REVIEW OF NEW MUSIC.
EIGHT SONGS, by BARRY CORNWALL and the CHEVALIER NEUKOMM. (Cramer, Addison, and Beale.)
OUR pages during the last two years will attest how often and how successfully the poet who writes under the above name, and the musician who composes in his own, have combined their talents: ‘The Sea,’ and ‘David’s Lament for Absalom,’ are sufficient, had those authors produced nothing else in union, to float them together down the stream of time, and will assist in proving that the age which certainly brought forth a good deal of trash,—as all ages have done, and will continue to do,—also gave birth to what is, without other evidence, quite sufficient to rescue it from a sweeping charge of false taste and inability. Those canzonets, difficult as they are to ordinary amateurs, are now in almost every house where a musical instrument is to be found, and are sung, especially the first, by all who are blessed with a voice, and by some who possess scarcely any at all.
Barry Cornwall, the pseudonyme adopted by one of the most distinguished of the really good lyric poets of the day, last year published a delightful little volume of ‘English Songs, and other small Poems,’ a fact so well known in the world of literature and taste, that we should not have repeated it here, but for the purpose of showing the connexion of that work with the present. The Chevalier Neukomm had set some of the songs before they appeared in print; and the eight now before us are among the hundred and seventy, or thereabouts, contained in the volume mentioned.
Great success naturally leads to further efforts, and the applause which attended the two songs above-named, has tempted the composer to write perhaps rather too fast. The most fertile fancy, like the richest soil, must be allowed time to recruit: the mind that creates needs fallows as much as the earth which produces. A want of a little of this restorative appears in the songs now under notice. There is no absence of exertion,—certainly no want of whatever science or labour can yield; but we do not meet with those evidences of the inventive faculty that are so strong in the compositions to which we have alluded. We know full well that he who always expects works of equal value from the same pen must infallibly be disappointed, and slightly touch upon a comparison only in order to make our opinion more accurately understood by our readers.
The first of the set, ‘The happy hours,’ is in two movements; the last partly in three-eight time, and partly in six-eight, is rather common. At page 3, however, is a redeeming modulation from C to A
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The second, ‘Hide me, O twilight air!’ is a clever composition, the concluding page exceedingly effective, and the poet’s general meaning is well expressed; but in the setting of particular words, the foreigner, the stranger to the niceties of our accent, is very visible. The style of the early part of the seventeenth century is here so ably imitated by the poet, that we must beg leave to lay his verses before our readers:—
SONG FOR TWILIGHT.
Hide me, O twilight air!
Hide me from thought, from care,
From all things, foul or fair,
Until to-morrow!
To-night I strive no more;
No more my soul shall soar;
Come, Sleep, and shut the door
’Gainst Pain and Sorrow!
If I must see through dreams,
Be mine Elysian gleams,
Be mine by morning streams
To watch and wander!
So may my spirit cast
(Serpent-like) off the past,
And my free soul at last
Have leave to ponder!
And should’st thou ’scape controul,
Ponder on love, sweet soul,
On joy,—the end—the goal
Of all endeavour!
But if earth’s pains will rise
(As damps will seek the skies)
Then, Night, seal thou mine eyes
In sleep for ever!
The ‘Serenade’ is too long and laboured for an evensong in the open air; and the sameness of the accompaniment, running on in one unvarying stream through three verses, becomes at last rather fatiguing.
The fourth, ‘The Night,’ opens with a sweet and gentle melody; the changes of time, however, are too frequent for a song, though, as well as the declamatory parts, they would be proper enough in a cantata. The whole of this appears the result of study. In truth the words are difficult to set.
No. 5, ‘The Evening Star,’ presents no feature at all remarkable. The accentuation of this is free from all reproach.
The sixth, ‘My Sword,’ is a fine, spirited, martial air, the accompaniments in excellent keeping, and the whole characteristic and exciting.
‘The Exile,’ in C minor, the seventh of the set, is deeply pathetic: a well-imagined andantino in F comes in beautifully, expressing a gleam of future hope; but this is checked again by reflection; and the last part, ‘Farewell to old England’ is affectingly uttered in the mournful tones of the minor key.
The eighth, ‘Oh, pleasant is the fisher’s life,’ does not conclude the volume in a very brilliant manner; the phrases and cadences offer nothing new, and no part of the song is likely to make any impression on the hearer, whether he belong to the learned or unlearned class of auditors.
This volume is much increased in value by portraits of the poet and composer, drawn by Wivell and engraved by Holt. They are admirable likenesses, and executed in a superior manner. How far preferable are such additions to a work, to those fancy things miscalled embellishments, which we rejoice to find are now pretty generally discarded in musical publications. Portraits, if at all faithful resemblances, are always interesting, and gratify a very natural curiosity; while imaginary scenes and emblematical designs are most commonly destitute of any charm, being too often mean in conception and faulty in execution.