Ole Bull: A Memoir

by Sara Chapman Thorp Bull

Very respectfully, your obedient servants,

James Shields,
R. M. T. Hunter,
Chas. T. James,
Hamilton Fish,
Geo. W. Jones,
S. P. Chase,
John J. McRae,
Richard Brodhead,
Pierre Soule,
J. W. Bradbury,
H. Clay,
A. P. Butler,
Wm. M. Gwin,
S. R. Mallory,
Chas. Sumner,
J. D. Bright,
J. M. Mason,
S. U. Downs,
Thomas G. Pratt,
H. Hamlin,
Thomas J. Rusk,
M. Norris,
James C. Jones,
Jackson Morton,
W. P. Mangum,
Lewis Cass,
John Davis,
S. A. Douglas,
Truman Smith,
John H. Clarke,
Wm. H. Seward.

The undersigned unite cordially in the foregoing request, and hope that it may be convenient and agreeable to gratify us:

Daniel Webster,
J. J. Crittenden,
A. H. H. Stuart,
Wm. A. Graham,
Thomas Corwin,
Winfield Scott,
A. De Bodisco,
Sartiges,
John T. Crampton,
F. Testa,
A. Calderon de la Barca,
Fr. V. Gerolt,
Marcoleta,
F. Molina,
De Bosch Spencer,
G. Sibbern,
De Sodre.

In accordance with this invitation, Ole Bull gave a concert in Washington on the 26th of March. He had visited the city to learn more about the inducements and advantages offered emigrants to go to the Western States. He had now a better opportunity than ever of studying and understanding the government of this country, because of personal acquaintance with such men as Webster, Clay, and Sumner. Minister Sibbern, the resident Swedish ambassador at that time, was a friend of Ole Bull, and did everything in his power to make his stay pleasant.

He now performed by invitation in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and New York. The following notice of one of his concerts at this time (in the New York Tribune of May 24, 1852) is from the pen of Mr. George William Curtis:—

Nine years ago Ole Bull, then little known in America, made his début at the old Park Theatre. Those who remember the glowing enthusiasm of that evening, and the triumphal career of which it was the prelude, will understand the interest with which the news of his recent arrival among us was received, and the eager curiosity to know if he was again to witch our world. On Saturday evening that curiosity was satisfied by the re–appearance of the great violinist, and the revelation of undiminished power. The audience was in itself a triumph, on Saturday evening, in the midst of the present musical excitement attendant upon Madame Goldschmidt’s farewell series. To gather three thousand people in Metropolitan Hall was an evidence of cordial and admiring remembrance, and of genuine homage to genius of which any artist might be justly proud. Since Ole Bull played here before, our musical experience is enlarged and deepened. Our audience is no longer unused to fine performance. It has heard much of the best, and its approbation is more discriminating, and therefore more flattering. That Ole Bull’s success on Saturday evening was very great, it is unnecessary to say; for no audience (except the French), however critical and severe, can escape the electrical touch of his genius. One word, one glance, one sweep, if it is informed with magnetic power, leaves all rules in the rear, and asserts its own supremacy. Here is the characteristic and charm of Ole Bull. Like Paganini, he is an exceptional person. Like every man of remarkable and pronounced genius, he is a phenomenon. He is his own standard; he makes his own rules. It is useless to pursue him with the traditional rules. His orbit will not be prescribed or prophesied, for it is eccentric. In all that he does, the traditional temperament of genius betrays itself. He is tremulous and tender, but also rugged and stern, and strong as his native mountains. He is no unapt type of his Norway, with its sunny but breezy heights, with its dark and solemn depths, and, over all, the clear, blue heaven. In his mien and manner, in his music and his playing, the same thing is constantly felt. They are all wonderfully suggestive, but mainly of bold and melancholy outlines. For the pathos which inheres in air Northern story and character permeates all that he does, not as lachrymose sentiment, but as a genuine minor tone of feeling. It will not be difficult to infer the impression of his music and of his performance. It is all subjugated to himself. It is all means of expression for his own individuality. He aims not so much at a pure representation of the subject treated by his music, as at his own peculiarity of perception in regarding it. The hearer must know it as it struck him, and in the way he chooses, and all tends to impress upon that hearer the individuality of the artist. Hence Ole Bull stands in direct opposition to the “classical” school, of which the peculiarity is to subdue the artist to the music. He is essentially romantic. His performance, beyond any we have ever heard, is picturesque. He uses music as color, and it matters nothing to him if the treatment be more or less elaborate, or rhythmical, or detailed, if it succeed in striking the hearer with the vivid impression sought. It is unavoidable, therefore, that he is called a charlatan. It is natural that the classical artists are amazed at this bold buccaneer roving the great sea of musical approbation and capturing the costliest prizes of applause. But these prizes are never permanently held by weakness. They surrender only to majestic power. Hence we have the strange spectacle of an immense and miscellaneous audience hanging enchanted upon this wondrous bow, through performances of a length which, in itself, would be enough to wreck most success. Like the voice of an orator speaking for a people its hopes, its indignation, its pity and sorrow, so this violin sings for those who listen their own shifting, wild, and vague fancies. It is because the artist magnetizes them, for the time, and they think and dream as he chooses.

Ole Bull’s mastery of his violin is imperial. The proud majesty of his person imparts itself in feeling to his command of the instrument; and artist, orchestra, and performance only magnify the man. We can, of course, have no quarrel with those who do not like it. If the hearer regrets the want of subtle musical elaboration in the composition; if he complains of its ponderous physique; if he is angry at the submission of the author to the virtuoso, we have nothing to say but that certainly he has reason, and that, if without these there were no beauty, no grandeur, no long–haunting imagery in the mind, then there would be little hope for our artist. But every man like Ole Bull shows that these are not essentials; he shows that the heart and imagination yield against all wishes and precedents and rules. Ole Bull is precisely “an irrefragable fact,” against which criticism may dash its head at leisure. The public heart will follow him and applaud, because he plays upon its strings as deftly as upon those of his violin. Possessed of a nature whose moods sympathize with those of the mass of men, and that in broad and striking reaches,—not too finely spun,—not of a Chopin–like dreaminess, which is rather the preternatural state of a feeble and excited organization, but of a broad humanity in his lights and shades, so full of life and overflowing vigor that he must impart that sympathy, and will scorn all rules in burning and branding it upon his audience; it is no marvel that this eccentric artist sways his hearer as he will, and is as secure of victory as Napoleon. If we turn more directly to his performance, we find a purity, a firmness, a sweetness, and breadth of tone which is unprecedented. The violin has no secrets from him. It waits upon him as Ariel upon Prospero. There is no fiddle left in it. It sings and shouts and weeps as he wills. It is an orchestra or a flute or an Æolian harp, as the mood seizes him. The brilliancy, the incredible articulation, and the rapidity of his execution—upon one string or four strings—with all kinds of marvelous effects and whims, with the intensity and precision of his bowing, are in harmony with all the rest. They are called tricks, but they are only such tricks as the wind and clouds play; they are only such tricks as an artist of his organization, who loves the sounds and capacities of his instrument for their own sake, must necessarily display. He rejoices in this bewitching of the strings with a kind of physical delight, and he uses that witchery so well, with such richness and lavishness, that the susceptible listener does not long resist. We have left ourselves no space to follow the performance in detail, which we shall do upon occasion of the next concert, at which, in the “Carnival of Venice,” his supreme mastery of the violin will be dazzlingly displayed.

Again Mr. Curtis said:—