"Mr. Handel is, in music, what his own Dryden was in poetry; nervous, exalted, and harmonious; but voluminous, and, consequently, not always correct. Their abilities equal to every thing; their execution frequently inferior. Born with genius capable of soaring the boldest flights; they have sometimes, to suit the vitiated taste of the age they lived in, descended to the lowest. Yet, as both their excellencies are infinitely more numerous than their deficiencies, so both their characters will devolve to latest posterity, not as models of perfection, yet glorious examples of those amazing powers that actuate the human soul."
On the whole, Mr. Avison's "little book" on Musical Expression is eminently sensible as to the matter and very agreeable in style. He hits off well, for example, the difference between "musical expression" and imitation.
"As dissonances and shocking sounds cannot be called Musical Expression, so neither do I think, can mere imitation of several other things be entitled to this name, which, however, among the generality of mankind hath often obtained it. Thus, the gradual rising[428] or falling of the notes in a long succession is often used to denote ascent or descent; broken intervals, to denote an interrupted motion; a number of quick divisions, to describe swiftness or flying; sounds resembling laughter, to describe laughter; with a number of other contrivances of a parallel kind, which it is needless here to mention. Now all these I should chuse to style imitation, rather than expression; because it seems to me, that their tendency is rather to fix the hearer's attention on the similitude between the sounds and the things which they describe, and thereby to excite a reflex act of the understanding, than to affect the heart and raise the passions of the soul.
"This distinction seems more worthy our notice at present, because some very eminent composers have attached themselves chiefly to the method here mentioned; and seem to think they have exhausted all the depths of expression, by a dextrous imitation of the meaning of a few particular words, that occur in the hymns or songs which they set to music. Thus, were one of these gentlemen to express the following words of Milton,
—Their songs
Divide the night, and lift our thoughts to heav'n:
[429]it is highly probable, that upon the word divide, he would run a division of half a dozen bars; and on the subsequent part of the sentence, he would not think he had done the poet justice, or risen to that height of sublimity which he ought to express, till he had climbed up to the very top of his instrument, or at least as far as the human voice could follow him. And this would pass with a great part of mankind for musical expression; instead of that noble mixture of solemn airs and various harmony, which indeed elevates our thoughts, and gives that exquisite pleasure, which none but true lovers of harmony can feel." What Avison calls "musical expression," we call to-day "content." And thus Avison "tenders evidence that music in his day as much absorbed heart and soul then as Wagner's music now." It is not unlikely that this very passage may have started Browning off on his argumentative way concerning the question: how lasting and how fundamental are the powers of musical expression.
The poet's memory goes back a hundred years only to reach "The bands-man Avison whose little book and large tune had led him the long way from to-day."
CHARLES AVISON
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