In Music a retrogressive step in which there is much hope, has been taken. The P.A.B., or pre-Agincourt Brotherhood, has arisen, nobly devoted to consign to oblivion Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, and every other such ridiculous reputation, and to fix its Millennium (as its name implies) before the date of the first regular musical composition known to have been achieved in England. As this institution has not yet commenced active operations, it remains to be seen whether the Royal Academy of Music will be a worthy sister of the Royal Academy of Art, and admit this enterprising body to its orchestra. We have it, on the best authority, that its compositions will be quite as rough and discordant as the real old original.
Fourteen years later he makes use of a well-known phrase in writing to his friend Wills (October 8, 1864) in reference to the proofs of an article.
I have gone through the number carefully, and have been down upon Chorley's paper in particular, which was a ‘little bit’ too personal. It is all right now and good, and them's my sentiments too of the Music of the Future.[ 8 ]
Although there was little movement in this direction when Dickens wrote this, the paragraph makes interesting reading nowadays in view of some musical tendencies in certain quarters.
[ 1 ] In his speech at Birmingham on ‘Literature and Art’ (1853) he makes special reference to the ‘great music of Mendelssohn.’
[ 2 ] Moore's Irish Melodies.
[ 3 ] Moore.
[ 4 ] ‘Seven Dials! the region of song and poetry—first effusions and last dying speeches: hallowed by the names of Catnac and of Pitts, names that will entwine themselves with costermongers and barrel-organs, when penny magazines shall have superseded penny yards of song, and capital punishment be unknown!’ (S.B.S. 5.)
[ 5 ] The ‘Hutchinson family’ was a musical troupe composed of three sons and two daughters selected from the ‘Tribe of Jesse,’ a name given to the sixteen children of Jesse and Mary Hutchinson, of Milford, N.H. They toured in England in 1845 and 1846, and were received with great enthusiasm. Their songs were on subjects connected with Temperance and Anti-Slavery. On one occasion Judson, one of the number, was singing the ‘Humbugged Husband,’ which he used to accompany with the fiddle, and he had just sung the line ‘I'm sadly taken in,’ when the stage where he was standing gave way and he nearly disappeared from view. The audience at first took this as part of the performance.