The music of a low sweet voice, how it penetrates and vibrates through the whole being! The music of the small birds, though limited in its scale, how it fills up the measure of the imagination, by giving a voice of harmony to the silent beauties of nature. The pealing organ with its various tones, breathes out religious strains, and moves the heart to penitence and prayer. This instrument is suited above all others, to display the imagination of a master hand, from the vast extent of its compass, and the almost endless variety of its powers by combinations. It affects the imagination more than any individual instrument, or any combination of instruments. How deep and varied the emotions of the heart of him, whose “spirit is attentive,” while listening to one of the sublime masses of Mozart, Haydn or Beethoven. With what a thrilling and awful feeling, the dark, mysterious and wailing miserere falls upon the soul; and with what a happy contrast, does the beautiful and comforting benedictus, pour “oil upon the bruised spirit.”
The shrill fife, the hollow drum and the clangourous trumpet, speak to other and wilder passions of our hearts. They breathe an inspiration into the mind; they nerve the arm, make firm the tread, and give an animated existence to slumbering ambition, or wavering courage. The soft toned flute, the plaintive oboe, the mellow clarionette, with the other various harmonious instruments, under the influence of the creative mind, affect to smiles or tears, discourse of love, or breathe of hate, according to the shades of feeling pourtrayed by the composition.
But by what means is the imitation of these non-tangible things, transferred to a medium, which is not visible to the eye, nor distinguishable to the touch? From whence does the musician draw, to enable him to affect his hearers, by the means of sound, with the very feelings which he attempts to imitate? We will proceed to answer these inquiries.
The task of the poet is one of less difficulty, than the task of the musician, for he treats of real or imaginary subjects, with the aid of a medium that is universally understood and appreciated, according to the various degrees, and powers of the peruser’s intellect. This medium is language. Words embody and define ideas; a word can express a passion, and other words can describe its rise and progress, and follow it in all its secret channels, and through all its numerous ramifications. The power of language is unbounded. Every thing that is, has a name, which name becomes associated with it in the mind, and inseparable from it, always presenting to the mental vision the object that it represents. The most subtle emotions of the human mind, feelings which lie deep in the recesses of the heart, can be torn from their lair, and displayed before the world by means of this mighty agent. Even nature with her ten thousand hoarded secrets, is over mastered, and bares her bosom to the force of thought, and stands revealed to the world, yea, even to her innermost core, by the power of language. To aid him in the task, the poet hath a million adjuncts. He moves amidst the human world, and gathers from its denizens, unending food for thought and observation,—their joys and their sorrows; their pursuits and their ends; their passions and their vices, their virtues and their charities. The life of a single being in that living mass, would form a subject of varied and startling interest, and leave but little for the imagination to fill up, or to heighten. He looks up into the heavens, and finds a space of boundless immensity, in which his restless speculation may run riot. He looks abroad upon the face of nature, and there are endless stores of bright and beautiful things, to feed his fancy, to stimulate his imagination and refresh his thoughts.
How few of these fruitful themes, are available to the musician!
The painter in all his beautiful creations, pourtrays his subjects by the means of the actual. From the living loveliness which he daily sees, he hoards up rich stores of beauty, for some happy thought. But to aid him in his labors, he has the actual form and color, light and shade. The forms of beauty that glow and breathe upon the canvass; the quiet landscape, so full of harmony and peacefulness; the rolling ocean, the strife of the elements, the wild commingling of warring men, are but the transcripts of the actual things.
The sculptor as he hews from the rough block, some form of exquisite loveliness, whose charms shall throw a spell over men’s souls for ages, does but compress into one fair creation, the beauties of a thousand living models.
But the resources of the musician are in his own soul. From that alone can he forge the chain of melody, that shall bind the senses in a wordless ecstasy. Tangibilities to him are useless. Comparisons are of no avail. He individualises, but does not reflect. He feels but does not think. He deals with action and emotion, but form and substance are beyond his imitation. He is a metaphysician, but not a philosopher. But the depth of the music, will depend entirely upon the man. From a close study of the works of Mozart and Beethoven, a correct and metaphysical analysis of their characters can be obtained. In the early works of Mozart will be found a continuous chain of tender and impassioned sentiment; an overflowing of soul, an exuberance of love, and his early life will be found to be a counterpart of these emotions. In him the passions were developed at an age, when in ordinary children their germ would be scarcely observed. Loved almost to idolatry by his family, and loving them as fondly in return, his life was passed in one unceasing round of the tenderest endearments. All that was beautiful in his nature was brought into action, and gave that tone of exquisite tenderness, that pervades all his imperishable works. But as the passing years brought with them an increase of thought and reflection, a change is to be found equally in the character of the music and the man. This change can be traced in his later operas, Le Nozze de Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi Fan Tutti, La Clemenza di Tito, Die Zauberflöte, and Die Entführung aus dem Serail. In these works there is the evidence of deeper and more comprehensive thought; the metaphysical identity of character is as strictly maintained, and as closely developed, as it could be pourtrayed by words. His Il Don Giovanni, stands now, and will forever stand, an unapproachable model of musical perfection.
The character of Beethoven exhibits no decided change through life, excepting, that in his later years the characteristics of his youth and manhood, increased to a degree of morbid acuteness. From his earliest childhood he was of a retiring, studious, and reflective nature. The conscious possession of great genius, made him wilful and unyielding in his opinions. Too high minded to court favours, he at various times suffered the severest privations that poverty could inflict; and, taking deeply to heart the total want of public appreciation, he became morose, distrustful and dissatisfied. These feelings were rendered morbid in the highest degree, by the melancholy affliction that assailed him in his later years. He became nearly deaf, and was consequently deprived of the dearest enjoyment of a musician’s life. These feelings were developed, in a marked degree, in all his purely ideal compositions. Dark and mysterious strains of harmony would be succeeded by a burst of wild and melancholy fancy. Anon a tender, but broad and flowing melody, would melt the soul by its passionate pathos, but only of sufficient duration to render the cadence of heart-rending despair, which succeeds it, the more striking. Rapid and abrupt modulations, strange and startling combinations, bore evidence of his wild imagination, and the uncontrollable impulse of his feelings. The opera of Fidelio, the only dramatic work that he ever wrote, ranks only second to Don Giovanni. In Fidelio each person has a distinct musical character, so clearly and forcibly marked, that the aid of words is not necessary to distinguish them. It would be impossible to transpose them without losing their identity, and destroying the sense of the music. Mozart’s genius was tender yet sublime: Beethoven’s was melancholy, mysterious, yet gigantic. Each painted himself; each drew from his own bosom all the inspiration his works exhibited. They required no outward influence; they needed no adventitious circumstances to rouse their imagination, or to cause their thoughts to flow, for in their own souls was an ever gushing spring of divine melody, that could not be controlled. They thought music, and, as light flows from the sun, gladdening the creation, so their music came from them, irradiating the hearts of men, and throwing over them a delicious spell, whose charm is everlasting.
Music is so ethereal, and deals so little in realities, that its followers, partaking of its characteristics, are in most instances, impulsive, impassioned and unworldly. Careless of the excitements and mutations of the times; unambitious of place or power; indifferent to the struggles and heart-burnings of party politicians, from the utter uncongeniality of the feelings and emotions they engender, with their own, they live secluded, shut up within their own hearts, and seldom appear to the world in their true colors, from the utter impossibility of making it comprehend or sympathise with their refined and mysterious feelings. The world has no conception of the exquisite delight that music confers upon musicians. It is not mere pleasure; it is not a mere gratification that can be experienced and forgotten! Oh, no! It is a blending of the physical with the intellectual; it softens the nature; it heightens the imagination; it throws a delicious languor over the whole organization; it isolates the thoughts, concentrating them only to listen and receive; it elevates the soul to a region of its own, until it is faint with breathing the melodious atmosphere.