Cardinal Newman as a Musician

by Edward Bellasis

I cannot of that music rightly say, Whether I hear or touch or taste the tones, Oh, what a heart-subduing melody![23]

There was just that human element about it, so "deeply pathetic," which in the same way made him prefer Euripides to Sophocles, for all the latter's "sweet composure, melodious fulness, majesty and grace."[24] And here we may add, that as late as January, 1890, apropos of a Greek play for his school, he was as keen and eager as ever about the merits of Euripides, expressed himself as being at a loss to understand the critics invariably preferring Sophocles to the other two, and evidently placed Euripides and Æschylus first and second respectively. A frequently true and natural feeling, whether displayed by the author of the Bacchæ, or by the composer of Fidelio, evidently almost atoned, in his estimation, for every deficiency.

He writes to his sister, October, 1834: "There is a lady here" (at Tunbridge Wells), "who plays most beautifully. I think I never heard such a touch—why, I cannot make out, for she has not long fingers to be brilliant. So you must set yourself to rival her. It would be interesting to examine the causes of expression, which you might easily do. Strength of finger is one thing certainly. This lady is not brilliant in the common sense—that is, smart and rattling—but every note is so full-toned, so perfect, that one requires nothing beyond itself. This in Beethoven's effective passages produces a surprising effect. I accompanied her last night and am to do so again to-night."[25] He wrote in September, 1865, of a certain boy's progress with the violin: "He plays fluently, so to say; by fluency I mean in time, in tune, and with execution. This is stage one; stage two is eloquence, by which I mean grace, delicacy, and expression. To gain this nothing is better than to accompany his sisters. A boy who always is first fiddle is in danger of artistic faults parallel to those which are implied in the metaphorical sense of the words. When he comes back I think he has had enough of the music-master, and I shall try to make him turn his thoughts to a higher school of music than is suitable to a beginner, but I cannot tell whether he is old enough to take to it. I recollect how slow I was as a boy to like the school of music which afterwards so possessed me that I have to come to think Haydn, in spite of his genius, almost vulgar." And just as Blanco White would seem to have thoroughly initiated Mr. Newman into the mysteries of Beethoven, so did Dr. Newman lead on his boys (as they would say) "to swear by" that master. They might start with Corelli, and go on to Romberg, Haydn, and Mozart: their ultimate goal was Beethoven, and round would come the "Father Superior" with ancient copies of the quintet version of the celebrated septet, and arrangements from the symphonies; nor were the first ten quartets, the instrumental trios, the violin sonatas, and the overtures forgotten. The "Dutchman," with his force and depth, his tenderness and sweetness, was the Cardinal's prime favourite. "We were at the concert," Mrs. Newman writes to him at school, "and fascinated with the Dutchman" (the name he had given to Beethoven to tease his music-master because of the van to his name), "and thought of you and your musical party frequently."[26] "They tell me," he said in May, 1876, on occasion of hearing at the Latin Play, the scherzo and finale of the Second Symphony, "that these first two symphonies of Beethoven are not in his style; to me they are Beethoven all over. There is no mistaking that scherzo." And again in October, 1877, after a rendering of the allegretto of the Eighth Symphony, on our observing that it was like the giant at play, he said: "It is curious you should say that. I used to call him the gigantic nightingale. He is like a great bird singing. My sister remembers my using the expression long ago." And although he betrayed a little doubt as to Beethoven's tone being essentially religious, he was unwilling to hear anything said against him.[27] The late Father Caswall, once distracted, while singing High Mass, with Beethoven's Mass in C, half-humorously vented his wrath at recreation against the Credo. Said he: "I think that's a condemnable Credo." "Oh, I rather liked it," was Father Newman's rejoinder. "More dramatic than reverent," had been the remark made to the latter in September, 1882, by the then Warden of Keble, after the conclusion of the Mount of Olives at the Birmingham Festival. The Cardinal said little or nothing at the time, but his affection for Beethoven came out subsequently. "When you come to Beethoven," said he, "I don't say anything about good taste, but he has such wonderful bits here and there." And in the department of cadenza and variation he deemed him without an equal.

Distrusting their talent lest it should run away with them, and they neglect the rubrics, Dr. Newman was sensitive over musicians of the day setting to work upon liturgy. Of sorts of liberty taken we have modern examples in Gounod's Mors et Vita Oratorio, where O felix culpa, &c., is planted in the middle of the Dies Iræ, and in his Messe Solennelle, where Domine, non sum dignus, &c., figures as a solo in the Agnus Dei (a less objectionable case, the treatment being fortunately devotional). Berlioz, too, in his Requiem, introduces before the Tuba mirum the words, Et iterum venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos. And in a passage where he would appear to be depicting Beethoven's power, after alluding to "the marvellous development which musical science has undergone in the last century," Dr. Newman continues: "Doubtless, here, too, the highest genius may be made subservient to religion," but "it is certain that religion must be alive and on the defensive, for if its servant sleep a potent enchantment will steal over it.... If, then, a great master in this mysterious science ... throws himself on his own gifts, trusts its inspirations and absorbs himself in those thoughts which, though they come to him in the way of nature belong to things above nature, it is obvious he will neglect everything else. Rising in his strength he will break through the trammels of words; he will scatter human voices, even the sweetest, to the winds; he will be borne upon nothing else than the fullest flood of sounds which art has enabled him to draw from mechanical contrivances; he will go forth as a giant, as far as ever his instruments can reach, starting from their secret depths fresh and fresh elements of beauty and grandeur as he goes, and pouring them together into still more marvellous and rapturous combinations; and well indeed, and lawfully, while he keeps to that line which is his own; but should he happen to be attracted, as he well may, by the sublimity, so congenial to him, of the Catholic doctrine and ritual, should he engage in sacred themes, should he resolve by means of his art to do honour to the Mass, or the Divine Office—(he cannot have a more pious, a better purpose, and religion will gracefully accept what he gracefully offers; but) is it not certain from the circumstances of the case, that he will be carried on rather to use religion than to minister to it, unless religion is strong on its own ground, and reminds him that if he would do honour to the highest of subjects, he must make himself its scholar, must humbly follow the thoughts given him, and must aim at the glory, not of his own gift, but of the Great Giver."[28] How entirely is this spirit in accord with the Congregation of Rites; with the sentiments, indeed, of every lover of true church-music. He was thus very slow to take (if he ever really took) to new-comers on the field of sacred music. And holding, as he did, that no good work could be adequately adjudged without a thorough knowledge of it, he was disinclined to be introduced to fresh musical names at all, on the bare chance, that might never occur, of what had been a casual acquaintanceship ripening into intimate friendship. He had in early days found time and opportunity to comprehend certain masters, Corelli, Handel, Haydn, Romberg, Mozart, and Beethoven, but Schubert, Schumann, Wagner ("I cannot recollect all the fellows' names"[29]); who were these strangers, intruding somewhat late in the evening upon a dear old family party? Thus, writing of Mendelssohn's chief sacred work in March, 1871, which he had been reluctantly induced to go and listen to, and which he never got to hear again: "I was very much disappointed the one time that I heard the Elijah, not to meet with a beautiful melody from beginning to end. What can be more beautiful than Handel's, Mozart's, and Beethoven's melodies?" Now, of course, there is plenty of melody in the Elijah, though it may be conceded that Mendelssohn's melodious gift is less copious than that of Mozart, but the fact was, Cardinal Newman never got to know the Elijah, doubtless deemed it long, and felt content to feed upon the musical pabulum that he had so long found satisfying. And underlying this particular form of the gravamen against Mendelssohn, we should say that there existed a species of irritation with some of the modern oratorio. Was it not very possibly in his eyes a kind of Protestant rejuvenescence of an eighteenth century Biblical institution, all quietly founded, without acknowledgment, on St. Philip's own Catholic creation,[30] and nowadays bidding fair to do duty at convenient intervals for proper religious worship with large numbers alike of church-goers and of people who never go to church? Better oratorio here, it may be said, than nothing at all, and that may be conceded; but we have an impression that the Cardinal looked jealously at the use of Scripture for general musical performances in concert-halls. He was a little put out, too, by librettists interlarding Holy Writ with their own "copy." Scripture was good, and Gounod, for example, might be good, but both together in literary collaboration were—well, not so good. While allowing that there was something of interest in the history of the latter's Redemption Oratorio, insomuch as when first conceived long ago its composer had entertained thoughts of embracing the religious state, he could with difficulty be induced to go and hear it, at its first production in Birmingham on the last day of August, 1882. Nor could he be got to say anything about it by way of a compliment. "As the work of a man of genius one does not like to criticize it," was what he let fall, and he was rather troubled by its "March to Calvary," which he likened in private to "the bombardment of Alexandria." At the 1876 Festival, Wagner's Supper of the Apostles was to his ear "sound and fury," and Brahms' Triumphlied fared no better in 1882. We happened to be with him at the Friday morning performance, September 1. A certain party came in late, and talked away behind us all through the G minor Symphony of Mozart, whose "exuberant inventiveness"[31] excited our wonder. When the din of the Triumphlied came on, her voice was quite drowned, and the Cardinal whispered: "Brahms is a match for her."[32]

He got to know fairly well Mendelssohn's canzonet quartet and Schumann's pianoforte quintet Op. 44; but we recall no musical works heard by him for the first time in very late life making any particular impression on the Father, with one notable exception; Cherubini's First Requiem in C minor, done at the Festival, August 29, 1879. We were to have gone with him, but a Father who accompanied him wrote to us instead next day: "The Father was quite overcome by it, and that is the fact. He kept on saying, 'beautiful, wonderful,' and such-like exclamations. At the Mors stupebit he was shaking his head in his solemn way, and muttering, 'beautiful, beautiful.' He admired the fugue Quam olim very much, but the part which struck him most by far, and which he spoke of afterwards as we drove home, is the ending of the Agnus Dei—he could not get over it—the lovely note C which keeps recurring as the 'requiem' approaches eternity." When it was done twice in its true home, the church, later, on the 2nd and 13th November, 1886, he said, "It is magnificent music." "That is a beautiful Mass" (adding, with a touch of pathos), "but when you get as old as I am, it comes rather too home." A diary noting the service on All Souls' day, says: "His Eminence was at the throne in his purple robes. I was in the gallery at the end of the nave, and the dim-lit sanctuary (with the Cardinal's zucchetto the only bit of bright colour in the gloom), the sublime music, all had a most impressive effect." On November 13, 1885, he heard in the church and for the first time, the Florentine's Second Requiem in D minor, for male voices; and thought it beautiful and devotional, and in no way lacking in effect through the absence of soprani and contralti, which he had not missed. He was most struck with the piano passage in canon beginning with the words Solvet sæclum. On September 1, 1882, he heard at the Festival the same composer's Mass in C, and characterized as "beautiful" the fugue at the end of the Gloria, the part in the Offertory where the chorus enters in support of the soprano solo, and the conclusion of the Dona. It came as a relief to him after Brahms, who was not understood at a first hearing, and this inability in general to grasp good music at once is exhibited in his Italian correspondence. "This last week," he writes from Rome in April, 1833, "we have heard the celebrated Miserere, or rather the two Misereres, for there are two compositions by Allegri and Boii [it should be Bai, and a third is now added, composed by Father Baini] so like each other that the performers themselves can scarcely tell the difference between them. One is performed on the Thursday and the other on Good Friday. The voices are certainly very surprising; there is no instrument to support them, but they have the art of continuing their notes so long and equally that the effect is as if an organ were playing, or rather an organ of violin strings, for the notes are clearer, more subtle and piercing, and more impassioned (so to say) than those of an organ. The music itself is doubtless very fine, as everyone says, but I found myself unable to understand all parts of it. Here and there it was extremely fine, but it is impossible to understand such a composition on once or twice hearing. In its style it is more like Corelli's music than any other I know (though very different too). And this is not wonderful, as Corelli was Master of the Pope's Chapel, and so educated in the school of Allegri, Palestrina, and the rest. These are the only services we have been to during the week."[33]

For good operatic music Cardinal Newman had, we believe, more of a liking than for the more modern oratorio. Rossini, as a religious composer, was, we fear, in his bad books, yet when the choice had to be made at the 1879 Festival as to what performance he would attend, he at first said, "I shall go once, and I choose Mosé in Egitto." He was, he continued, fond of operatic music, and heard very little of it. "However," he added to two of the Fathers, "there's no reason why you shouldn't go to all." Perhaps there was one reason against that course; it would be expensive. There is an amusing notice of Rossini in the Anglican Letters of Mr. Newman. "Bowden tells me," he wrote in March, 1824, "that Sola, his sister's music-master, brought Rossini to dine in Grosvenor Place not long since; and that as far as they could judge (for he does not speak English) he is as unassuming and obliging a man as ever breathed. He seemed highly pleased with everything, and anxious to make himself agreeable. Labouring, indeed, under a severe cold, he did not sing, but accompanied two or three of his own songs in the most brilliant manner.... As he came in a private, not a professional, way, Bowden called on him, and found him surrounded, in a low, dark room, by about eight or nine Italians, all talking as fast as possible, who, with the assistance of a great screaming macaw, and of Madame Rossini in a dirty gown and her hair in curl papers, made such a clamour that he was glad to escape as fast as he could."[34]

The revised Latin play, and music in conjunction, and all played by the boys themselves, were two striking traditions (not, we trust, to die out) of the Oratory School in our time, and they were institutions introduced by Dr. Newman there, and rooted in his affections from boyhood's associations. "Music was a family taste and pursuit," writes the late Miss Mozley, "Mr. Newman, the father, encouraged it in his children. In those early days they could get up performances among themselves, operatic or simply dramatic."[35] At Ealing School he took the parts of Davus in the Andria, Cyrus in the Adelphi, and Pythias in the Eunuchus, as he told us himself; a varied répertoire, i.e. the confidential family servant, the young man about town, and the maid of all work! We see not only plays, and then music, and lastly the two together, but original composition also, early engaging his attention. He tells us, "In the year 1812 I think I wrote a mock drama of some kind.... And at one time I wrote a dramatic piece in which Augustus comes on. Again, I wrote a burlesque opera in 1815, composing tunes for the songs."[36]

As to composing, he writes to his mother in March, 1821: "I am glad to be able to inform you that Signor Giovanni Enrico Neandrini has finished his first composition. The melody is light and airy, and is well supported by the harmony."[37] We may add that Mr. Newman, Mr. Walker (afterwards Canon of Westminster), and Mr. Bowles, played together at Littlemore instrumental trios written by the Cardinal himself, and which Father Bowles once told us were "most pleasing." What has become of them?[38] On our showing the Father in 1869 an original song to his words "The Haven,"[39] he pointed to the second chord, exclaiming, "Ah, a diminished seventh!" We had no notion at that time what perpetrated iniquity that might be, but two years later he wrote: "Every beginner deals in diminished sevenths. At least, I did as a boy. I first learnt the chord from the overture to Zauberflöte; and henceforth it figured with powerful effect in my compositions. You must try to make a melody. Without it you cannot compose. Perhaps, however, it is that which makes a musical genius." If you have no ideas, in fact, go in con amore, for the chord of the diminished seventh.

On receiving a march, written by a pupil in 1873, he gently indicated faults while giving encouragement, and wrote in July, "It shows you are marching in your accomplishments. It is a very promising beginning.... On reading it, I thought I had found some grammatical faults, but perhaps more is discovered in the province of discords, concords, and coincidences of notes than when I was a boy." And in September of the same year, "Thank you for your new edition of St. Magnus. On what occasion did he march? I know Bishops were warlike in the middle ages. However, whenever it was, his march is very popular here, and it went off with great éclat." Then he wrote to his correspondent in April, 1880, who talked about not being "skilled," "Why should you not qualify yourself to deserve the title of a 'skilled musician?' 'Skilled' is another word for 'grammatical' or 'scholarlike.'"

When an Oratory organist in the early days was shown a hymn with tune and accompaniment all composed by Dr. Newman himself (for insertion in the printed Birmingham Oratory Hymn Book), unaware of the authorship he at once corrected some of the chords. The Father Superior noticed this, and asked him why he had made the changes. The organist proceeded to advert to some consecutive fifths in the harmony. But, urged the Father, Beethoven and others make use of them. "Ah," came the answer, "it's all very well for those great men to do as they like, but that don't make it right for ordinary folk to do as they like." Dr. Newman therefore learned that musically he was only an ordinary folk, and he would have been the first to laugh down the notion that he was anything else; for a modest estimate of himself in many things was a very marked characteristic with him, and made him call his beautiful verse "ephemeral effusions" to Badeley, and write in May, 1835, apropos of a suggested uniform edition of his revised Latin plays, "I have not that confidence in my own performance to think I can compete with a classical Jesuit" (i.e. Father Jouvency). In 1828 he had contemplated writing an article on music for the London Review, along with one on poetry. The latter, in the event, alone saw the day; the former "seems to have remained an idea only."[40] He is apologetic in the Idea of a University, when about to descant so eloquently upon music: "If I may speak," he says, "of matters which seem to lie beyond my own province;"[41] but in very early Oratory days at Edgbaston, he essayed some lectures on music to some of the community in the practice-room. And at the opening of the new organ there in August, 1877, he "preached a most beautiful discourse [taken down at the time], upon the event of the day; and on music, first as a great natural gift, then as an instrument in the hands of the Church; its special prominence in the history of St. Philip and the Oratory; the part played by music in the history of God's dealings with man from first to last, from the thunders of Mount Sinai to the trumpets of the Judgment; the mysterious and intimate connection with the unseen world established by music, as it were the unknown language of another state. Its quasi-sacramental efficacy, e.g., in driving away the evil spirit in Saul and in bringing upon Eliseus the spirit of prophecy; the grand pre-eminence of the organ in that it gave the nearest representation of the voice of God, while the sound of strings might be taken as more fitted to express the varying emotions of man's state here on earth."[42]