was very fond of music, especially of the songs of Wales and Italy. Queen Victoria, it is well known, is not only fond of music, but is an excellent pianist with a wonderfully correct ear. The Baroness Bloomfield in her " Reminiscences," relates how on one occasion the queen desired her to sing, and she, "in fear and trembling sang one of Grisi's famous airs, but omitted a shake at the end. The queen's quick ear immediately detected the omission, and smiling, her Majesty said, 'Does not your sister shake, Lady Normanby?' to which Lady Normanby promptly replied, 'Oh! yes, ma'am, she is shaking all over."" Lady Pollock tells us that Macready's ear was so defective that he could In the programme of one of the concerts of never learn to recognize the tune of our Na ... tional Anthem, and was often surprised when he saw the audience rise to it.. He held music and its exponents in great contempt. To the long list of those who despised an art which nature denied them the power to appreciate, must be added Dumas, who gave mortal offence to Wagner by telling him that he considered music the most expensive of noises. We have before spoken of Kant, but his objections were to the die-away music, for he admitted his liking for a military band. Rogers, whatever his dislike might be to music which was merely difficult, keenly appre ciated really good music. No one more thoroughly enjoyed the delicious singing of Tom Moore, or a seat at the Concerts of Ancient Music, though Mr. Hayward tells us he preferred simple melodies to complicated harmonies. Sydney Smith said he would rather hear Moore sing than any person he had ever heard, male or female. Though Kant thought music which was not military calculated to effeminate the mind, and lower the moral fibre, he is probably in a minority in this opinion, and we find Bourdaloue playing on the violin before he ascended the pulpit, that he might work himself up to the requisite enthusiasm. all kinds; very musical also, which is a joy to me at all times, one of the few pleasures neither age nor sadness can make one indiffer ent to. Though having no reference to the subject, yet I cannot resist another passage from this letter, in which Mrs. Norton gives us the following delicious description of herself by a French gentleman. He wished to be highly complimentary to her mental and other characteristics, and declares his worship of her because she is "so spirituous and abandoned." Some men are born lovers of music, and some dislike it. This I take to be true of the rulers of men, as of all other men- some like, some dislike. We have a certain pity for those to whom nature has denied one of her choicest gifts. My old schoolmaster, George Poticary of Blackheath, the master of the school where Disraeli was educated, sometimes used to come into the schoolroom singing Anacreon's "Oh heyew 'Arpeidas," and most things offered him occasion for musical expression. 6. Sabbato pango, Father Prout, the author or "The Reliques," a volume to have by your side at breakfast-time, was no lover of music, though his ear must have been rhyth mically attuned, as instance his beautiful Gray, says Mr. Twining, had "an en-song on "The Shandon Bells," on which thusiastic love of expressive and passion- were inscribed: ate music. Pergolesi was his darling." Yet he did not appreciate Handel, though holding in admiration the chorus in “Jephtha," "No more to Ammon's God and King." One would expect that an ear so tuned to rhythm should be drawn towards music. Not that all poets are lovers of music. Moore in his diary-which by the way should be re-edited and condensed, omitting much repetition, and many too trivial entries, for it contains a perfect mine of anecdote - Moore observes of Wordsworth that the poet in speaking of music, and the difference there is between the poetical and the musical ear, said he (Wordsworth) was totally devoid of the latter, and for a long time could not distinguish one tune from another. In a graceful letter to Abraham Hay: ward, written from Geneva à propos of Lady Emily Peel, sister of Lord Gifford, the gifted and beautiful Mrs. Norton writes: Music as we have it, is, I suppose, quite a modern art. Jews and Greeks used Romans had very little in their soul, and it as an accompaniment to song, and the kept their noise for their triumphs. They discovered little taste for it, unless Nero's fiddling show a bias that way. Country Clergyman of the Eighteenth The Church took music in hand, but its rians, was of no high type. Writing to early music, if we may judge by the GregoZelter, Mendelssohn observes in opposition to Zelter's views apparently of these Gregorians, "I can't help it; it shocks me to hear the most solemn and beautiful This place is delicious, and Lady Emily words chanted along with such unmeaning, charming, reminding me much, in a certain hurdy-gurdy sounds." Something must earnestness and simplicity, of Gifford, her be said for them, for the great Gregory brother, and full of information and ability of | found the Church music "too free and secular in character." Even in our own day we find a tendency to secularize the music employed for "Hymns Ancient and Modern," and I have heard one hymn sung to an air perilously near to "Slap, bang, here we are again!" Southey has well described what Church music should be: There must be no voluntary maggots, no military tattoos, no light and galliardizing notes; nothing that may make the fancy trifling, or raise an improper thought, which would be to profane the service, and to bring the playhouse into the church. Religious harmony must be moving, but noble withal grave, solemn, and seraphic, fit for a martyr to play, and an angel to hear. It should be contrived so as to warm the best blood within us, and to take hold of the finest part of the affections; to transport us with the beauty of holiness, to raise us above the satisfactions of life, and make us ambitious of the glories of heaven. So much for church music, and now back to our subject and old Pepys. Pepys belonged to those who loved melody, but who could not follow concerted music with any pleasure. "Never was so little pleased with a concert of music in my life," he writes, when commanded by royalty to Whitehall to hear an entertainment provided by Monsieur Grebus. pany, I will promise to entertain you with much better music and more agreeable scenes than ever you met with at the opera. Many men there are who enjoy a beautiful melody, and may yet be wholly unable to enter into the dreams of Schumann or into the fancies of Chopin; those who find real delight in the abounding melody of Rossini without being able to follow the mind music of Beethoven, who taste, as fully as the greatest lover of music, those two beautiful songs, "Should he upbraid or "Bid me discourse," and yet be lost and fatigued by what appears to them the entanglements and mazes of Sebastian Bach. The growth of harmony has, oddly enough, been a cause of the decay of melody. The childhood of music, with its sweet simplicity, its notes with many a winding bout Of linked sweetness long drawn out, curls and twiddles" of Purcell, appeals at even with what Twining calls the "old once to every one who has any music in him; but thoroughly to enjoy the harmonies of modern music one requires an education, and some of them one approaches with the same sort of distaste one has for olives till we learn to like them. Twining observes that "the steps by which ancient music got forward into modern, and melody slid by degrees into With my wife to the King's House to harmony, I take to be one of the darkest see the "Virgin Martyr."... That which processes of the dark ages." I suppose pleased me beyond anything in the whole Beethoven's "Fidelio" might be an inworld was the wind-musick when the angel stance where harmony overrides melody, comes down, which is so sweet that it rav- and that grandest of operas, "Don Gioished me.. I remained all night trans-vanni," an instance where melody floats On another occasion he writes: ported, so that I could not believe that ever any musick hath that real command over the soul of a man as this did upon me, and makes me resolve to practise wind musick, and to make my wife do the like. Pope had no knowledge of music, though he had a musical ear and a musical voice; so much so that Southerne called him the "little nightingale." over harmony. This may be fanciful, but I will wind up these remarks - crotchets may be-by asking what art is so plastic as music, so capable of responding intensity to David when with his harp he to every emotion of the soul? How it lent made "the floods lift up their voice," and sang, "The voice of the Lord breaketh the cedar-trees; yea, the Lord breaketh the cedars of Libanus." How it calmed the vexed spirit of Saul in his life-long contest with sacerdotalism; and how "the hidden soul of harmony "inspired blind Milton, and flowed into his "L'Allegro" and "Il Penseroso." Addison preferred the music of the thrush to any other, and invited the Earl of Warwick to a concert of music "which I have found out in a neighboring wood." It begins precisely at six in the evening, and consists of a blackbird, a thrush, a robin redbreast, and a bull-finch. There is a lark that, by way of overture, sings and mounts till she is almost out of hearing, and afterwards falling down leisurely, drops to the ground as soon as she has ended her song. The whole is concluded by a nightingale that has a much better voice than Mrs. Tofts, and something Surely this all points to a valuable qualof the Italian manner in her divisions. If ity missing in a great leader of men if he your lordship will honor me with your com- be incapable of receiving pleasure from |