I accompanied him, nevertheless, and he showed me part of the schloss, and endeavored in the intervals of his tolerably arduous task of cicerone to make himself agreeable to me. It was a wonderful place indeed—this schloss. The deeper we penetrated into it, the more absorbed and interested did I become. Such piled-up, profusely scattered treasures of art it had never before fallen to my lot to behold. The abundance was prodigal; the judgment, cultivation, high perception of truth, rarity and beauty, seemed almost faultless. Gems of pictures—treasures of sculpture, bronze, china, carvings, glass, coins, curiosities which it would have taken a life-time properly to learn. Here I saw for the first time a private library on a large scale, collected by generation after generation of highly cultured men and women—a perfect thing of its kind, and one which impressed me mightily; but it was not there that I was destined to find the treasure which lay hidden for me in this enchanted palace. We strayed over an acre or so of passage and corridor till he paused before an arched door across which was hung a curtain, and over which was inscribed Musik-kammern (the music-rooms).
“If you wish to see the music, mein Fräulein, I must leave you in the hands of Herr Brunken, who will tolerate no cicerone but himself.”
“Oh, I wish to see it certainly,” said I, on fire with curiosity.
He knocked and was bidden herein! but not going in, told some one inside that he recommended to his charge a young lady staying with the countess, and who was desirous of seeing the collection.
“Pray, mein Fräulein, come in!” said a voice. Herr Nahrath left me, and I, lifting the curtain and pushing open the half-closed door, found myself in an octagonal room, confronted by the quaintest figure I had ever seen. An old man whose long gray hair, long white beard, and long black robe made him look like a wizard or astrologer of some mediæval romance, was smiling at me and bidding me welcome to his domain. He was the librarian and general custodian of the musical treasures of Schloss Rothenfels, and his name was Brunken. He loved his place and his treasures with a jealous love, and would talk of favorite instruments as if they had been dear children, and of great composers as if they were gods.
All around the room were large shelves filled with music—and over each division stood a name—such mighty names as Scarlatti, Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Schumann, Mozart, Haydn—all the giants, and apparently all the pygmies too, were there. It was a complete library of music, and though I have seen many since, I have never beheld any which in the least approached this in richness or completeness. Rare old manuscript scores; priceless editions of half-forgotten music; the literature of the productions of half-forgotten composers; Eastern music, Western music, and music of all ages; it was an idealized collection—a musician’s paradise, only less so than that to which he now led me, from amid the piled-up scores and the gleaming busts of those mighty men, who here at least were honored with never-failing reverence.
He took me into a second room, or rather hall, of great size, height, and dimensions, a museum of musical instruments. It would take far too long to do it justice in description; indeed, on that first brief investigation I could only form a dim general idea of the richness of its treasures. What histories—what centuries of story were there piled up! Musical instruments of every imaginable form and shape, and in every stage of development. Odd-looking pre-historic bone embryo instruments from different parts of France. Strange old things from Nineveh, and India, and Peru, instruments from tombs and pyramids, and ancient ruined temples in tropic groves—things whose very nature and handling is a mystery and a dispute—tuned to strange scales which produce strange melodies, and carry us back into other worlds. On them, perhaps, has the swarthy Ninevan, or slight Hindoo, or some
“Dusky youth with painted plumage gay”
performed as he apostrophized his mistress’s eyebrow. On that queer-looking thing which may be a fiddle or not—which may have had a bow or not—a slightly clad slave made music while his master the rayah played chess with his favorite wife. They are all dead and gone now, and their jewels are worn by others, and the memory of them has vanished from off the earth; and these, their musical instruments, repose in a quiet corner amid the rough hills and oak woods and under the cloudy skies of the land of music—Deutschland.
Down through the changing scale, through the whole range of cymbal and spinet, “flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, and all kinds of music,” stand literally before me, and a strange revelation it is. Is it the same faculty which produces that grand piano of Bechstein’s, and that clarion organ of Silbermann’s, and that African drum dressed out with skulls, that war-trumpet hung with tiger’s teeth? After this nothing is wonderful! Strange, unearthly looking Chinese frames of sonorous stones or modulated bells; huge drums, painted and carved, and set up on stands six feet from the ground; quaint instruments from the palaces of Aztec Incas, down to pianos by Broadwood, Collard & Collard, and Bechstein.