PIANO-FORTE.
- IMPROMPTU MUSICALE sur la Ronde Bacchique des Démons de la Tentation, composée par F. KALKBRENNER. Op. 114. (Goulding and D’Almaine.)
- L’Hermite, 3me. RONDO, sur des thêmes de La Tentation, (Musique de HALEVY) arrangée par ADOLPHE ADAM. (Chappell.)
WHETHER it is that the state of the country influences the publication of music of this class, or that the extravagancies and inanities with which we have so long been deluged have at length produced the effect which was to be expected, we will leave our readers to determine; certain it is that very few compositions for the piano-forte have appeared this spring—a season in which they usually are so abundant that we have found it difficult to keep pace with them, and indeed have generally been deeply in arrear with composers of all descriptions. Our belief is, that music requiring nothing but mechanical powers of execution, in which neither taste nor invention have any share, has had its day—a very long one; but people are growing more rational, common sense is returning, and with it will be again opened to us those rich stores of the great masters, the access to which has been almost choked up by the rubbish that has issued in cart-loads from the shops, and been recommended by nine masters in every ten throughout the country. Haydn and Mozart will again be met with in the drawing-room; Beethoven’s best and most reasonable works will once more be placed before the fashionable amateur; Dussek’s, Clementi’s and Steibelt’s works, with the early ones of Cramer, will be restored; and even Handel and Corelli must speedily be acknowledged to possess as much claim to notice as Czerny, Pixis, and id genus omne.
The two rondos before us are from an opera very popular in Paris; indeed we are indebted to the theatre for all our most modern piano-forte music. The first air—if air it may be called, which, though it has rhythm, possesses little melody—is simple enough, being nearly all confined to the following notes:—
Mr. Kalkbrenner has of course very much extended it, by passages, one or two of which bring back good old harmony to our recollection, by others not inappropriate, and none difficult; but altogether this has not many pleasing qualities to recommend it.
No. 2 is an agreeable though not a very uncommon air. M. Adam has enlarged it in a familiar manner certainly, for while about his task, if a task it proved, he was not able to call up a single new thought. And let us caution him against such left-hand passages as
they are intolerable, and send one back to the horn-book of music. They are, it is true, to be met with now and then in some few of the old and excellent masters; but in reviving the works of these—which will soon be set about—all such twaddle must be carefully expunged.
- INTRODUCTION and RONDINO in the air, ‘Under the Walnut-tree,’ composed by T. A. RAWLINGS. (Chappell.)
- MILITARY DIVERTIMENTO, in which is introduced a favourite Spanish Air, composed by JAMES CALKIN. (Chappell.)
It will be supposed, from the wording of the title-page of No. 1, that the air is the composition of Mr. Rawlings, whereas it is the very melody that lately produced the controversy between the author and Mr. Gödbe, and to which our pages gave publicity. The best part of the air, in fact, is Stephen Storace’s, though it is very possible that Mr. George Linley, who claims it, had it floating in his memory, without being aware that it had any rightful owner. Mr. Rawlings has increased its dimensions by some exceedingly commonplace descant, and the guilt of employing the very base which we have above reprobated he shares in common with M. Adolphe Adam. The whole is easy and inoffensive, with the exception we mention.
To criticise No. 2 would be to break a butterfly on a wheel. A butterfly!—most of the papilio tribe are beautiful, a quality not at all perceptible in this one-part-milk-and-nine parts-water production, craving the reader’s pardon for so long a compound; which epithet, however, overrates the strength of the composition under notice.
- DIVERTIMENTO from BELLINI’s Pirata, arranged by W. Etherington. (Metzler.)
- RONDOLETTO, composed by T. M. MUDIE. (Cramer and Co.)
IN the first of these, three of the less commonly known airs in Il Pirata are woven together with some skill. The first pages are the best, though Mr. Etherington ought to have been aware that such reiterated triplets of the same notes as are introduced at page 2 are ill adapted to keyed instruments. Is this, we beg leave to ask, one of the works which the publisher sells to the profession, and to country traders, at a quarter of the marked price?
No. 2 is a mere bagatelle, but it is a pretty trifle, and a trait or two of originality may be traced amidst its unaffected simplicity.