On referring to the book before us, for the number just given out by the conductor, we find—a motett, Dr. Christopher Tye. The baton falls, and we launch into the unexplored ocean of song before us. What breadth in the harmonies! What stateliness in the progression of the parts!—and what a depth of feeling under the incrustation of these crabbed old modulations!
And now for a madrigal. Will it be "Lady, thine eye," or "Cynthia, thy song," or "Sweet honey-sucking bees?"—No: as we live, it is "Die not, fond man!"—the noblest of them all.
And now, another motett; and now—but stay! here is something unusual. The vice looks to the chair—the chair looks to the vice. The vice, like the sun over a mountain, shows his head above the wall of books before him, and prepares to make a speech. "Gentlemen, I beg to call your attention—" But we have forgotten the form, so we'll give the substance of his observations, which go to prove that he has received a madrigal, according to the rules of the society,—that is, anonymously,—which he has looked over, and deems worthy of a trial. The parts, which are of course not in the book, are distributed, and much good-natured speculation is afloat; for the madrigalians, though conservatives, are not exclusives. We begin:—there is a stoppage at the onset,—something was wrong in the parts,—it is corrected, and we start once more;—the precipice is passed in safety. Still it does not "go." There is no good reason why it should not; and so it is tried again; is better understood, and "goes" accordingly. A sealed paper is delivered to the chairman, who opens it with much solemnity, and announces the name of the composer, casting a most significant glance on an individual at one corner of the table, who, for the last quarter of an hour, has been engaged in the most unpleasing of all sedentary pursuits,—sitting upon thorns. We drink his health; the individual rises, and for upwards of a minute and some seconds, is supposed to occupy himself in making some observations germane to the present subject, but which, from his state of nervous trepidation, are quite inaudible.
The books are again in requisition. We draw on firms of centuries' standing, and our checks are duly honoured. The stately motett, the graceful madrigal, and the sprightly ballet alternate in rapid succession. What a contrast does this enthusiastic coterie present to the listless audience of the concert-room or opera! No mob of apathetical time-killers is here; but true and constant lovers of the divine art, joining "with heart and voice" in strains to them as fresh and beautiful as they were two hundred years ago!
Oh! how we might gossip about and speculate upon the old fellows who treasured up for us this legacy of fine things. Talk of love for their art!—!—think of Luca Marenjio, who wrote a thousand madrigals; and Dr. Tye, who set to music the whole of "The Acts of the Apostles!"
The human voice is the noblest of all instruments. In the madrigal it finds an exercise worthy of its powers. Music, as developed through the medium of the voice, assumes a far more elevated and poetical form than it ever presents through instrumental performance even of the very highest character. Music is less essentially music, coming through throats of flesh and blood than throats of wood or metal; but it is something infinitely finer,—the unchecked emanation of the human heart,—the current fresh from the well-springs of all that is good and beautiful in man's nature.
The changeableness of fashion, the perishability of all instrumental music, is of itself sufficient evidence of this. Five-and-twenty years ago, the works of Pleyel were the delight of every musical coterie in Europe; now, there is not one amateur in fifty who ever heard a bar of his music. And as for the cart-loads of sonatas, gigues, pasacailles, serenatas, follias, fugues, concertantes, and "jewells" of Dr. Bull, Paradies, Scarlatti, Geminiani,—yes, even Handel and Mozart themselves!—they are regarded in about the same light as an Egyptian papyrus, or a loaf of bread from Herculaneum.
It is difficult indeed to conceive "The Jupiter Symphony," or the "Sonate Pathétique," food for the virtuoso; but assuredly "Dove sono," "The Hallelujah Chorus," and "St. Patrick's Day," are as imperishable as expression, grandeur, and sunshine themselves.
Sounds are the body of music, to which the voice gives immortality and a soul. To put the voice on the same level as an instrument, is to pit matter against mind,—"man against cat-gut."
There is a sense of personal enjoyment connected, too, with pure vocal music performed in this manner, which it is quite impossible to find in the theatre or concert-room. Our thoughts there, are perpetually brought back to some technical matter, and our imagination curbed by the audience, some individual association with the singers, or the "mise de théâtre;" but here, sitting at our ease around the table, with our "part" before us, joining in the harmony or not, as we please,—our only care that the madrigal shall go well, our only interruption a glance now and then at the enthusiastic faces around us,—we feel truly "the power of sound," and that our pleasure is without alloy.