Abt Vogler, A Toccata of Galuppi’s, Master Hughes of Saxe-Gotha, and Charles Avison, are all concerned with music as the principal subject. Each has minor references to Italy, and in the first two, the musician is an Italian one. Abt Vogler is probably the finest poem on music in the English language. It contains a perfect idealized expression of the aims of the musician and a thorough knowledge of his technique. Like A Toccata of Galuppi’s it is based on extemporization and the transitory quality of music; but it is unlike that poem in emphasizing the permanence of good. Abt Vogler voices the musician’s own musings on the stately but vanishing castle he has built. A Toccata probably refers to an improvization on the harpsichord, a frequent occurrence at the time concerned, and presents the poet as speaker, questioning the musician concerning the effect of his performance on the audience. Very different psychological states produced these two poems. Abt Vogler was written in a mood of reverent optimism; A Toccata, in a mood of half careless, half earnest pessimism. Where A Toccata closes with “dust and ashes” the other poem passes on to the “ineffable name,” and a belief in the future existence of “All we have willed, or hoped, or dreamed, of good.” The one closes hope in the grave; the other poem opens heaven. The transitory quality of human life in A Toccata of Galuppi’s accords with the music being played, and many terms, such as “lesser thirds,” “sixths diminished,” “suspensions,” “solutions,” “commiserating sevenths,” express the different phases of the listener’s mood.
No attempt will be made in this paper to consider Browning’s musical terms; for with the exception of “toccata”, meaning a light touch piece, an overture, they seem mostly non-Italianate. Abt Vogler, A Toccata of Galuppi’s, Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha, and Parleyings with Charles Avison, all contain a considerable number of musical terms; but beside the fact that they are non-Italianate, those in at least part of the poems have already been discussed somewhat extensively in various articles among the Browning Society papers.
IV. Lack of modern italian references.
Probably there are several reasons for this neglect of Italian opera composers. Few poets, least of all Browning, are prone to bestow unmitigated praise on contemporaries. In the poems of Browning there are few extended references to any artists who were living at the time. He particularly loved to choose an obscure Galuppi, or an Andrea del Sarto, instead of a Michael Angelo or a Raphael, as a personality about whom to weave a poem. A more potent reason for the indifference to modern Italian music, however, lies in the diverging values of the Italian school and that of northern Europe. A musician who had been trained in the German music of London concerts could hardly be expected to welcome the operas of Verdi and Rossini with anything approaching ecstatic admiration. At the most he might venture a half-conciliatory remark, such as Mrs. Browning’s concerning Il Trovatore.
V. Conformity to facts.
VI. Source of browning’s knowledge.
CHAPTER IV
Italian Poetry in the Poems of Browning.