Charles Hallé, born in Westphalia in 1819, and so just ten years younger than Mendelssohn was driven from Paris to London by the Revolution of 1848, to which England was indebted for such an influx of foreign genius of all kinds to her shores. Beethoven, like Handel, first became known in Europe through a German Elector, him of Cologne. He died in 1827. Though the charm and fame of Beethoven had been steadily growing upon English critics and musicians first and upon the general public afterwards, to Charles Hallé[79] belongs the distinction of having done much towards popularizing this great author of classical music with the English public. The Musical Union which preceded the Popular Concerts was then directed by John Ella, whose programmes included Beethoven’s sonatas, played by Hallé with great applause.
The English public, if by voluntary culture it had not been disciplined into a genuine admiration for Teutonic music, as interpreted by various foreign executants, would have been wooed to its love by the educating influences of the Hungarian violinist Herr Joachim, deservedly reverenced by all circles of English society, ever receiving his homage with the dignified modesty of great genius. This director of the Royal Academy of Music at Berlin had, before that appointment, received the degree of Doctor of Music at Cambridge. The bow with which he elicited entrancing strains from his instrument was a social sceptre as well. When George Eliot was writing Daniel Deronda, Herr Joachim’s social and artistic ascendancy had just reached its culminating point. A scientific musician herself, George Eliot visited those circles where first-rate music was to be heard. No writer more artistically found the suggestions of her characters in real life. The Herr Joachim whom English society knew is reflected so strikingly in the Herr Klesmer of whom the Daniel Deronda public reads as to warrant the conjecture that the master before whom Gwendolen Harleth trembled had been suggested by the violinist at whose feet the aristocracy of birth, beauty, wit, intellect and wealth with unfeigned admiration knelt down.
Other individuals deserve a place in the catalogue of those who have helped on the musical movement of our times. Sir George Grove made a substantial addition to the musical wealth of the world by contributing a chapter to its musical romance; that which relates his discovery of the lost scores of Schubert in a Vienna cupboard. His dictionary of music will survive when the honourable record of his Directorship of the Royal College of Music may be forgotten. Sir Arthur Sullivan has not only illustrated with melodies, that have at once caught the ear of the town, the fantastic conceptions of Mr W. S. Gilbert’s intellect; he has used his personal popularity on all levels of social London to diffuse improved notions of musical taste. Agencies of the same kind, collective as well as individual have not, during the Victorian age, been wanting.
The personnel of upper middle class society in England has been perceptibly affected by the entrance into it through the gate of marriage, of ladies of German origin, of great taste and accomplishments generally, and like all their nation, devoted to music. Hence among other things the increased patronage of the Italian Opera, of all high-class concerts in public as well as of musical artists in private by that well to do section of the Queen’s subjects which combines the tastes of culture and of birth with the resources of trade. Its composition of the veritable materials of Paxton’s Glass House for the Great Exhibition is not the only respect in which the Crystal Palace at Sydenham is connected with that enterprise of the Prince Consort as a reformer of English taste. To mention only its connection with the subject now being specially considered, the Crystal Palace has maintained its full orchestra since 1854. These concerts have been admittedly during near half a century prime instruments of metropolitan and suburban civilization. They have practically revolutionized the home life of tens of thousands of the prosperous commercial class which fixes its household gods out of earshot of Bow Bells. The impulse thus given to the study of the art on a basis wider and deeper than anything formerly existing can scarcely be exaggerated. It is of itself enough to explain why the number of English students of music in the nineties is so vastly larger than it was during any of the preceding decades.[80]
CHAPTER XXV
TRANSFORMED AND TRANSFORMING ART
English art stimulated and strengthened to a degree second only to science by the movements with which, through the Prince Consort, the Victorian Court identified itself. Contrast between the social consideration of artists now and fifty years ago. From Gandish to Gaston Phœbus. Progress in the association of art with the government of England, and general gain to all concerned in consequence. Gradual endowment of art by the State and establishment of the existing machinery for teaching art and displaying its triumphs to a cultivated public. The work of South Kensington. Success of the Academy tested by figures and facts. Reciprocal benefits to art workers and art patrons. Foreign recognition of English art. The past, present and future of English sculpture.
The popularization and improvement of art in all its manifestations followed the 1851 Exhibition and the initiative of the Prince Consort in a degree second only to the development of science and music themselves. That the Court of Victoria and Albert should have been to the painters of a later day what the Court of Charles I. was to Van Dyck could not have been expected. The Consort’s interest and judgment in pictures were inferior to his genuine concern for science. The complacency with which he regarded the canvases of Winterhalter could not promise much enthusiasm in the patronage of English painters. His rescue from disorder and decay of the Raphael cartoons, long before the Prince’s day belonging to our Court, but by him first properly cared for and arranged, was not a work of creation, but was one of artistic development. His were the active mind and useful hand that rendered available for national instruction or delight the hereditary treasures of Crown and country which before his day were not indeed unknown, but were not perhaps properly appreciated in the country which possessed them. The rise of a moneyed and fairly cultivated class in English society was the chief element in the improvement of the social and commercial position of the English painter. These agencies happily coincided with the example set by the Prince to his successors of assisting at the great artistic gatherings of the year.