This spiritual expression of music is heard in very different degrees by different people, and by some not at all. One man remarked, as he left Ole Bull’s concert, “Well, there is no such thing as getting a dollar’s worth of music out of a fiddle, in three hours.” Of the same concert, a man of thorough musical science, and deep feeling for his musical art, writes to me thus: “Ole Bull has certainly impressed me as no man ever impressed me before. The most glorious sensation I ever had was to sit in one of his audiences, and feel that all were elevated to the same pitch with myself. My impulse was to speak to every one as to an intimate friend. The most indifferent person was a living soul to me. The most remote or proud I did not fear or despise. In that element they were all accessible, nay, all worth reaching. This surely was the highest testimony to his great art and his great soul.”
An eloquent writer, who publishes under the fictitious signature of “John Waters,” describes his first impressions of Liszt’s piano–playing, with an enthusiasm that would doubtless seem very ridiculous to many who listened to the same sounds. He says that, “with blow after blow upon the instrument with his whole force, he planted large columnar masses of sound, like the Giant’s Causeway. The instrument rained, hailed, thundered, moaned, whistled, shrieked round those basaltic columns, in every cry that the tempest can utter in its wildest paroxysms of wrath.... Then we were borne along, through countless beauties of rock and sky and foliage, to a grotto, by the side of which was a fountain that seemed one of the Eyes of the Earth, so large and darkly brilliant was it, so deep and so serene. Here we listened to the voices rather than the songs of birds, when the music by degrees diminished and ceased.”
A lady to whom he spoke of the concert acknowledged that the sounds had brought up very similar pictures to her soul; but probably not ten of the large audience listened in such a spirit. That it was thus received by any, shows that it was in the music, whether the composer was aware of it or not; and genius only can produce those magical effects, even on a few.
To Him who made the ear a medium of pleasure to the soul, I am humbly grateful for delight in sweet sounds; and still more deeply am I grateful that the spiritual sense of music is more and more opened to me. I have joy in the consciousness of growth, as I can imagine a flower might be pleased to feel itself unfolding and expanding to the sunlight. This expressiveness of music no man ever revealed to me like Ole Bull, and therefore, in my joy and gratitude, I strive, like a delighted child, to bring all manner of garlands and jewels wherewith to crown his genius.
Here is a wreath of wild flowers to welcome his return:—
Welcome to thee, Ole Bull!
A welcome warm and free!
For heart and memory are full
Of thy rich minstrelsy.
’Tis music for the tuneful rills
To flow to from the verdant hills;
Music such as first on earth
Gave to the Aurora birth.
Music for the leaves to dance to;
Music such as sunbeams glance to;
Treble to the ocean’s roar,
On some old resounding shore.
Silvery showers from the fountains;
Mists unrolling from the mountains;
Lightning flashing through a cloud,
When the winds are piping loud.
Music full of warbling graces,
Like to birds in forest places,
Gushing, trilling, whirring round,
Mid the pine–trees’ murm’ring sound.