No. 1 consists of five clever and very pleasant variations on an air which appears to much greater advantage instrumentally than vocally. This is short enough to admit an encore, and if played with neatness and some degree of brilliancy, will very often induce the hearers to ask for it a second time.
In No. 2, Mr. Perry has given us the air, with its second movement, ‘Io sono docile,’ exactly according to the score. We do not perceive that he has added or taken away a single note; but he has transposed the whole from E to F, and this we cannot consider an improvement. In days long gone by, the key of E with four sharps looked formidably; the march of music has robbed it of its terrors; and every one who has the slightest faith in the character of keys, will protest against so violent a change.
No. 3 is the air made so amusing by Signor Lablache; though many laughed while he was crying ‘Slippers! who wants slippers?’ without very well knowing what they laughed at. Signor (Maestro) Cittadini might have chosen something better adapted to the purpose than an air, the merit of which depends so much on the words and the humour in singing them. Spread, as this is, over nineteen pages, and exhibiting so little variety, we must say that, should it sell, it will prove more useful to the stationer and publisher than the purchaser. We do not, however, mean to cast any slur on the arrangement itself, which is faultless, but in the selection made by the Maestro.
VOCAL.
THE ART of SINGING, a Method, in Three Parts, on an entirely new plan of vocalization, &c., by J. P. LE CAMUS. (Published by the Author.)
THIS is a ponderous tome indeed! Two hundred and twelve large folio pages! But considering what it is to achieve—or rather, what the author most courageously asserts it will effect—such vastness of extent is by no means unnecessary. But let the author himself be heard.
‘The Method,’ he says, ‘I now publish has more novelty, and (I may say) more importance than the public usually attribute to works of this nature. It is the fruit of a singular but fertile idea, developed with conscientious care, and with the intention of superseding all the treatises on singing that have hitherto appeared.’—(Preface.)
There is no bashfulness in this, but much candour. Whenever a work is published the author wishes it to be thought the best that ever appeared, and hopes that it may cast into utter oblivion all others of the kind; but he seldom has honesty enough to declare this. M. Le Camus has no disguise.