In December Drury Lane filled while Covent Garden was empty. During the last month the case was reversed. Thus it has been for a long time, and thus it will continue, till some great change of system is prudently adopted.
THE MUSIC OF THE PRESENT NUMBER.
THE maxim of the French milliner, Nothing so new as that which is forgotten, continually recurs in looking over long-laid-by music. The early works of CLEMENTI are as unknown to the present generation, his Octave Lesson excepted, as the sonatas of Scarlatti, or the concertos of Emmanuel Bach, yet a single page of almost any one of them contains as much as is to be found in half a dozen of the generality of modern compositions. The sonata we have here republished—raised, we may say, from the tomb—is, considered in every point of view, a master-piece, of surpassing beauty. What a sweet, intelligible melody flows through the whole of the first movement, and how admirably set off by the harmony! The slow movement is a model of deep expression, of grandeur, and of the sublime in music[21]; and the rondo is no less remarkable for air, for gaiety, than for ingenuity—for that kind of treatment which none but a musician of the highest order knows how to bestow on a subject. The Opera VII. of Clementi was first published in Vienna, upwards of fifty years ago. We have carried a few of the passages into the octave above; and in thus slightly altering the original, have, we are persuaded, only done what the author would have approved. When he composed the Three Sonatas of this set, the additional keys had never been dreamt of: the harpsichord, for which they were written, only reached F, an octave below the present highest note.
The Andante of PARADIES is from an edition of his XII Sonata di Gravicembalo, published about seventy years since in London,—a work which charmed our grandsires, but now still less known than the early sonatas of Clementi. The notation of this composer is sometimes perplexed, and difficult of comprehension to the mere modern musician; we have, therefore, reconciled it to the present improved manner of writing, but without altering a single note, except in appearance. This movement, selected from sonata IX. needs no eulogy; the melody sings from first to last bar, and the accompaniment is that of an able contrapuntist.
Pier Dominico Paradies was a Neapolitan, a pupil of Porpora, and lived many years in London, where he arrived in 1742, and composed some operas for the King’s Theatre when under the management of the Earl of Middlesex. He was in high repute as a master, and obtained more reputation for his harpsichord lessons than his vocal works.
The recitative, from the opera of Giuglio Cesare, is one of the finest pieces of musical eloquence that the art ever produced. Dr. Burney says of it[22], that when sung by Senesino, it produced an effect never before equalled; and at the Ancient Concert, some fifty years ago, Pacchierotti used to draw tears from his auditors by his pathetic manner of declaiming it. Were it newly accompanied, with the addition of those instruments which Handel had not at command, we feel quite sure that it would be still as effective as ever; nay, more so, in the hands of a Braham, who surely could express such sentiments with more force than a soprano ever had the power to give them. The poetry is by Haym, who wrote or compiled the drama for Handel, in 1724, the year in which it was first produced at the King’s Theatre.
Dr. Burney[23] gives the following free translation of this recitative:—
These are thy ashes, Pompey, this the mound,