Ole Bull: A Memoir

by Sara Chapman Thorp Bull

If one would measure the depth of an impression, he must seek its expression in literature. Read Welhaven’s poem at that time to Ole Bull. Any man with a knowledge of European literature will not hesitate to say that it is one of the most beautiful lyrics ever written.

How happened it that he was the one to accomplish all this? His birth of a musical race had not sufficed without the fervor of his patriotism. During our war for independence he was still a boy at play, and his childish voice was among the first to shout for our young freedom. When a youth—I speak whereof I know—his violin, with its boundless, exultant joy, sang our first national songs in Henrik Wergeland’s college–room, and became the overture to Wergeland’s inspiration of our national observance of the 17th of May. These feelings Ole Bull carried with him to other lands.

Patriotism was the creative power in his life. When he established the Norse theatre, assisted Norse art, helped the national museum, his mighty instrument singing for other patriotic ends; when he helped his countrymen and others wherever he found them, it was not so much for the object, or the person, but for the honor of Norway. He always felt himself our representative; and, if he felt there was need, let it be at home or abroad, that “Ole Olsen Viol, Norse Norman from Norway”[25] should appear, he never failed us.

His patriotism had a certain tinge of naïveté, of morbidity, about it; it was a consequence of the times. But it was of importance to us that our finest gentleman, coming from Europe’s most cultured salons, could and would go arm in arm with our poor Norse beginnings. It lies in the nature of things that first attempts are never popular; they only become so when developed and recognized by all; but, as a rule, they have then outlived their usefulness.

It was this sturdy faithfulness in Ole Bull, spite of his impulsive temperament, that made him dear to our people; in other words, it was his patriotism.

So it was with Henrik Wergeland. Ole Bull and Henrik Wergeland were of the same age and temperament. The one responded to the other as in the spring the wood–song answers the green of the meadows, or on the western coast the sea skerries and irregular mountain groups—the flickering sunshine on their grassy slopes, their shifting lights and shadows—answer the wooded ridges, the great, broad, rich landscape of the east, with Mjosen’s gleaming surface in its midst. The one was the blue boy of the west, with the ocean’s salt flavor, the restless spirit of the Vikings; the other, the gray boy of the east.[26] There was western blood in Henrik Wergeland; but his genius had the color of the mild, broad outlook of an eastern landscape, with the mountains in the distance.

When Ole Bull talked of his art, he was wont to say that he had learned to “sing” of the Italians. Without doubt this was true; the outer form he had learned from them, but the genius and the colors were from the soul of our soul, the most spontaneous message of the folk–song, as love of country made it glow in his consciousness. An old, world–renowned artist[27] said to me: “Faults in Ole Bull’s playing are more noticeable as he advances in age; but no artist in our time has possessed Ole Bull’s poetic power; no one has ever surpassed his playing of the ‘Adagio.’ I think all his cultivated auditors will say the same.”

The criticism has been made that Ole Bull has failed in not leaving behind him great musical works. This is unjust. A man that could so fully give what he at times gave us could not do more. In proportion to the ability for the one, is the other impossible.

But it was important for us at that time, as it is always important for a small nation, that we had a man of the first rank among us. It was a direct connection with the outside world. It exalted our aims. As far as human power could, it spurred our ambition,—and that in all directions. Let us then, at the grave of our greatest citizen, say honor to him beyond all the artists who have broken a way for us,—he who not alone inspired followers in his profession, but also awakened ambition and happiness wherever he was known; helping the moral and intellectual forces,—the greatest legacy one can bequeath.