OLE BULL’S NIAGARA.
(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.