A SKETCH OF BEETHOVEN.
A Lecture.
(OVERTURE.)
"Give me sweet music when I'm glad—
Give me sweet music when I'm sad;
For music softens every woe,
And brightens every rapture's flow.
"Oh! give me music! In my years
Of childhood's hopes and childhood's fears,
One sweetly-breathing vocal lay
Could steal my griefs, my fears away.
"Yes, music, come! Thou dying voice
Of distant days—of far-past joys—
Come, softly breathe into mine ear,
And thine shall be the flowing tear!
"Come in the strain I loved so well,
And of the lip that breathed it tell.
Oh! be the lingerings of thy lays
The voice of those departed days!"
Association not only gives significancy to music, but contributes greatly to heighten its agreeable effect. We have heard it performed, some time or other, in an agreeable place, perhaps, or by an agreeable person, or accompanied with words that describe agreeable ideas; or we have heard it in our early years—a period of life which we seldom look back upon without pleasure, and of which Bacon recommends the frequent recollection, as an expedient to preserve health. Nor is it necessary that musical compositions should have much intrinsic merit, or that they should call up any distinct remembrance of the agreeable ideas associated with them. There are seasons at which we are gratified with very moderate excellence. In childhood every tune is delightful to a musical ear: in our advanced years, an indifferent tune will please, when set off by the amiable qualities of the performer, or by any other agreeable circumstance. The flute of a shepherd, heard at a distance, on a fine summer day, amidst beautiful scenery, will give rapture to the wanderer, though the tune, the instrument, and the musician be such as he could not endure in any other place. If a song, or piece of music, should call up only a faint remembrance that we were happy the last time we heard it, nothing more would be needful to make us listen to it again with peculiar satisfaction.
Well has Cowper said—
"There is in souls a sympathy with sounds;
And as the mind is pitch'd, the ear is pleased
With melting airs, or martial, brisk or grave,
Some chord in unison with what we hear
Is touched within us, and the heart replies.
How soft the music of those village bells,
Falling at intervals upon the ear
In cadence sweet, now dying all away,
Now pealing loud again, and louder still,
Clear and sonorous, as the gale comes on!
With easy force it opens all the cells
Where mem'ry slept. Wherever I have heard
A kindred melody, the scene recurs,
And with it all its pleasures and its pains."