A royal personage being a lover of music possesses many advantages for attaining proficiency in this art, which are rarely at the command of a poor musician, however talented he may be. The young prince has from the beginning the best instruction, excellent instruments, and every possible assistance in making progress. The most distinguished musicians consider it an honour to play to him whenever he is disposed to listen to them. If it affords him pleasure to be a composer, whatever he produces, even if it is a large orchestral work, he can directly have performed; and he is thus enabled to ascertain at once whether it sounds exactly as he contemplated in composing it, and whether the peculiar instrumental effects in certain bars, which he had aimed at producing, really answer his expectation. Repeated rehearsals, and revisions of the score, with the ready assistance of the most experienced professional musicians in his service, enable him to improve his composition as long as he likes. And should he be inclined to join the musicians with his instrument in a performance,—to become for a little while, so to say, one of them,—he may be sure that they will do everything to help him through by covering his mistakes and giving him, if possible, the opportunity of displaying his skill.
What can be more delightful for an influential amateur than to join with first-rate professional players in practising the classical Quartets of Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven! All this, and more, is at the command of the royal musician; and the poor striving disciple of the art may have some excuse for envying him on this account.
However, if the poor disciple is a true artist, he will also duly appreciate the disadvantage under which the royal musician labours for attaining proficiency in the art. He will see how necessary it is for the sake of progress to know exactly the truth about one's own powers and requirements, and that in this respect even a musical beggar enjoys an advantage above the King,—or rather, he has it, whether he enjoys it or not; a candid opinion as to his musical accomplishments is gratuitously offered him, and it is often a just one. If his music is bad, he, instead of being deceived with fine words of flattery, will simply be told: "Leave off! Begone!" If it pleases, he will be rewarded. But the royal musician gets praise, however his music may be; there is no distinction made between good and bad.
No wonder, therefore, that history records but few good royal musicians, although many are known to have occupied themselves with music almost like professional musicians. As an example of an estimable one may be mentioned King David "the sweet singer of Israel," who, as a youth, soothed the evil spirit of Saul by playing upon his kinnor; and who later, as King, admonished his people in the psalms: "Praise ye the Lord! Praise him with the sound of the trumpet; praise him with the psaltery and harp. Praise him with the timbrel and dance: praise him with stringed instruments and organs. Praise him upon the loud cymbals. Praise him upon the high-sounding cymbals."
And in his religious fervour he joined his royal band in a procession conveying the ark. On this occasion "David danced before the Lord with all his might." The band consisted of vocal and instrumental performers. "And David was clothed with a robe of fine linen, and all the Levites that bare the ark, and the singers, and Chenaniah, the master of the song with the singers: David also had upon him an ephod of linen. Thus all Israel brought up the ark of the covenant of the Lord with shouting and with sound of the cornet, and with trumpets, and with cymbals, making a noise with psalteries and harps. And it came to pass, as the ark of the covenant of the Lord came to the city of David, that Michal, the daughter of Saul, looking out at a window, saw King David dancing and playing: and she despised him in her heart." (II. Sam. chap. vi., I. Chron. chap. xv.) Michal, Saul's daughter, was David's wife; nevertheless, after the ceremony she upbraided him: "How glorious was the King of Israel to-day, who uncovered himself in the eyes of the handmaids, as one of the vain fellows who shamelessly uncovereth himself!" If the musicians exhibited some vanity, they might, at any rate, be more easily excused than many of the present day; for it was an extraordinary honour for them to perform with a King who was certainly a noble musician, and of whose companionship they could have been proud even if he had not been a King. Moreover, he was, as is recorded in the Bible, not only "cunning in playing," but also "a mighty and valiant man, and a man of war, and prudent in matters, and a comely person, and the Lord was with him." There are not many royal musicians of whom thus much could be said without flattery.
The German common saying—
Wo man singt da lass dich ruhig nieder,
Böse Menschen haben keine Lieder;
is as untenable as Shakespeare's assertion—
The man that has no music in himself,
Nor is not mov'd with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils;