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Sir Henry Heyman
Memories of a®
Musical Life
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Rev. H. R.. HAWEIS, m. a.
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NEW YORK
BOSTON
CARL FISCHER
Cooper Square
JEAN WHITE PUB. CO.
521 Washington St.
Copyright 1909 By Carl Fischer, New York
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CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
Reminiscences of Youth. — Fiddle Shops. — The Men-
delssohn Mania. — Bottesini 5
CHAPTER II.
Some of my Teachers. — Tennyson 17
CHAPTER III.
College Days 31
CHAPTER IV.
Hearing Music. — Concerts. — Music as a Healer . 39
CHAPTER V.
Old Violins and their Makers. — The Anatomy of the
Violin. — About Strings. — The Italian Schools. —
Maggini. — Stradivarius. — Guarnerius. — Bergonzi
and guadagnin1 53
CHAPTER VI.
Paganini . 71;
i)i>^'>*> i
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER VII.
PAGE
Richard Wagner. — Wagner in Paris. — Personal
Traits. — Wagner's Death. — His Popularity . . 105
CHAPTER VIII.
Parsifal. — Act I. — Act II. — Act III 134
CHAPTER TX.
The Ring of the Nibelung. — I. Rheingold. — II. Wal-
kdre. — III. Siegfried. — -IV. The Gotterdammerung. 15.
CHAPTER X.
Liszt. — "Death of Young Liszt" 16S
MEMORIES
MUSICAL LIFE
CHAPTER I.
REMINISCENCES OF YOUTH.
I THINK it was Lord Beaconsfield who said that a man
was usually interesting in proportion as his talk ran upon
what he was familiar with ; and that as a man usually
knew more about himself than about anything else he sel-
dom failed to be tolerable if his self-centred talk turned out
to be unaffected and sincere. To talk about one's self and to
be dull is, nevertheless, possible. In the early pages of this
volume I shall have to do t'he first to a considerable extent ;
let me hope to avoid the second.
Music is not the business of my life, but it remains its
sweetest recreation ; and there is one opinion which used to
be widely held by my friends in the old days, and to which
I subscribed for many years. Nature, they often said, in-
tended me for a violinist.
There is something about the shape of a violin — its
curves, its physiognomy, its smiling and genial / \'s —
which seems to invite and welcome inspection and hand-
ling.
Tarisio, the Italian carpenter, came under this fascina-
tion to good purpose. He began by mending old fiddles ;
he played, himself, a little ; he got more enamored of these
M'EM'Gk'lES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
mysterious, lifeless, yet living companions of his solitude,
until he began to " trade in fiddles."
At the beginning of this century, hidden away in old Ital-
ian convents and wayside inns, lay the masterpiece of the
Amati, Stradivarius, the Guarnerii, and Bergonzi, almost
unknown and little valued. But Tarisio's eye was getting
cultivated. He was learning to know a fiddle when he
saw it.
"Your violino, signor, requires mending," says the itin-
erant pedler, as he salutes some monk or padre known to
be connected with the sacristy or choir of Pisa, Florence,
Milan. " I can mend it."
Out comes the Stradivarius, with a loose bar or a split rib,
and sounding abominably.
" Dio mio ! " says Tarisio, "and all the blessed saints!
but your violino is in a bad way. My respected father is
prayed to try one that I have, in perfect and beautiful accord
and repair ; and permit me to mend this worn-out machine."
And Tarisio, whipping a shining, clean instrument out
of his bag, hands it to the monk, who eyes it and is for try-
ing it. He tries it ; it goes soft and sweet, though not loud
and wheezy, like the battered old Strad. Tarisio clutches
his treasure.
The next day back comes the pedler to the cloister, is
shown up to the padre, whom he finds scraping away on
his loan fiddle.
" But," he exclaims, " you have lent me a beautiful vio-
lino, and in perfect order."
" Ah ! if the father would accept from me a small favor,"
says the cunning Tarisio.
" And what is that? "
" To keep the violino that suits him so well, and I will
take in exchange the old machine which is worn out, but
with my skill I shall still make something of it ! "
A glass of good wine, or a lemonade, or black coffee,
clinches the bargain. Oft' goes Tarisio, having parted
with a characterless German fiddle, — sweet and easy-go-
ing and " looking nice," and worth now about £5 ; in per-
fect order, no doubt. — and having secured one of those
gems of Cremona which now run into £300. Violin-col-
lecting became the passion of Tarisio's life. The story-
has been told by Mr. Charles Reade, and all the fiddle-
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
world knows how Tarisio came to Paris with a batch of
old instruments, and was taken up by Chanot and Vuil-
laume, through whose hands passed nearly every one of
those chefs-d'oeuvre recovered by Tarisio in his wander-
ings, which now are so eagerly contended for by English
and American millionaires whenever they happen to get
into the market.
I have heard of a mania for snuff-boxes ; it was old La-
blache's hobby. There are your china-maniacs, and your
picture-maniacs, and your old-print connoisseurs who only
look at the margin, and your old book-hunters who only
glance at the title-page and edition, and your coin-collectors
and your gem-collectors, who are always being taken in ;
but for downright fanaticism and "■gone-cooniness," if I may
invent the word, commend me to your violin-maniac. He
who once comes under that spell goes down to the grave
with a disordered mind.
FIDDLE SHOPS.
I said that I was, perhaps, intended for a violinist by
nature. I can understand Tarisio's passion, though I never
followed out that particular branch of it which led him to
collect, repair, and sell. I could not buy violins, — the
prices have risen since the days of the Italian pedler. I
could not cheat people out of them ; the world was too
knowing for that, — and then I was too virtuous. I could
not " travel" in violins. It was not my vocation ; and one
may in these days go far and get little, for it is now about
as easy to find a Stradivarius as a Correggio. But long
before I had ever touched a violin I was fascinated with
its appearance. In driving up to town as a child — when,
standing up in the carriage, I could just look out of the win-
dow — certain fiddle shops, hung with mighty rows of
violoncellos, attracted my attention. I had dreams of these
large editions, — these patriarchs of the violin, as they
seemed to me. I compared them in my mind with the
smaller tenors and violins. I dreamed about their brown,
big, dusty bodies and affable, good-natured-looking heads
and grinning J\'s. These violin shops were the great
points watched for on each journey up to London from
Norwood, where I spent my early days.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
Youth is the great season of surprises, as it certainly is
of delights. There never were such buttercup- he Ids and
strawberry-ices as in the days of my childhood. Men try to
make hay now, but it is poor work ; and as for the mod-
ern ices they are either frozen amiss or ill-mixed. They
are not good enough for me who can remember what they
were in the exhibition of 1851. One of my keenest musi-
cal impressions is connected with that marvellous show. I
shall never see such another. As I stood in the gallery of
the great crystal transept, and looked down upon a spectacle
such as has been witnessed since, but had never before been
seen, a feeling of intoxication — there is no other word for
lt — came over me.
I remember perfectly well falling into a kind of dream as
I leaned over the painted iron balcony and looked down on
this splendid vista. The silver-bell-like tones of an Erard —
it was the 1,000-guinea piano — pierced through the human
hum and noise of splashing waters, but it was a long way
off. Suddenly, in the adjoining gallery, the large organ
broke out with a blare of trumpets that thrilled and riveted
me with an inconceivable emotion. I knew not then what
those opening bars were. Evidently something martial, fes-
tal, jubilant, and full of triumph. I listened and held my
breath to hear Mendelssohn's "Wedding March" for the
hist time, and not know it ! To hear it when half the peo-
ple present had never heard of Mendelssohn, three years af-
ter his death, and when not one in a hundred could have
told what was being played, — that was an experience I shall
never forget. As successive waves of fresh, inexhaustible in-
spiration flowed on, vibrating through the building without
a check or a pause, the peculiar Mendelssohnian spaces of
cantabile melody, alternating as they do in that march with
the passionate and almost fierce decision of the chief proces-
sional theme, I stood riveted, bathed in the sound as in an
element. I felt ready to melt into those harmonious, yet
turbulent, waves and float away upon the tides of " Music's
golden sea setting towards Eternity." The angel of Tenny-
son's vision might have stood by me whispering : —
'■' And thou listenest the lordly music flowing from the illimitahle
rears."
Some one called me, as I was told afterwards, but I did not
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE.
hear. They supposed that I was following; they went on,
and were soon lost in the crowd. Presently one came back
and touched me, but I did not feel. I could not be roused,
my soul was living apart from my body. When the music
ceased the spell slowly dissolved, and I was led away still
half in dreamland. For long years afterwards the " Wed-
ding March," which is now considered banale and claptrap
by the advanced school, affected me strangely. Its power
over me has almost entirely ceased. It is a memory now
more than a realization —
" eheu ! fugaces, Posthume,
Posthume, labuntur anni — "
THE MENDELSSOHN MANIA.
This was in 1S51 ; but it must have been about the year
1S46 that I was taken up to a concert at Exeter Hall, and
heard there for the first time what seemed to me to be music
of unearthly sweetness. The room was crowded. I was far
behind. I could only see the fiddlesticks of the band in the
distance. Four long-drawn-out, tender wails on the wind
rising, rising ; then a soft, rapid, flickering kind of sound,
high up in the treble clef, broke from a multitude of fiddles,
ever growing in complexity as the two fiddles at each desk
divided the harmonies amongst them, pausing as the deep,
melodious breathing of wind instruments suspended in
heavy, slumberous sighs their restless agitation, then recom-
mencing till a climax w r as reached, and the whole band
broke in with that magnificent subject which marks the first
complete and satisfying period of musical solution in the
overture to the " Midsummer Night's Dream."
I was at once affected as I had never before been. I did
not know then that it was the Mendelssohn mania that had
come upon me. It seized upon the whole musical world of
forty years ago, and discolored the taste and judgment of
those affected, for every other composer. The epidemic
lasted for about twenty years at its height ; declined rather
suddenly with the growing appreciation of Schumann, the
tardy recognition of Spohr, and the revival of Schubert,
receiving its quietus, of course, with the triumph of Wagner.
People noiv "place" Mendelssohn; then they worshipped
him.
IO MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
As my ideas group themselves most naturally about my
favorite instrument — the violin — I may as well resume the
thread of my narrative in connection with my earliest violin
recollections. I became possessed, at the age of six years,
of a small, red, eighteen-penny fiddle and stick, with that
flimsy bow and those thready strings which are made ap-
parently only to snap, even as the fiddle is made only to
smash. I thus early became familiar with the idol of my
youth. But familiarity did not breed contempt. I pro-
ceeded to elicit from the red eighteen-penny all it had to give ;
and when I had done with it, my nurse removed the belly,
and found it made an admirable dust-pan or wooden shovel
for cinders, and, finally, excellent firewood. Many went
that way, without my passion for toy fiddles suffering the
least decline ; nay, it rather grew by that it (and the fire)
fed on. It may not be superfluous to add that I had by this
time found means to make the flimsiest strings yield up
sounds which I need not here characterize, and to such pur-
pose that it became a question of some interest how long
such sounds could be endured by the human ear. I do not
mean my own. All violinists, including infants on eighteen-
pennies, admit that to their own ear the sounds produced are
nothing but delightful ; it is only those who do not make
them who complain. As it seemed unlikely that my
studies on the violin would stop, it became expedient that
they should be directed. A full-sized violin was procured
me. I have every reason to believe it was one of the worst
fiddles I ever saw.
I had played many times with much applause, holding a
full-sized violin between my knees. I was about eight years
old when the services of the local organist — a Mr. Ingram,
of Norwood — were called in. His skill on the violin was
not great, but it was enough for me ; too much, indeed, for
he insisted on my holding the violin up to my chin. The
fact is, he could not play in any other position himself; so
how could he teach me? Of course the instrument was a
great deal too large ; but I strained and stretched until I got
it up ; for, as it would not grow down to me, I had to grow
up to it. And here I glance at the crucial question, Ought
young children to begin upon small-sized violins? All
makers say "Yes;" naturally, for they supply the new
violins of all sizes. But I emphatically say " No." The
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
sooner the child gets accustomed to the right violin intervals
the better ; the small violins merely present him with a
series of wrong distances, which he has successively to
unlearn. It is bad enough if in after years he learns the
violoncello or tenor. Few violinists survive that ordeal, and
most people who take to the tenor or 'cello after playing the
violin keep to it. Either they have not been successful on
the violin, or they hope to become so on its larger, though
less brilliant, relation ; but they have a perfectly true instinct
that it is difficult to excel on both, because of the intervals.
Yet in the face of this you put a series of violins of different
sizes into the pupil's hand, on the ground that, as his hand
enlarges with years, the enlarged key-board will suit his
fingers better ; but that is not the way the brain works, —
the brain learns intervals. It does not trouble itself about
the size of the ringers that have got to stretch them. A
child of even seven or eight can stretch most of the ordi-
narv intervals on a full-sized violin finger-board. He may
not be able to hold the violin to his chin, but he can learn
his scales and pick out tunes, sitting on a stool and holding
his instrument like a violoncello. Before the age of eight
I found no difficulty in doing this But the greater the
difficulty the better the practice. The tendons cannot be
too much stretched short of spraining and breaking. Mere
aching is to be made no account of; the muscles can hardly
be too much worked. A child will soon gain surprising
agility even on a large finger-board. Avoid the hateful
figured slip of paper that used to be pasted on violin finger-
boards in my youth, with round dots for the ringers. I
remember tearing mine off in a fit of uncontrollable irrita-
tion. I found it very difficult, with the use of my eyes, to
put my fingers on the dots, and even then the note was not
always in tune, for of course the dot might be covered in a
dozen ways by the finger-tips, and a hair's breadth one w r ay
or the other would vary the note. But the principle is
vicious. A violin-player's eyes have no more business with
his fingers than a billiard-plaver's eyes have with his cue.
He looks at the ball, and the musician, if he looks at any-
thing, should look at the notes, or at his audience, or he can
shut his eyes if he likes. It is his ears, not his eyes, have
to do with his fingers.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
I was about eight years old. My musical studies were
systematic, if not well directed. Every morning for two
hours I practised scales and various tunes at a double desk,
my father on one side and I on the other. We played the
most deplorable arrangements, and we made the most
detestable noise. We played Beethoven's overture to
"Prometheus," arranged for two fiddles; Callcott's Ger-
man melodies with pianoforte accompaniment, and without
the violoncello part ; and Corelli's trios, also without
the third instrument. I had somehow ceased to take les-
sons now. My father's knowledge of violin-playing was
exactly on a level with my own ; his skill, he modestly
owned, was even less, but had it not been for him I never
should have played at all. Our method was simple. We
sat for two hours after breakfast and scraped. In the
evening, with the addition of the piano, we scraped again —
anything we could get hold of; and we did get hold of odd
things: Locke's music to "Macbeth," old quadrilles, the
" Battle of Prague," " God save the Emperor," and the
"Huntsman's Chorus." I confess I hated the practising ;
it was simple drudgery; and, put it in what way you will,
the early stage of violin-playing is drudgery, but it must be
gone through with. And then I had my hours of relaxa-
tion. I used to walk up and down the lawn in our garden
playing tunes in my own fashion. I got very much at
home on the finger-board, and that is the grand thing, after
all. No one ever gets at home there who has not begun
young, — not so young as I began, but at least under the
age of twelve. I was soon considered an infant phenome-
non on the violin, stood on tables, and was trotted out at
parties, and I thus early got over all shyness at playing in
public.
The finest lesson a young player can have is to hear good
playing. So my father thought. We had both come to a
kind of stand-still in our music. We seemed, as he ex-
pressed it, to have stuck.
It now happily occurred to him to subscribe to certain
quartet concerts then announced to take place at Willis's
Rooms. In those days such things were novelties. With
the exception of Ella's Musical Union, then in its early
days, I believe no public quartets have been given in Lon-
don, except perhaps as a rare feature in some chamber con-
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE.
l 3
cert. At each concert some bright, particular star appeared
as a soloist.
BOTTESINI.
On a certain afternoon there was neither solo pianist nor
violinist down on the programme, but a player on the contre-
basso was to occupy the vacant place. I remember my dis-
appointment. Who is that tall, sallow-looking creature,
with black mustache and straight hair, with long, bony
ringers, yet withal a comely hand, who comes lugging a
great double-bass with him ? Some one might have lifted it
up for him ; but, no, he carries it himself, and hoists it lov-
ingly on to the platform. He seems familiar with its ways,
and will allow no one to help him. Why, there are Sainton,
Hill, Piatti, and Cooper, all coming on without their
fiddles. They seem vastly interested in this ungainly couple,
— the man and the big bass. He has no music. People
behind me are standing up to get a better sight of him,
although he is tall enough in all conscience. I had
better stand up too ; they are standing up in front of me, I
shall see nothing ! — so I stood on a chair. The first curi-
osity over, we all sat down, and, expecting little but a series
of grunts, were astonished at the outset at the ethereal notes
lightly touched on the three thick strings, harmonics of
course, just for tuning. But all seemed exquisitely in tune
with the piano.
This man was Bottesini, then the latest novelty. How
he bewildered us by playing all sorts of melodies in flute-like
harmonics, as though he had a hundred nightingales caged
in his double-bass ! Where he got his harmonic sequences
from ; how he hit the exact place with his long, sensitive,
ivory-looking fingers ; how he swarmed up and down the
finger-board, holding it round the neck at times with the grip
of a giant, then, after eliciting a grumble of musical thunder,
darting up to the top and down again, with an expression
on his face that never seemed to alter, and his face always
calmly and rather grimly surveying the audience ; how his
bow moved with the rapidity of lightning, and his fingers
seemed, like Miss Kilmansegg's leg, to be a judicious com-
pound of clockwork and steam, — all this, and more, is now
a matter of musical history, but it was new then. I heard
him play the " Carnival de Venice." I have heard him
*4
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
play it and some three or four other solos since at intervals
of years. His stock seemed tome limited; but when you
can make your fortune with half a dozen, or even a couple
of solos, why play more? At one time he travelled with
Lazarus, the matchless clarionet-player ; and I shall long
remember the famous duet they invariably played, and
which was always encored. Then Bottesini was fond of
conducting and of composing. He got a good appointment
in Egypt, and I suppose got tired of going " around " playing
the same solos. I never wearied of his consummate grace
and finish, his fatal precision, his heavenly tone, his fine
taste. One sometimes yearned for a touch of human
imperfection, but he was like a dead-shot : he never
missed what he aimed at, and he never aimed at less than
perfection.
Another afternoon there came on a boy with a shock head
of light hair, who was received with a storm of applause.
He was about sixteen, and held a violin. His name was
Joachim. He laid his head upon his Cremona, lifted his
bow arm, and plunged into such a marvellous performance
of Bach's " Chaconne " as was certainly never before heard
in London. The boy seemed to fall into a dream in listen-
ing to his own complicated mechanism. He shook out the
notes with the utmost ease and fluency. It all seemed no
trouble to him, and left him quite free to contemplate the
masterpiece which he was busy in interpreting. Mendels-
sohn, after hearing him play the same masterpiece on one
occasion, caught him in his arms and embraced him before
the audience.
About this time I heard Jullien's band at the Surrey
Zoological Gardens. The siege of Gibraltar was going on
at night, with explosions and fireworks of inconceivable
splendor ; the great card-boai-d ships looked quite real to
me, — they were blown to pieces every evening, — and the
fort, with the sentinels pacing up and down on the ramparts,
as large as life. The band played in a covered alcove, not
far from the water's brink. The effect on a summer's even-
ing was delightful. Jullien's enormous white waistcoat
and heavily gilt arm-chair made a good centre. I can see
his large, puffy, pale face and black mustache now, as he
lolled back exhausted in the gorgeous fauteuil ; then sprang
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
*5
up, full of fire, patted the solo cornet on the shoulder with
"Pratiquez!" I happened to overhear him. " Pratiquez,
il faut toujours pratiquez." Bottesini also played there in
the still summer evenings, with magical effect, accompanied
by Jullien's band. Days and nights of my childhood, what
music ! what fireworks !
At this time Jenny Lind and Ernst were both in Lon-
don ; and Liszt, I believe, passed through like a meteor.
I never heard any of them in their prime, though I did
hear Madame Lind-Goldschmidt sing the " Ravens" at a
concert years afterwards, and it was my privilege to hear
Ernst before he had lost his cunning, nor shall 1 ever hear
his like again. He played once at Her Majesty's Opera-
House, when the whole assembly seemed to dream through
a performance of the " Hungarian Airs." The lightest
whisper of the violin controlled the house ; the magician
hardly stirred his wand at times, and no one could tell from
the sound when he passed from the up to the down bow in
those long, cantabile notes which had such power to en-
trance me.
I heard Ernst later at Brighton. He played out of
tune, and I was told that he was so shaken in nerve that,
playing a Beethoven quartet in private, and coming to a
passage of no great difficulty, which I have often scram-
bled through with impunity, the great master laid down his
fiddle and declared himself unequal to the effort.
Great, deep-souled, weird magician of the Cremona ! I
can see thy pale, gaunt face even now ; those dark, hag-
gard-looking eyes, with the strange veiled fires, semi-
mesmeric ; the wasted hands, so expressive and sensitive ;
the thin, lank hair and emaciated form, yet with nothing
demoniac about thee, like Paganini, from whom thou wast
absolutely distinct. No copy thou, — thyself all thyself, —
tender, sympathetic, gentle as a child, suffering, always suf-
fering ; full of an excessive sensibility; full of charm ; irre-
sistible and fascinating beyond words ! Thy Cremona should
have been buried with thee. It has fallen into other hands.
I see it every season in the concert-room. Madame Norman-
Neruda plays it. I know she is an admirable artist. I do
not hear thy Cremona ; its voice has gone out with thee, its
soul has passed with thine.
I heard other great players: Sivori, delicate, refined,
16 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
with a perfect command of his instrument, — a pupil of
Paganini's, playing all his pieces, and probably no more like
him than a Roman candle is like a meteor ; Chatterton, on
the harp, a thankless instrument, without variety and never
in tune, whose depths are quickly sounded, — arpeggio, a
few harmonics, a few, full, glorious chords and ethereal whis-
pering, and da capo I Piatti on the violoncello, — a truly
disembodied violoncello, so pure and free from catgut and
rosin came the sound ; and pianists innumerable in latter
davs. But if, looking back and up to the present hour, I
am asked to name oft-hand the greatest players — the very
greatest I have heard — I say at once, Ernst, Liszt, Ruben-
stein.
MEM OK IKS OK A MUSICAL LIFE.
17
CHAPTER II.
SOME OF MY TEACHERS.
FROM such heights I am loth to return to my own in-
significant doings, but they happen to supply me with
the framework for my present meditations ; they are, in
fact,, the pegs on which I have chosen to hang my thoughts.
I was at a complete stand-still ; I sorely needed instruction.
I went to the seaside for my health. One day, in the
morning, I entered the concert- room of the town hall at
Margate. It was empty, but, on a platform at the farther
end, half-a-dozen musicians were rehearsing. One sat up
at a front desk and seemed to be leading on the violin. As
they paused I walked straight up to him. I was about
twelve then.
" Please, sir," I began, rather nervously, " do you teach
the violin ? "
He looked round rather surprised, but in another moment
he smiled kindly, and said : —
" Why, yes — at least," he added, "that depends. Do
you mean vou want to learn ? "
" That's it," I said ; " I have learned a little. Will you
teach me ? "
" Wait a bit. I must finish here, first, and then I'll
come down to you. Can you wait? " he added, cheerily.
I had been terribly nervous when I began to ask him, but
now I felt my heart beating with joy.
" Oh, yes," I said, " I can wait ! " and I waited and heard
them play, and watched every motion of one whom I already
looked upon as my master.
And he became my master — my first real Piaster. Good,
patient Mr. Devonport ! I took to him, and he took to me,
at once. He got me to unlearn all my slovenly wavs, taught
me how to hold my fiddle, and how to finger, and how to
bow. It seems I did everything wrong. He used to write
out Kreutzer's earlv exercises over his breakfast, and
iS MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
bring them to me all blotted, in pen and ink, and actually
got into disgrace, so he said, with his landlady, for inking
the table-cloth ! That seemed to me heroic ; but who
would not have mastered the crabbed bowing, the ups and
downs, and staccatos, and slur two and bow one, and slur
three and bow one, and slur two and two, after that? And
I did my best, though not to his satisfaction ; but he never
measured his time with me, and he had an indefinitely
sweet way with him which won me greatly, and made me
love my violin — a five-pound Vuilhaume copy of Stradiva-
rius, crude in tone — more than ever.
When I left the sea I lost my master. I never saw him
again. If he is alive now, and these lines should chance to
meet his eye, I will join hands with him across the years.
Why should he not be alive? Hullah, and Sainton, and
Piatti, and Mine. Dolby, and Mme. Lind-Goldschmidt, and
I know not how many more of his contemporaries, and my
elders, are alive. Only there was a sadness and delicacy
about that pale, diaphanous face, its hectic flush, its light
hair, and slight fringe of mustache, — I can remember it so
well ; and I must own, too, there was a little cough, which
makes me fear that Devonport was not destined to live long.
Some one remarked it at the time, but I thought nothing of
it then.
I made a great stride under Devonport, and my next
master, whom I disliked exceedingly, was a young Pole,
Lapinski, who could not speak a word of English. Our
lessons were very dull. He taught me little, but he taught
me something, — the art of making my fingers ache, — the
great art, according to Joachim. My time with him was
pure drudgery, unrelieved by a single glow of pleasure or
gleam of recreation. He was a dogged and hard taskmaster,
knew exactly what he meant, and was utterly indifferent to
the likes and dislikes of his pupil, — the very opposite to
Devonport, whom in six weeks I got positively to love. In
music you learn more in a week from a sympathetic
teacher, or at least from some one who is so to you, than
from another, however excellent, in a month. You will
make no progress if he can give you no impulse.
What a mystery lies in that word " teaching" ! One will
constrain you irresistibly, and another shall not be able to
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
l 9
persuade you. One will kindle you with an ambition that
aspires to what the day before seemed inaccessible heights,
whilst another will labor in vain to stir your sluggish mood
to cope with the smallest obstacle. The reciprocal relation
is too often forgotten. It is assumed that any good master
or mistress will suit any willing pupil. Not at all — any
more than A can mesmerize B, who goes into a trance im-
mediately on the appearance of C. All personal relations
and teaching relations are intensely personal ; have to do
with subtle conditions, unexplored, but inexorable and
instantly perceived. The soul puts out, as it were, its in-
visible antennae, knowing the soul that is kindred to itself.
I do not want to be told whether you can teach me anything.
I know you cannot. I will not learn from you what I must
learn from another ; what he will be bound to teach me.
All you may have to say may be good and true, but it is a
little impertinent and out of place. You spoil the truth.
You mar the beauty. I will not hear these things from
you ; you spoil nature ; you wither art ; you are not for me
and I am not for you — " Let us go hence, my songs, —
she will not hear."
My next master was Oury. I fell in with him at Brighton
when I was about sixteen. He had travelled with Paganini,
and was a consummate violinist himself. He was a short,
angry-looking, stoutly built little man. Genial with those
who were sympathetic to him, and sharp, savage, and sar-
castic with others, — he made many enemies, and was
unscrupulous in his language. I found he had been unlucky,
and I hardly wondered at it, for a man more uncertain, un-
stable, and capricious in temper I never met ; but he was
an exquisite player. His fingers were thick and plump,
his hand was fat and short, not unlike that of poor Jaell,
the late pianist. How he could stop his intervals in tune
and execute passages of exceeding delicacy with such hands
was a mystery to me ; but Jaell did things even more amaz-
ing with his, — stretching the most impossible intervals, and
bowling his fat hands up and down the key-board like a
couple of galvanized balls.
I was at this time about sixteen, and a member of the
Brighton Symphony Society. We played the svmphonies
of the old masters to not verv critical audiences in the Pa-
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIEE.
vilion, and I have also played in the Brighton Town Hall.
It was at these meetings I first fell in with Oury.
I noticed a little group in the anteroom on one of the
rehearsal nights ; they were chattering round a thick-set,
crotchety-looking little man and trying to persuade him to
do something. He held his fiddle, but would not easily
yield to their entreaties. They were asking him to play.
At last he raised his Cremona to his chin and began to im-
provise. What fancy and delicacy and execution ! What
refinement ! His peculiar gift lay not only in a full, round
tone, but in the musical k4 embroideries," the long flourishes,
the torrents of multitudinous notes ranging all over the in-
strument. I can liken those astonishing violin passages to
nothing but the elaborate embroidery of little notes which
in Chopin's music are spangled in tiny type all round the
subject, which is in large type. When Oury was in a good
humor he would gratify us in this way, and then stop
abruptly, and nothing after that would induce him to play
another note. He had the fine, large style of the De Beriot
school, combined with a dash of the brilliant and romantic
Paganini, and the most exquisite taste of his own. In those
days De Beriot' s music reigned supreme in the concert-
room until the appearance of Paganini. It had not yet gone
out of fashion, and I remember hearing Oury play De
Beriot's showy first concerto with a full orchestra, at the
Pavilion, in a way which reminded me of some conqueror
traversing a battle-field ; the enthusiasm he aroused was
quite remarkable in that languid and ignorant crowd of
loitering triflers. He certainlv brought the house down.
He was a great player, though past his prime, and he knew
how to score point after point without ever sacrificing his
musical honor by stooping to clap-trap.
From Oury I received, between' the ages of fifteen and
seventeen, my last definite violin instruction. After that I
studied for myself and heard assiduously the best players,
but I was never taught anything. Oury had been trained
himself in the old and new schools of Rode, Baillot, and
De Beriot, and only grafted on the sensational discoveries,
methods, and tricks of Paganini, Ernst, and Sivori. But
he was artist enough to absorb without corruption and ap-
propriate without mimicry. He always treated me with a
semi-humorous, though kindly, indulgence. He was ex-
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
tremely impatient, and got quite bitter and angry with my
ways, stormed at my self-will, said I had such a terrible
second ringer that he believed the devil was in it. I had a
habit of playing whole tunes with my second finger on the
fourth string. It seemed more muscular than the rest, and,
from his point of view, quite upset the equilibrium of the
hand. He had a habit of sighing deeply over the lessons.
" You should have been in the profession. What's the
use of teaching you? Bah! you will never do anything.
I shall teach you no more."
Then he would listen, as I played some bravura passage
in my own way, half-amused, half-surprised, half-satirical ;
my method was clearly wrong, but how had I got through
the passage at all? Then, taking the violin from me, he
would play it himself, without explanation, and then play
on and say : —
"Listen to me, that is your best lesson, you rascal! I
believe you never practise at all. Nature has given you
too much facility. Your playing will never be worth any-
thing. You do not deserve the gifts God has given you."
At times poor Oury took quite a serious and desponding
view of me. He would sit long over his hour, playing away
and playing to me, telling me stories about Paganini's
loosening the horse-hair of his bow and passing the whole
violin between the stick and the horse-hair, thus allowing
the loosened horse-hair to scrape all four strings together,
and producing the effect of a quartet. He described the
great magician's playing of harmonic passages, and showed
me how it was done, and told me how the fiddlers when
Paganini played sat open-mouthed, unable to make out
how he got at all his consecutive harmonics.
In his lighter moods he taught me the farm-yard on
the violin : how to make the donkey bray, the hen chuckle,
the cuckoo sing, the cow moo. He taught me Paganini's
lt Carnaval de Venise" variations ; some of them — especially
the canary variation — so absurdly easy to any fingers at
home on the violin, yet apparently so miraculous to the
uninitiated. But it remained his bitterest reflection that
amateur I was, and amateur I was destined to be ; other-
wise I believe I should have been a pupil after his heart,
for he spent hour after hour with me, and never seemed to
reckon his time or his toil by money.
22 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
If I did not acquire the right method it was not Oury's
fault. He taught me how to hold the violin ; to spread my
ringers instead of crumpling up those I was not using ; to
bow without sawing round my shoulder.
" In position," he used often to say, " nothing is right
unless all is right. Hold your wrist right, the bow must go
right ; hold your fiddle well up. or you cannot get the tone."
Above all he taught me how to zv/iip instead of scraping-
the sound out. This springing, elastic bowing he contrasted
with the grinding of badly taught fiddlers, who checked the
vibration. Some violinists of repute have been " grinders."
but I could never bear to listen to them. Oury poisoned
me early against the grinders, and all short of the men of
perfect method. He instilled into me principles rather than
rules. I caught from him what I was to do, and how I was
to do it. He did not lecture at me like some masters ; he took
the violin out of my hands without speaking, or with merely
an impatient expletive, of which I regret to sa\* he was
rather too free, and played the passage for me. His
explanations I might have forgotten ; this I could never
forget, and I could tell at once whether what I did
sounded like what he did.
Oury taught me the secret of cant ab He playing on the
violin ; how to treat a simple melody with rare phrasing,
until it was transfigured by the mood of the player. He
taught me Rode's Air in G, — that beautiful melodv which
has been, with its well-known variations, the piece de
resistance of so many generations of violinists and soprani.
I was drilled in every note, the bowing w r as rigidly fixed
for me, the whole piece was marked, bar by bar, with
slur p and_/*, rait and crescendo. I was not allowed to
depart a hair's breadth from rule. When I could do this
easily and accurately Oury surprised me one day by say-
ing :"—
"Now you can play it as you like ; you need not attend
to a single mark ! "
" How so?" I said.
"Don't you see," he said, "the marks don't signify:
that is only one way of playing it. If you've got any music
in you you can plav it in a dozen other ways. Now, I will
make it equallv good," and he took the violin and played
it through, reversing as nearly as possible all the p's and_/"\s\
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
" bowing " the slur and slurring the "bow," and it sounded
just as well. I never forgot that lesson. At other times
Oury was most punctilious about what he called " correct"
bowing. He complained of my habit of beginning a forte
"attaque" with an up bow, — an unusual perversity I
admit, — but I replied, in my conceit, I had observed
Richard Blagrove do the same thing. Oury said, as sharply
as wisely, " When you play like Blagrove you may do it
too ; until then, oblige me, sir, by minding your up and
down bow, or I cease to be your violin tutor."
Oury detested Jullien ; why, I could never make out.
I was fond of maintaining that Jullien had done much for
music in England, introduced classical works, was a
famous conductor, and good composer of light music him-
self.
" He knows nothing, I tell you ; he is an ignorant,
affected charlatan. He cannot write down his own com-
positions, he borrows his subjects, he steals his treatment,
and he bribes a man to lick it into shape for him. Mellon,
his leader, is a good musician ; but don't talk to me of
Jullien. You admire the way his band plays the overture
to the ' Midsummer Night's Dream ; ' but those men learnt
it under Mendelssohn's bdton! Mendelssohn took an
infinity of trouble with those very men. They knew the
music by heart before Jullien touched it, and they played
away without even looking at him."
I used about this time to hear some very good quartet-
playing at Captain Newberry's, Brunswick square.
The captain had some fine violins ; one I specially coveted ;
he held it to be a genuine Stradivarius : it was labelled 171 2 ;
quite in the finest period, and of the grand pattern, — the
back a magnificently ribbed slice of maple in one piece ; the
front hardly so fine ; the head strong, though not so fine as
I have seen, — more like a Bergonzi ; but the fiddle itself
could never be mistaken for a Bergonzi. It had a tone like
a trumpet on the fourth string ; the third was full, but the
second puzzled me for years, — it being weak by comparison ;
but the violin was petulant, and after having it in my
possession for thirty years I know what to do with it if I
could ever again take the time and trouble to bring it into
oerfect order, and keep it so, as it was once my pride to do.
2 4
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL II EE.
On Captain Newberry's death that fiddle was sent me by
his widow, who did not survive him long. She said she
believed it was his wish.
This violin was my faithful companion for years. I now
look at it under a glass case occasionally, where it lies un-
strung from one end of the year to the other. It belonged
to the captain's uncle ; he had set his heart on it, and having
a very fine pair of carriage-horses, for which he had given
JC1S0, he one day made them over to his uncle and obtained
the Strad. in exchange. This was the last price paid for my
violin, some fifty years ago. It came into the hands of
Newberry's relative early in the present century ; how, I
know not. Many years ago I took this fiddle down to
Bath, and played it a good deal there in a band conducted
by the well-known Mr. Salmon. I found he recognized it
immediately. I there made acquaintance with the score of
Mendelssohn's " Athalie," playing it in the orchestra. I
studied the Scotch and Italian symphonies in the same
way.
No amateur should omit an opportunity' of orchestral or
chorus work. In this way you get a more living acquaint-
ance with the internal structure of the great masterpieces
than in any other. I first made acquaintance with the
k ' Elijah " and " St. Paul " in this way. What writing for
the violin there is in the chorus parts ! What telling passages
are those in " Be not afraid," where the first violins lift the
ohrases, rise after rise, until the shrill climax is reached and
the aspiring passage is closed with a long drawn-out^"/
When the violins pealed louder and louder, mounting
upwards, it was always a delight to me to hear my own
powerful first string thrilling through all the others. The
conductor used to know this passage, and the way in which
it told on my Strad., and invariably gave me a knowing nod
as he heard my violin at the first fiddle-desk through all the
others. I may add that, as a rule, when any particular.
violin in a band is heard above the rest it usually belongs
to a bungler ; but there are passages where the leading vio-
lins have carte blanche to play up, and then, if you can, you
may be allowed to sing through the rest ; and, if this be
anywhere allowable, it is of course so at the first violin
desk.
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIEE.
2 5
Most boys find it difficult to keep up their music at
school ; with me it was the reverse ; my ill-health was the
making of my music. I had been an invalid on and oft* up
to the age of seventeen.
When I was sixteen it became evident that I was not
going to die ; my health was still feeble, and my general
education defective. I was sent to an excellent tutor at the
Isle of Wight, the Rev. John Bicknell. That good man
never overcame my dislike to mathematics, but he got me
on in Latin, and he was kind enough to tolerate my
violin.
Oury had already begun to direct my violin studies. I
had ample time at school in the Isle of Wight for practis-
ing, and I practised steadily, nearly every day. I had a
faculty for practising. I knew what to do, and I did it.
I always remembered what Joachim had said about tiring
out the hand ; and with some abominable torture passages,
invented for me by that morose Pole, Lapinski, I took a
vicious pleasure in making my fingers ache, and an intense
delight in discovering the magical effects of the torture
upon my execution.
I put my chief trust in Kreutzer's exercises, — admirable
in invention and most attractive as musical studies, — the
more difficult ones in chords being little violin solos in
themselves. I perfected myself in certain solos at this time.
I had no one to play my accompaniments, and no one cared
to hear me play at school, except some of the boys, who
liked to hear me imitate the donkey and give the farm-yard
entertainment, including the groans of a chronic invalid,
and a great fight of cats on the roof which never failed
to be greeted with rapturous applause.
I said no one cared to hear me play at Freshwater. Yes,
some people did. One autumn whilst I was at Freshwater,
an old house, Farringford, with a rambling garden at the
back of the downs, was let to Baron A. — an eminent light
of the Bench — and his charming family. I forget how they
discovered my existence ; but I dare say Lady A. and the
young ladies found the place rather dull, and they were not
the people to neglect their opportunities.
I received an invitation to dinner ; my violin was also
asked. I did not reply like Sivori, when similarly invited
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
to bring his violin with him, " Merci ! raon violon ne dine
pas ! " I saw to my strings and screws, put together my
solos, and went, and enjoyed the occasion highly.
TENNYSON.
Soon after the A.'s left Farringford it was taken by
the Poet Laureate. At that time I was rapidly outgrow-
ing Longfellow, and my enthusiasm for Mr. Tennyson
amounted to a mania : he was to me in poetry what
Mendelssohn was in music. I can now place him. I can
now see how great he is. I can now understand his rela-
tion to other poets. Then I could not. He confused and
dazzled me. He took possession of my imagination.
I suppose the continued play of one idea upon my brain
was too much for me. To live so close to the man who
filled the whole of my poetic and imaginative horizon with-
out ever seeing him was more than I could bear. I
walked over the neglected, grass-grown gravel between the
tall trees yellowing in the autumn, and up to the glass-
panelled doors, as bold as fate.
" Mr. Tennyson," said the maid, " saw no one." I was
aware of that. Was Mrs. Tennyson at home? Perhaps
she would see me. The servant looked dubious. I was a
shabby-looking student, sure enough ; but there was some-
thing about me which could not be said nay ! I evidently
meant to get in, and in I got.
In another moment I found myself in the drawing-room
lately tenanted by the Baron and Lady A.
There was the piano, beside which Miss M. stood and
sang very shyly, and under protest, in her simple white mus-
lin dress and a rose in her hair; there — but the door
opened, and a quiet, gentle lady appeared, and bowed
silently to me. I had to begin then.
I had no excuse to make, and so I offered no apologv. I
had called desiring to see Mr. Tennyson, that was all.
The lady looked surprised, and sat down by a little work-
table with a little work-basket on it. She asked me very
kindly to sit down too. So I sat down. I said that mv ad-
miration for Mr. Tennyson's poems was so great that, as I
was living in the neighborhood, I had called with an ear-
nest desire to see him. I then began to repeat that I con-
M EMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. zf
sidered his poems so exquisite that — a smile was on the
kind lady's face as she listened for the thousand and first
time to such large and general praises of the laureate's
genius. But the smile somehow paralyzed me. She evi-
dently considered me a harmless lunatic, not an impertinent
intruder.
This was fortunate, for had I been summarily shown the
door I should not have been surprised. I should not have
gone, for I was desperate and prepared to show fight, and
be kicked out, if needful, by the laureate alone ; but the
fates were propitious.
Said Mrs. Tennyson, " My husband is always very busy,
and I do not at all think it likely he can see you."
" Do you think he would if you ask him?" I stammered
out.
Said Mrs. Tennyson, a little taken aback, " I don't
know."
" Then," said I, pursuing my advantage with, if any calm
at all, the calmness of a calm despair, " would you object
to asking him to see me, if only for an instant? "
What passed in that indulgent lady's mind I shall never
know ; the uppermost thought was probably not flattering
to me, and her chief desire was, no doubt, to get rid of me.
" He won't go till he has seen my husband — he ought never
to have got in ; but, as he is here, I'll manage it and have
done with him ; " or she might have reflected thus : " The
poor fellow is not right in his head ; it would be a charity
to meet him half-way, and not much trouble."
At any rate at this juncture Mrs. Tennyson rose and left
the room. She was gone about four minutes by the clock.
It seemed to me four hours. What I went through in those
four minutes no words can utter.
At last I heard a man's voice close outside the door.
" Who is it? Is it an impostor? "
In another moment the door opened. The man whose
voice I had heard — in other words, Mr. Tennyson —
entered.
He was not in court-dress ; he had not got a laurel-
wreath on his head, nor a lily in his hand — not even a
harp.
It was in the days when he shaved. I have two portraits
of him without a beard. I believe they are very rare now.
28 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
I thought it would be inappropriate to prostrate myself,
so I remained standing and stupefied. He advanced
towards me and shook hands without cordiality. Why
should he be cordial? I began desperately to say that I
had the greatest admiration for his poetry ; that I could not
bear to leave the island without seeing him. He soon
stopped me, and taking a card of Captain Crozier's, which
lay on the table, asked me if I knew him. I said I did, and
described his house and grounds in the neighborhood of
Freshwater.
I have no recollection of anything else, but I believe
some allusion was made to Baron A., when the poet
observed abruptly, " Now I must go ; good-by ! " and he
went. And that was all I saw of Mr. Tennyson for nearly
thirty years. The next time I set eyes on him was one
Sunday morning, about twenty-eight years later. He came
up the side aisle of my church, St. James, Westmoreland
street, Marylebone, and, with his son Hallam, sat near the
pulpit, almost in the very spot that had been pointed out to
me when I was appointed incumbent as the pew occupied
by Hallam the historian and his son Arthur, — the Arthur
of the " In Memoriam."
But I have not quite done with the interview at Fresh-
water. As the poet retired, Mrs. Tennyson reentered and
sat down again at her work-table. To her surprise, no
doubt, I also sat down. The fact is, I had crossed the
Rubicon, and was now in a state of considerable elation
and perfectly reckless. I thanked her effusively for the
privilege I had had ; I believe I made several tender and
irrelevant inquiries after the poet's health, and wound up
with earnestly requesting her to give me a bit of his hand-
writing.
This was, perhaps, going a little too far ; but I had now
nothing to lose, — no character for sanity, or prudence, or
propriety ; so I went in steadily for some of the poet's hand-
writing.
The forbearing lady pointed out that she treasured it so
much herself that she never gave it away. This would not
do. I said I should treasure it to my dying day, any little
scrap, — by which I suppose I meant that I did not require
the whole manuscript of " Maud," which the poet was
then writing, and which is full of Freshwater scenery. I
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
29
might be induced to leave the house with something short
of that.
With infinite charity and without a sign of irritation she
at last drew from her work-basket an envelope in Mr.
Tennyson's handwriting, directed to herself, and gave it to
me.
It was not his signature, but it contained his name.
Then, and then only, I rose. I had veni, I had vidi,
I had vici. I returned to my school, and at tea-time re-
lated to my tutor, with some little pride and self-conceit, the
nature of my exploit that afternoon. He administered to
me a well-merited rebuke, which, as it came after my indis-
cretion, and in no way interfered with my long-coveted joy,
I took patiently enough and with all meekness.
I have been a martyr to bad accompanists. All young
ladies think they can accompany themselves; so why not
you or any other man ? The truth is that very few ladies
can accompany at all. To accompany yourself properly
you must do it with ease and accuracy ; nothing is so charm-
ing and nothing is so rare.
To accompany well you must not onlv be a good musician,
but you must be mesmeric, sympathetic, intuitive. You
must know what I want before I tell you ; you must feel
which way my spirit sets, for the motions of the soul are
swift as an angel's flight.
As from the age of seven I have always played the violin
more or less publicly, I entered upon my amateur career at
Brighton without the smallest nervousness. My facility was
very great, but my execution, although showy (and, I blush
to add, tricky), was never as finished as I could have
desired. My tone, however, was considered by Ourv
remarkable, and except when drilling me with a purpose he
would never interfere with my reading of a solo. It was
the only point in which he gave in to me.
" I never taught you that," he would say sharply.
" Shall I alter it?" I would ask.
" No, no, let it alone ; follow your own inspiration ; you
must do as you will, the effect is good."
Indeed, no one ever taught me the art of drawing tears
from the eyes of my listeners. Moments came to me when
3o
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
I was playing — I seemed far away from the world. I was
not scheming for effect — there was no trick about it. I
could give no reason for the rail, the p, the pp, the f.
Something in my soul ordered it so, and my fingers fol-
lowed, communicating every inner vibration through their
tips to the vibrating string until the mighty heart of the Cre-
mona pealed out like a clarion, or whispered tremblingly
in response. But those moments did not come to me in
mixed, buzzing audiences ; then I merely waged impatient
war with a mob.
The}' came in still rooms, where a few were met. and
the lights were low, and the windows open toward the
sea.
They came in brilliantly lighted halls, what time I had
full command from some platform of an attentive crowd
gathered to listen, not to chatter.
They came when some one or other sat and played with
me, whose spirit-pulses rose and fell with mine, — in a world
of sound where the morning stars seemed always singing
together.
I was such a thorn in the side of my accompanists that
at last they got to have a wholesome dread of me. In this
way I often got oft' playing at houses where people asked
me to bring my violin impromptu, because I happened to
be the fashion.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
CHAPTER III.
COLLEGE DAYS.
I WENT up to Trinity College in 1856. I was com-
pletely alone. I had an introduction to Dr. Whewell, the
Master of Trinity. But what w;is Dr. Whewell to me,
or I to Dr. Whewell? Something, strange to say, we were
destined still to be to each other. Of this more anon.
Soon after passing my entrance examination I was sum-
moned into the great man's presence. In the course of our
interview I ventured rashly to say that I understood Cam-
bridge was more given to mathematics than to classics. Dr.
Whewell replied, with lofty forbearance, that when I had
been a little longer at Cambridge I should possibly correct
that opinion. As I had entered under the college-tutor,
Mr. Munro, perhaps the most famous Latin scholar of the
day, my remark was, indeed, an unfortunate one, most fully
displaying my simplicity and ignorance.
The master questioned me as to my aims and ambi-
tions. I had none, — I told him so very simply, — I played the
fiddle. He seemed surprised ; but from the first moment
of seeing him I took a liking to him, and I believe he did
to me. He had been seldom known to notice a fresh-
man personally, unless it were some public-school boy of
distinction. After mv first interview I was closely ques-
tioned at dinner in hall, when I found that Whewell was
regarded as a sort of ogre, not to be approached without
the utmost awe, and to be generally avoided if possible.
Of this I had heen happily ignorant, and, indeed, there had
been nothing to alarm me in the great man.
The master married, during my term of college life.
Lady Affleck, a charming person, and from the time she
became mistress at the Lodge the rugged old lion seemed to
grow affable and gentle, and apparently eager to do what he
could to make people "'at home."
When he married, the master did a very graceful thing.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
He sent for me one morning, brought Lady Affleck in
the drawing-room, and said, in his bluff way, "Mr. Hawe
1 wish you to know Lady Affleck, my wife. She is musics
she wishes to hear your violin." The master then left 1
with her, and she got me to arrange and come and play
the Lodge on the following night at a great party. I was
bring my own accompanist. I had played at Dr. Whewel
before that night, but that night the master paid me spec
attention. It was part of his greatness and of his tr
humility to recognize any sort of merit, even when tru
different in kind to' his own.
Whewell's ability was of a truly cosmic and univen
character ; but nature had denied him one gift, — the gift
music. He always beat time in chapel, and generally sa
atrociously out of tune. I do not think he had any e;i
music to him was something marvellous and fascinating ;
could talk learnedly on music, admire music, go to concer
have music at his house, W'orry over it, insist upon silen
when it was going on ; and yet I knew, and he knew tha
knew, that he knew nothing about it ; it was a closed woi
to him, a riddle, yet one he was incessantly bent upon so
ing, and he felt that I had the key to it and he had not.
On that night I played Ernst's " Elegie," not quite
hackneyed then as it is now, and some other occasior
pieces by Ernst, in which I gave the full rein to my fan(
The master left his company, and, taking a chair in front
where I stood, remained in absorbed meditation during t
performance.
I was naturally a little elated at this mark of resp<
shown to an unknown freshman in the presence of so ma
"Heads" of Houses and the elite of the University.
played my best, and indulged rather freely in a few mc
or less illegitimate dodges, which I thought calculated
bewilder the great man. I was rewarded, for at the clc
Dr. Whewell laid his hand upon my arm. "Tell me o
thing: how do you produce that rapid passage, ascendi
and descending notes of fixed intervals?" I had simply
a tour of force glided my whole hand up and down t
fourth open string, taking, of course, the complete series
harmonics up and down several times and producing tl
the effect of a rapid cadenza with the utmost ease; <
trick only requires a certain lightness of touch, and
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
33
knowledge of where and when to stop with effect. I replied
that I had only used the series of open harmonics which
are yielded, according to the well-known mathematical law,
by every stretched string when the vibration is interrupted
at the fixed harmonic nodes. The artistic application of
a law, which, perhaps, he had never realized but in theory,
seemed to delight him intensely, and he listened whilst I
repeated the cadenza, and again and again showed him the
various intervals on the finger-board, where the open har-
monics might be made to speak ; a hair's-breadth one way
or the other producing a horrid scratch instead of the sweet,
flute-like ring. It struck him as marvellous how a violinist
could hit upon the various intervals to such a nicety as to
evoke the harmonic notes. I replied that this was easy
enough when the hand was simply swept up and down the
string as I had done, but that to hit upon the lesser nodes
for single harmonics was one of the recognized violin diffi-
culties. I then showed him a series of stopped harmonics,
and played, much to his surprise, a tune in stopped har-
monics. He was interested to hear that Paganini had been
the first to introduce this practice, which has since become
common property.
After the anxiety of my entrance examination at Trinity
College, which I passed without glory, I solaced my loneli-
ness by making as much noise as ever I could on my violin.
My mathematics may have been weak, and my classics
uncertain, but it was impossible to ignore my existence. I
had not been up a fortnight when the president of the Cam-
bridge University Musical Society called upon me. He
believed I played the violin. " How did he know that?"
I asked. He laughed out, "Everybody in the place knows
it." Then and there he requested me to join the Musical
Society, and play a solo at the next concert. I readily
agreed, and from that time I became solo violinist at the
Cambridge Musical Society and played a solo at nearly every
concert in the Town Hall for the next three years.
I confess to some nervousness on my first public ap-
pearance at a University Concert. It was a grand night.
Sterndale Bennett, our new professor of music, himself
conducted his "May Queen," and I think Mr. Coleridge,
an enthusiastic amateur and old musical star at the Univer-
m MEM OK. CAL LIFE.
Sity, since very well known in London. sang, ha
lected as my chevaJ de bataillc, Kode's air in G wth varia-
tions, and to my own surprise, when my turn cane to go
on. I was quite shaky. The hall was cranned. the
master of Trinity sat in the front row, with othe heads of
colleges and their families. I tuned in the nteroom.
Some one offered me a glass of wine. I had nevi resorted
to stimulants before playing, but I rashly drank it it was in
my head at once. Sterndale Bennett conducted ie to the
platform. I was a I >tal stranger to the company, - a fresh-
man, in my second month only. My fingers fell imp and
unrestrained, my head was half swimming. 1 e crowd
looked like a mist. I played witli exaggerated i nession.
I tore the passion to tatter-. I trampled on th time. I
felt the excess of sentiment was bad, and special!) bhorrent
to Sterndale Bennett, who followed my vagaries i
— bless him forever !
But the thing took. The style was new; at 1
unconventional and probablv daring, for I reav hardly
knew what I was about. The air was listened i in dead
.silence, half out of curiosity no doubt; but a bust of ap-
plause followed the last die-away notes. I pluged into
the variations; I felt my execution slovenl) an beneath
my usual mark; but I was more than once inteiupted by
applause, and at the close of the next cantabile lovement
of extreme beauty, which I played better, — a soi if medi-
tation on the original air. — the enthusiasm ros to fever
pitch ; men stood up in the distant gallery and w ■■ ed their
cap-, and I remained holding my violin, unable i proceed
with the last rapid variation. When silence was Stored I
played this atrociously : I hardly played it at al it
quite wild. Sterndale Bennett, seeing that it W8 all up
with me that night, hurried and banged it through. nyhow :
but the critical faculty of the room was gone, s was my
head. I had won by a toss, and although then, iu\ often
afterwards, owing to neglect of practice. I was equently
not up to my own mark, my position as solo violiist at the
[ ty Concerts was never disputed up to theime that
1 >k i;,-. degree.
My most extensive effort was De Beriot's first oncerto.
! played through by heart, of course, nth full
orchestra. It did not go well ; the band was no
MEJk RIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 35
drilled and too ften smothered me ; but I was bent on
playing with a 11 orchestra, and I had my will ; but I
never repeated tl experiment at those concerts. As I was
invariably encon I taxed my ingenuity to devise new sen-
sations. " Old og Tray," the words of which were at
that time very fa;iliar, was a favorite encore, the first verse
taken cheerfully. ind each verse up to the sausage verse in-
creasing in pathc and emotion until the climax was reached
in —
' rnie tempting mutton pies
In which I recognize
he flavor of my old dog Tray.
Old dog Tray, he was faithful," etc., etc.
The audience vere never tired of following the sound-
drama conducte by me through its various stages, until the
sausage verse imriably broke down amidst roars of laughter.
One day, as I as sitting in my arm-chair, with an open
book upon my hee, a knock came at the door. Opening
the door brusqily, I was confronted by a strange figure,
with a sort of 1 le plaid waistcoat, well-made frock-coat.
heavily dyed th whiskers, and dark wig, yellow gloves,
and patent boot Middle-aged? No, — in spite of the wig
and showy get-p, — old, very old ; but oddly vigorous, in-
clined to embofi int ; ruddy, florid, perhaps choleric face,
marked feature.-- verspread now with a beaming smile and
a knowing twinle in the rather rheumy eyes.
I never saw s h an odd man. I laughed out almost, and
instinctively ext ided my hand and shook that of the irre-
sistible stranger /armly, although I did not know him from
Adam.
" Beg pardoi " he said ; " may I come in ? I tell you, my
friend, my nam s Venua — never heard of me — no matter —
old Venua kno^ you ; heard you play at the Town Hall —
got the stuff ii , ou ; you can play d d well ; you can
play better den it — nature gif you all dis gift — you practise
and den you p / like ze d 1 himself. Old Venua, dey
say to me, he iow all about it — he can tell you how to
play. Forty y.r ago you should have heard me play de
fiddle by — I iay de fiddle now ; gif me your fiddle —
vonderful tone >ur fiddle — where is your fiddle?"
All this was ttered without a pause, very rapidly.
36 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
The strange, rambling, stuttering, energetic, decided old
creature had now rolled into my room ; he had sat down and
pulled out an enormous silk pocket-handkerchief, then an
old gold snuff-box. " This gif me by ze Grand Duke of
Hesse Darmstadt. You take a pinch. Oh, no ! You are
young man. You know noding of snuff — bad 'abit — young
man, bad 'abit ! never you take snuff! Old Venua can't
get on widout his snuff. All de bigwigs take snuff with old
Venua — but where is your fiddle? Bring him out, I say.
Vonderful tone — let me see him."
What a jargon ! Was it Italian, French, or German-
English? I could never make out. In an old book, only
the other day, I met with a short biography of a certain
Venua, violinist, who flourished at the beginning of this
century. Old Venua, of Cambridge, was undoubtedly this
man. He was very long past his prime and utterly for-
gotten. I brought him out the fiddle ; he put it to his chin ;
in a moment I could see he had played ; his touch, execu-
tion, all but his intonation, were gone, but his style was
first-rate, and his expression admirable in intention.
From that day I and old Venua became close allies. He
used to ask me to dine with him, generally on Sunday,
and his ceaseless flow of anecdote and dramatic style of
conversation amused me greatly.
He had known Paganini, he had seen Beethoven, he had
chatted with Spohr, he remembered the first Napoleon. He
mimicked Haydn's style of conversation, violin in hand, as
though he had been intimate with him too. Yet this was
in 1859, and Haydn died in 1809.
" Gif me a sobjech," says Haydn. " Zo ! — here — Tra-
la-doi-e-dee-dee, etc., etc. Zat will do, mein freund. Haydn
— make you on zat sobjech — a beautiful melody, and work
it wonderful ; gif you him a start off, he do all the rest.
No quartet like the Haydn quartet, my young freund — he
is the great master of the string instrument — he knows the
just combinazione — he gif all their due. Spohr he all first
fiddle — he make all de rest lacqueys to first fiddle. Men-
delssohn he make an orchestra of his quartet. Beethoven
vonderful always. Mozart he learn all of Haydn — he come
after him and die before him. He never write quartet better
zan de Papa Haydn — he find new ideas and he write new
things — he great master of vat you call de form — of his
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
37
composition — but in de string quartet Haydn ze great
creator — a Brince — a real Brince and founder of ze quartet
art ! "
Venua loved the violin, and his impromptu lectures upon
it taught me much — always characteristic, humorous, genial,
and to the point.
"If you want to make a man irritable, discontented,
restless, miserable, give him a violin."
"Why?" said I.
" Because," he replied, — and I will now resume to some
extent the use of my own language, — " the violin is the
most exacting and inexorable of non-human things. A loose
joint somewhere and he goes ' tubby ' (a term used to ex-
press a dull vibration), a worn finger-board and he squeaks,
a bridge too high and his note grows hard and bitter, or too
low and he whizzes, or too forward and one string goes
loud, or too backward and two strings go soft and weak ;
and the sound-post (/.<?., the little peg which bears the strain
on the belly and back), mein Gott ! dat is de Teffell." But,
correcting himself, he added, " No, the French are right,
they call it the soul of the violin, Vdme du violon ; and it is
the soul, — if that is not right, all the fiddle goes wrong.
A man may sit the whole morning worrying the sound-post
a shade this way or that, and at last, in despair, he will give
it up ; then he will go to the bridge and waste his whole
afternoon fidgeting it about, and then he will give that up.
A hair's-breadth this way with the bridge — oh! the fourth
string is lovely ; but, bah ! the second and third are killed ;
a little back then, and now the fourth is dead, and the
chanterelle {i.e., fii"st string) sings like a lark — misery ! it
is the only string vat sing at all. Give him a fiddle ! " cried
the old gentleman, gesticulating; "yes, give him a fiddle,
it will make him mad ! "
Interspersed with such droll exaggerations were excellent
hints, such as, "Leave your bridge and your sound-post
alone if ever you get the fiddle to sound near right ; don't
change your bridge unless you are absolutely obliged —
sound-board, neck, head, nut, everything, but not the
bridge ; a fiddle and a bridge that have lived for years
together love each other as man and wife ; let them alone,
my young freund, vy make mischief? " and old Venua's
eye twinkled, as he chuckled at his own joke, and never
ceased talking and flourishing his arms.
3 S MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
It was Venua who first taught me about the fabric of
the violin what my old master, Oury, — who was a pupil of
Mori, — first made me feel about violin-playing, — a tender
love and sympathy for the instrument as well as the art.
What was Venua's connection with Cambridge I never
could make out. He seemed independent. He had long
ceased to teach or play, yet he was frequently away, and
appeared only at intervals, always retaining the same lodg-
ings at Cambridge, aud generally giving me a call when he
was in town. When I came up, about a year after leaving
the University, for my voluntary theological examination.
I inquired for my old friend Venua ; but he was gone, and
no one could give me any news of him. I never saw him
again.
From the time that I entered the Church I have never
played to anv real purpose. I resolved to make that sacri-
fice, and no subsequent reflection has led me to repent of my
decision. I could never have played the violin by halves,
and, had I come up to London and entered the Church in
the character of a fiddling parson, I should in all probabil-
ity never have got credit for, or applied myself seriously to
win, any other position. At all events I should have been
heavily weighted and laid myself open to many temptations.
I should always have been coming West in search of musi-
cal society and distraction, and people would have said, as
my caricaturists continue to say, " He should have stuck to
the one thing which he could do well, and not meddled
with theology." These good people sometimes gave me
credit for having made an heroic sacrifice. They knew
nothing about it. The sacrifice I made was a very small
one. From the age of eight to the age of twenty-three I
had played the fiddle in season and out of season. Applause
had lost its charm for me. I was hardened to flattery.
My own critical taste disenchanted me with my own per-
formances. Nothing but the best suited me. and I knew I
never could attain to that as an executant myself, because
I never could take up the violin professionally. Then.
fiddling was not my only taste. I had a passion for oratory,
for literature, for the study of human nature, and for church
work. ^For a time my new parochial sphere, with its
special enthusiasms, expelled everything else.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
39
CHAPTER IV
HEARING MUSIC.
WOULD you rather be blind or deaf? Most people
will illogically reply, " Neither ; " but when pressed
nine out often will be found to answer, " Leave me
the sight of my eyes — let me be deaf." Yet all experience
shows that they are wrong. Deafness tries the temper more,
isolates more, unfits for social converse, cuts off from the
world of breathing, emotional activity, tenfold more than
blindness. There is something as yet unanalyzed about sound,
which doubles and intensifies at all points the sense of living ;
when we hear we are somehow more alive than when we
see. Apart from sound the outward world has a dream-
like and unreal look ; we only half believe in it ; we miss
at each moment what it contains. It presents, indeed,
innumerable pictures of still-life ; but these refuse to yield
up half their secrets. If any one is inclined to doubt this,
let him stop his ears with cotton wool for five minutes, and
sit in the room with some intelligent friend who enjoys the
full use of his ears, and at the end of five or ten minutes
let the two compare notes. Of course we must suppose
that both are doing nothing, except the one taking stock of
his loss, and the other taking stock of his gain.
I sit, then, in my chair stone-deaf. I look up at the pict-
ures on the wall, — a man driving a goat, a hay-stack, and
somepigs, — an engraving of Millais' " Black Brunswicker."
I am tired of the sight of it. I notice the bird on his perch ;
his mouth is wide open, he looks to me as if he were in a
fit. I point at him in an alarmed manner ; my friend shakes
his head with a smile, — the bird's only singing. I can't
say I am glad to hear it, for I cannot hear anything. Pres-
ently my friend rises and goes to the door, opens it ; what
on earth for? Why, in jumps the cat. I suppose he heard
it outside ; it might have mewed till doomsday as far as my
ears were concerned. My strange companion has no sooner
4°
MEM OKIES OF A MCSICAL LIFE.
sat down on his chair than he jumps up as if stung. He
points out, in answer to my bewildered look, that the legs
are loose ; he must have heard them creak. I suppose. Then
he goes up to the clock, and begins winding it up ; he must
have noticed that it had left off ticking. I might not have
found that out for hours. Another start! — he rushes from
the room, I follow : the maid has spilt the coal-scuttle all
down the stairs ; he probably heard the smash. My wife
might have fallen downstairs and broken her neck, and I
should have known nothing about it. No sooner are we
alone again than he once more rises. I know not why ; but
I perceive he is met at the door by some one who has called
him : it is of no use for any one to call me.
There happens to be a kettle on the fire, and at a par-
ticulai moment my prudent friend rises. I should never
have thought of it, — the kettle is going to boil over ; he
hears. All this is insupportable. I am being left out of
life : it is worse than being shut up in the dark. I tear the
wool out of my ears long before the expiration of the ten
minutes, and my friend addresses me as follows : —
■• I pass over the canary, the cat. the chair, the coal-
scuttle, and the kettle. You happened to find out about
them a day after the fair by using your eyes ; but. besides all
this, of how much vivid life were you deprived. — how many
details of consciousness, how manvavenues of thought, were
lost to you in less than ten minutes ! As I sat I could hear
your favorite nocturne of Chopin being played in the next
room. Perhaps vou did not know it was raining ; nor should
I have noticed it, only I heard it on the skylight I there-
fore rang the bell, ordered a trap-door open in the roof to be
shut, and sent the carriage for a lady who would have other-
wise had to walk home. You did not notice a loud crack
behind you ; but. in fact, a hot coal flew out of the fire, and
I seized it in time to prevent mischief. The postman's knock
reminded me of some letters I ought to write, and I made a
note of them. The band playing outside put me in mind of
some concert-tickets I had promised to send. A neighbor-
ing church-bell reminded me of the fact that it was
Wednesday, and about a quarter to eleven o'clock. Punch
and Judy, heard in the distance, reminded me of the children,
and some tovs I had promised. I could hear the distant
whistle of a train. The pleasant crackling of the fire behind
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
4 1
me was most genial. I let a poor bee out who was buzzing
madly upon the window-pane. I heard a ring at the street-
bell ; presently I heard a well-known voice in the hall. I
knew who had arrived — I knew who met him; I could
shrewdly conjecture where they went together, and I guessed
not unnaturally that the children's lessons would be neg-
lected that morning, since a far more agreeable companion
had stepped in to monopolize the eldest daughter. Of all
which things, my poor friend, you knew nothing, because
your ears were stuffed with cotton wool."
Alas ! too many of us go through life with our ears
stuffed with cotton wool. Some persons can hear, but not
well : others can hear common sounds and musical sounds,
and no one would suspect in them any defect, until it some
day turns out that they do not know the difference between
" God save the Queen" and " Auld lang syne." Thus we
reach the distinction between the common ear and the mu-
sical ear. Then, in connection with the musical ear, there
are mysteries. Some cannot hear sounds lower than a cer-
tain note ; others cannot hear them higher than a certain
note, as musical sounds.
The mystery of the musical ear has not been solved. Yet
some things are known about it. There is probably no ear
so radically defective — except a deaf ear — as to be inca-
pable of a certain musical training. The curate who arrives
in a High Church parish without a notion of the right note
to intone upon, and with the vaguest powers of singing it
when it is given him, in a few months learns to take fairly
the various pitches in the service.
But still the question remains, — a physiological one, —
why is one ear musical and another not? Professor Helm-
holtz, whose discoveries in the sound- world are only com-
parable to the discoveries of Newton in the world of light,
has put forth an ingenious theory somewhat to this effect :
He discovered within the ear, and soaked in a sensitive
fluid, rows and rows of microscopic nerves, — several hun-
dred in number, — each one of which, like the string of a
pianoforte, he believed vibrated to some note ; therefore, we
were to infer that just as a note sung outside a piano will
set up in the corresponding wire a sympathetic vibration,
so any sound or sounds in the outer world represented by a
nerve wire, or nerves in the ear, could be heard by the ear ;
4 2
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
and, as a consequence, I suppose any absence of or defect
in these internal nerve wires would prevent us from hear-
ing the sound as others better constituted would hear it.
The next direct question of musical ear now becomes one
of inherited tendency and special training. The musical
ear is the ear that has learned — by constantly using the
same intervals — to recognize the tones and semitones of
the usual scale, and to regard all variations of quarter-tones
as exceptions and subtleties not to be taken account of in
the general construction of melody and harmony. Now,
our octave, and our division of the octave into tones and
semitones, is not artificial, but natural, founded as much
upon certain laws of sound vibration as our notation (if I
may say so) of color is founded upon the laws of light-
vibration. But although the selection of eight notes with
their semitones is the natural and scientific scale, seeing
that the ear is capable of hearing impartially vast numbers
of other vibrations of sound which produce vast numbers of
other intervals, quarter-notes, etc., what we have to do in
training the musical ear is just to harp on the intervals
which compose the musical scale in various keys, and on
these only. In this way the ear gets gradually weaned
from sympathy with what is out of tune, ceases to be dog-
like or savage-like, and becomes the cultured organ for
recognizing the natural order and progression of those
measured and related vibrations which we call musical
sound. Of course a tendency like this can be inherited
just as much as any other, and in almost all cases it can be
improved and cultivated.
CONCERTS.
Some people enjoy themselves at concerts. But " some
people" and " concerts" are vague terms. You must go
with the right people, and you must go to the right con-
certs. These right conditions will, of course, vary accord-
ing to taste and cultivation. The right people for you are
in all cases the people with whom you are musically in
sympathy. The right concerts for you are the concerts you
can at least in some measure enjoy and understand. The
classical pedant sneers at people who delight in ballad con-
certs and hate Wagner, but the greatest composers have not
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
43
been above ballads ; and, although there are bad ballads, yet
the characteristics of a ballad — namely, that it should be
lyrical, simple, and easily understood — are not bad char-
acteristics. Some of the greatest men have been infinite
losers because they happened to be generally unintelligible,
whilst inferior people have exercised an influence out of
proportion to their merits, simply because they made them-
selves generally understood. And be it observed that this
element of intelligibility is one common to the ballad and
all the greatest works of art. The greatest men all "strike
home." The transfiguration is simple ; so is the Moses
of Michael Angelo. So is Handel's " Messiah " taken as a
w hole. So is the " Elijah " of Mendelssohn. They are a
great deal more than simple, but they are that. Let me
revive a scene, fresh, doubtless, in the memory of many now
living, in which the hearing of music in public probably
reached its climax. I allude to the production of Mendels-
sohn's "Elijah" at the Birmingham festival of 1S46, upon
which occasion Mendelssohn himself wielded the conduc-
tor's baton.
On that memorable August morning in the year 1S46,
when, punctual to the minute, Felix Mendelssohn stepped
into the conductor's seat, and, facing the immense audience
assembled in the noble Town Hall of Birmingham, was
received with a storm of applause which was taken up and
redoubled by the chorus and orchestra, how little did that
vast audience know that in little more than a year from that
time the heart of the great composer would have ceased to
beat! That day, we must always think, was the crowning
moment of his life, and that great oratorio seems to us the
culmination of his mighty musical and dramatic faculty.
All those who were present declare that that first public
performance was one never to be forgotten ; the novelty
of treatment, the startling effects, the enchanting subjects,
the prodigious daring of some of the situations, the heavenly
melodies which have since become musical watchwords,
and, above all, the presence of the composer, who sent an
electric thrill through the room, and inspired chorus, band,
and singers with the same lofty enthusiasm which made him
so great and irresistible in achievement, — all this may now,
alas ! be remembered, but can never be reproduced. It
made the hearing of the music of " Elijah " for the first time a
44
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
perfectly typical occasion, and one whose conditions, as far
as they are realizable, should never cease to be striven after.
There is a phrase, " I was carried away by the music."
That expression is true to feeling; it means, "When I
heard this or that I ceased to be affected by the outward
things or thoughts which a moment before moved me. I
entered a world of other feeling, or, what I before possessed
was so heightened and changed that I seemed to have been
' carried away' from the old thing in a moment." But it
would be still truer to say, not " music carried me away,"
but " music carried away, or changed, the mood, and with
the significance of the things which occupied me in that
mood.*'
The easy command over the emotions possessed by sound,
and elaborated by the art of music, is due to the direct im-
pact of the air-waves upon the drum of the ear, which
collects them and sends them to the seat of consciousness in
the brain by means of the auditory nerve. The same, of
course, is true of the waves of color upon the eye, scent
upon the nose, and vibrations of touch taken by the brain
even from the most distant nerve in the body. But the
auditory nerve has in some things a strange advantage and
prerogative of power over the others. First, the distance
from the ear to the brain is shorter than that of any other of
the sensitive surfaces, so the time taken to convey the im-
pressions of sound is less, and therefore the impact more
direct. This measured by time is infinitesimal, but measured
by emotional effect it counts for much. Secondly, the vibra-
tions of sound as distinguished from the vibrations of light,
and even the vibrations of touch, which are, after all, differ-
ently local, — the vibrations of sound induce a sympathetic
vibration in every nerve in the body ; they set it going, in
short, as the strings of a piano are set going by the stroke
of a hammer on the floor, and when the sound is excessive
or peculiar all the great ganglionic centres are disturbed, the
diaphragm and many other nerves and muscles are influ-
enced, the stomach is affected, the spine " creeps." as we
say, the heart quickens and throbs with strong beatings in the
throat. Thus a curiously sympathetic action is set up
through this physical peculiarity which sound has of shak-
ing, moving, and at times causing to tremble the human
body.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
45
We can explain, perhaps, why it is that our musical
sensations are different in small rooms and large ones, or,
to speak more closely, why the relations between the vol-
ume of sound and the space to be rilled must be suitable in
order to produce the right effect. I can sit close to a piano
and listen to a " Lied ohne Worte." I can take in every
inflection of touch with ease, not a refinement is lost ; but
if I go to the end of a long room the impact is less direct,
the pleasure less intense ; the player must then exaggerate
all his effects ; hence a loss of refinement and ease. Public
players and singers constantly make shipwreck thus in pri-
vate rooms. Accustomed to vast spaces they roar and
bang until the audience is deaf, and the only reason why
the unknowing applaud on such occasions, and the only
difference, as far as they are concerned, between the pro-
fessional and the amateur, is simply that the first is so
much louder than the second. This makes them clap
their hands and cry "Bravo!" but in reality they are
applauding a defect.
The only musical sounds which really master vast spaces,
like the Albert Hall, are those of a mighty organ or an im-
mense chorus. The Handel Festival choruses are fairly
proportioned to the Crystal Palace ; but on one occasion,
when a terrific thunder-storm burst over Sydenham in the
middle of " Israel in Egypt," every one beneath that crystal
dome felt that, acoustically, the peal of thunder w r as very
superior to the whole power of the chorus, because the re-
lation between the space to be filled and the volume of
sound required to fill it was in better proportion. But
there is still something which has not yet been said for
small sounds in large places. Transport yourself in im-
agination to the Albert Hall on some night when, as is
usually the case, there is but a scanty orchestra, and pres-
ently a new mystery of sound will present itself to you.
At first you will be disappointed. Any one can hear that
the hall is not properly occupied by the sound ; the violins
should be trebled at least, several of the wind instruments
doubled, etc. You think you will not listen to this charm-
ing E flat symphony of Mozart ; you cannot help feeling
that you lose a delicate inflection here, a staccato there, a
flute tone, a pianissimo on the drum, or a whole piece of
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MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
47
iia moderately-sized room, — I lose much of all that, — but
I ain a number of new abnormal effects, which also have
a lower over certain hidden depths and distant fastnesses
othe emotional region.
vlusic has a vast future before it. We are only now
banning to find out some of its uses. With the one
e:eption of its obvious and admitted helpfulness as an
a<unct of religious worship, as a vehicle for and incentive
oreligious feeling, I had almost said that we had as yet
c covered none of its uses. It has been the tov of the rich ;
itias often been a source of mere degradation to both rich
ad poor ; it has been treated as a mere jingle and noise, —
spplying a rhythm for the dance, a kind of Terpsichorean
z i-tom, or serving to start a Bacchanalian chorus, the
cief feature of which has certainly not been the music.
..-id yet those who have their eyes and ears open may
rid in these primitive uses whilst they run the hints of
r.isic's future destiny as a vast civilizer, recreator, health-
or. work-inspirer, and purifier of man's life. The horse
iws what he owes to his bells. The factory girls have
n instinctively forced into singing, finding in it a solace
ad assistance in work. And for music, the health-giver,
viat an untrodden field is there ! Have we never known
a invalid forget pain and weariness under the stimulus of
msic? Have you never seen a pale cheek flush up, a dull
s sparkle, an alertness and vigor take possession of the
viole frame, an animation succeed to apathy? What does
a this mean? It means a truth that we have not fully
psped, a truth pregnant with vast results to body and
rind. It means that music attacks the nervous svstem
erectly, reaches and rouses where physic and change of
a" can neither reach nor rouse.
MUSIC AS A HEALER.
Music wdl some day become a powerful and acknowl-
eged therapeutic. And it is one especiallv appropriate to
tis excited age. Half our diseases, some physicians sav all
K diseases, come from disorder of the nerves. How many
is of the mind precede the ills of the bodv ! Boredom
ikes more patients than fever, want of interest and excite-
ient, stagnation of the emotional life, or the fatigue of over-
4S MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
wrought emotion, lies at the root of half the ill-health of our
young men and women. Can we doubt the power of music
to break up that stagnation ? Or, again, can we doubt its
power to soothe ; to recreate an overstrained emotional life,
by bending the bow the other way? There are moods of
exhausted feeling in which certain kinds of music would act
like poison, just as whip and spur, which encourage the
racer at first, tire him to death at last. There are other
kinds of music which soothe, and, if I may use the word,
lubricate, the worn ways of the nervous centres. You will
ask what music is good for that? We reply, judgment and
common-sense, and, above all, sympathy, affectional and
musical sympathy, will partly be your guide, but experience
must decide. Let some friend well versed in the divine
art sit at the piano, and let the tired one lie on a couch
and prescribe for herself or for himself. This will happen :
" Do not play that ' Tannhauser' overture just now, — it
wears me out, I cannot bear it;" or, "Yes — sing that
' Du bist die Ruh,'and after that I must hear Mendelssohn's
' Nocturne,' out of the ' Midsummer Night's Dream ; '
and then — and then — what must come next must be left
to the tact and quick sympathy of the musician. I have
known cases where an hour of this treatment did more good
than bottlefuls of bark or pailfuls of globules ; but I do not
wish to overstate the case. I merely plead for an unrecog-
nized truth, and I point to a New Vocation, — the vocation
of the Musical Healer.
Music is not only a body healer ; it is a mind regulator.
The great educational function of music remains almost to
be discovered. The future mission of music for the million
is the Discipline of Emotion.
What is the ruin of art? Ill-regulated emotion.
What is the ruin of life? Again, ill-regulated emotion.
What mars happiness? What destroys manliness? What
sullies womanhood? What checks enterprise? What spoils
success? Constantly the same, — ill-regulated emotion.
The tongue is on fire, an uncontrolled and passionate out-
burst swallows up many virtues, and blots out weeks of
kindness.
There is one thing more important than knowing self; it
is governing self. There is one thing better than crushing
impulse ; it is using impulse. The life of the ascetic is half
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE. 49
true, the life of the voluptuary is the other half true. The
stoic may be said to be blind at least of one eye. The cynic
is very nearly blind of both, since the power and the passion
and the splendid uses of existence are hidden from him, and
all these go wrong in various ways, from abusing, misusing,
or neglecting the emotional life.
The Greek was not far wrong when he laid such stress on
gymnastics and music. Of music, indeed, in its modern,
exhaustive, and supple developments, as the language of the
emotions, he knew nothing ; but his faint guess was with a
certain fine and unerring instinct in the right direction.
Shame upon us that, in the blaze of modern music, we have
almost missed its deepest meaning ! The Greek at least
understood how sound regulated motion, which is, after all,
onlv the physical expression of emotion ; not a procession,
not a social gathering, not a gymnasium, nay, not even an
important oration, was thought complete without the intro-
duction of musical sound ; and that not as a mere jingle or
pastime, but to regulate the order, the variety, the intensity
of bodily motions, actions, and words, so that throughout
there might be an elaborate discipline carried on through
musical sound, — a discipline which, thus learned at the
schools, met the Greek again at every turn in his social and
political life, and ended by making his earth-life that rounded
model of physical and intellectual harmony and perfection
which has made at once the despair and wonder of sculp-
tors, poets, and philosophers of all ages.
And we, living in the full development of this divine art
of music, put it to less practical uses than the Greek, who
never got beyond music as a rhythmic and melodic regulator
of dancing, feasting and oratory!
Music rouses the emotions. Inward activities, long dor-
mant, or never before awakened, are called up, and become
new powers within the breast ; for, remember, emotion
nerves for action. The stupidest horse that goes up-hill to
the sound of bells, the timidest soldier that marches to
battle with fife and drum, the most delicate girl who spins
round tireless in the dance, the poorest laborer who sings
at his work, — anv of them are good enough to prove that
nusic rouses and sustains emotion.
But, secondly, music disciplines and controls emotion.
That is the explanation of the art of music, as distin-
c MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
guished from the mere power of the musical sound. You
can rouse with a stroke ; but to guide, to moderate, to con-
trol, to raise and depress, to combine, to work out a
definite scheme involving appropriate relations and pro-
portions of force, and various mobility, — for this you
require the subtle machinery of an art, and the direct
machinery for stirring up and regulating emotion is the
wonderful vibratory mechanism created by the art of music.
Now, if music does really rouse and then take in hand
and rule at its will, and thereby teach us to rule the emo-
tions, it is obvious that we are, when we we hear music
intelligently and sympathetically, actually cultivating ab-
stract habits of mind which may after-wards be trans-
ferred as trained forces to the affairs of daily life. As
the study of Euclid trains the mind in the abstract, so the
study of music trains the emotions in the abstract. If you
want to touch and train this emotional life music is your
all-powerful ally.
The time- is not distant when this great truth will be
understood and practised in connection with our toiling
masses, — our artisans, our poor, our laborers, our degraded
denizens of back streets, cellars, and foul alleys. There
are millions whose only use of the emotional life is base,
undisciplined, and degraded. Pleasure with many means
crime ; restraint, the real handmaid of pleasure, is un-
known ; system, order, harmony in their feelings, habits of
self-control, checking the impulses, moderating and econ-
omizing the feelings, guiding them to powerful purposes
and wise ends and wholesome joys, of all this our masses
are chiefly ignorant ; yet, if what I have maintained be true,
all this music would mightily help to teach and to give.
I have known the oratorio of the " Messiah" draw the low-
est dregs of Whitechapel into a church to hear it, and during
the performance sobs have broken forth from the silent and
attentive throng. Will any one say that for these people to
have their feelings for once put through such a noble and
long-sustained exercise as that could be otherwise than
beneficial ? If such performances of both sacred and secular
music were more frequent we should have less drunken-
ness, less wife-beating, less spending of summer gains, less
pauperism in winter. People get drunk because they have
nothing else to do ; they beat their wives because their
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
5'
minds are narrow, their tastes brutal, their emotions, in a
word, ill-regulated ; they spend their wages because they
have no self-control, and dawdle in public houses, where
money must be spent, simply in the absence of all other
resources ; and they starve in winter because they have not
acquired the habit of steady work, which is impossible
without steady and wholesome recreation, or that steady
thrift and self-control which is impossible apart from dis-
ciplined emotion.
The question of music for the people will some day become
a great government question. A few thousands spent on
promoting bands, cheap and good, accessible and respecta-
ble, would save the country millions in pooi"-rates. I do not
say that music will ever shut up all our prisons and work-
houses, but I venture to believe that, as a chief and sovereign
means of rousing, satisfying, and recreating the emotions, it
would go far to diminish the number of paupers and crimi-
nals. It would help them to save, it would keep them from
drink, it would recreate them wholesomely, and teach them
to govern their feelings, — to use, and not invariably abuse,
their emotions.
One Saturday afternoon I stood outside a public house,
and saw the groups of men standing round the door. Those
that came to the door did not enter ; those who came
forth with lighted pipes paused ; a slatternly girl or two,
with a ragged child in her arms ; a wife who had followed
her husband to look after the Saturday wages, which were
going straight to the gin-shop ; a costermonger, with his
cart, drew up ; the idle cabmen came across the road ; even
a few dirty, stone-throwing, dog-worrying boys ceased their
sport; and two or three milliners' "Hands" stood still.
And what was it all about? I blush for my country ! A
wretched cornet, with a harp, no two strings of which were
in tune, the harpist trying wildly to follow " The last rose
of summer" with but two chords, and always in with the
wrong one. The weather was bitterly cold : the men's
hands were in their pockets, the girls shivered ; but they
were all taking their solace. This was the best music they
could get ; it seemed to soothe and refresh them. Oh that
I could have led those people to some near winter pavilion,
or even a cold garden, where they could have walked about
and heard a popular selection of tunes, an overture, any-
5 2
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIEE.
thing, by a common but excellent German band ! What
good that would have done them ! How they would have
enjoyed it ! And supposing that every Saturday they could
look forward to it, admission twopence apiece, the men
would be there with their wives and children ; they would
spend less on the whole family than they would have squan-
dered on themselves in one drunken afternoon. They could
meet their friends, have their chat and glass of ale, or cup
of coffee, in the winter garden ; they would go home sober ;
and being satisfied, recreated, having had their exercise and
company, would be more likely to go to bed early than to
get drunk late.
Oh ! what a vast, what a beneficent future has music in
the time to come !
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 53
CHAPTER V.
OLD VIOLINS AND THEIR MAKERS.
THE Construction, the History, the Sound of the violin
would make a romantic work in three volumes as
sensational as, and far more instructive than, most
novels.* The very pine-wood smells good, to begin with.
The forests of the Southern Tyrol, which now teem with
saplings, when the old violins were made, from 1520 to
1750, still abounded in those ancient trees, so eagerly and
often vainly sought out by modern builders, and which the
old viol-makers found to possess the finest acoustic proper-
ties.
The mighty timbers were felled in late summer. They
came in loose, floating rafts from the banks of the Garda ;
they floated down the Mincio to Mantua. Brescia was in
the midst of them. From Como they found their way to
Milan, and from Lake Maggiore direct, via the Ticino and
the Po, to Cremona.
What market days were those ! What a timber feast to
select from, and what cunning lovers and testers of wood
were the old viol-makers, the fathers of the violin ! The
rough heaps of pine, pear, lemon, and ash, beloved of the
Brescians ; of maple and sycamore, preferred by the Cre-
monese, lay steaming dry and hard in a few hours beneath
the sun of the southern Alps.
Before a beam was bought the master passed his hand
over the surface. He could tell by touch the density of its
fibre. Then he would take two equal slips of deal and
weigh them, and judge of their porousness. The very appear-
ance of the wood would guide him to its probable vibra-
tional powers. Then he would, perchance, before leaving
the market, cut strips of equal length, and elicit their relative
intensities by striking their tongues. He would often select
for a definite purpose, looking for a soft, porous piece, or a
specially hard and close-fibred grain, — a certain appearance
54
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
he would instinctively associate with rare acoustic proper-
ties. The seller would be eager to find the pieces, useless
to other customers, invaluable to an Andreas Amati, for he
was sure that the viol-maker would buy what suited him at
a long price. After the lapse of nearly two centuries we
can trace such favorite beams by peculiar stains, freckles
and grain ings. When, after cutting up a dozen trees once in
two or three years, a piece of fine acoustic wood was found, it
was kept for the master's best work. The same pine-beam
will crop up in the bellies of Stradivarius at an interval of
years. Another can be traced in the violins of Joseph
Guarnerius, and after his death Carlo Bergonzi got hold of
the remnants of it, and we detect it by a certain stain in the
fibre.
The anxiety to retain every particle of a precious piece
of wood is seen in the subtle and delicate patching and
repatching of backs and bellies. The seams are only dis-
coverable by a microscope, so perfect is the cabinet-work.
How different from the modern maker at Madrid, whom
Tarisio relates as having to repair a damaged Stradivarius,
and, rinding the belly cracked, sent it home with a brand-new
one of his own manufacture !
The properties of fine violin wood are very mysterious.
Only to be surrounded by a selection of fine violins is an
experience which cannot be forgotten. Sit in the room
with them, with your eyes shut, and, although you may not
touch one of them, you will soon be aware of ghostly pres-
ences.
THE ANATOMY OF THE VIOLIN.
Let us now look at the violin anatomically. It is a mira-
cle of construction, and as it can be taken to pieces, put to-
gether, patched, and indefinitely repaired, it is almost in-
destructible. It is, as one may say, as light as a feather,
and as strong as a horse. It is composed of fifty-eight or
seventy pieces of wood. Wood about as thick as a half-
crown, by exquisite adjustments of parts and distribution of
strain, resists for several centuries an enormous pressure.
The belly of soft deal, the back of hard sycamore, are united
by six sycamore ribs, supported by twelve blocks with
linings.
It appears that the quick vibrations of the hard wood,
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
55
married to the slower sound-waves of the soft, produce the
mellow but reedy timbre of the good violin. If all the wood
were hard, you would get the tone light and metallic ; if
all the wood were soft it would be muffled and tubby.
There is every conceivable variety of fibre, both in hard
and soft wood. The thickness of back and belly is not uni-
form ; each should be thicker towards the middle. But how
thick, and shaved thin in what proportions towards the
sides? The cunning workman alone knows. As a rule if
the wood be hard he will cut it thin ; if soft, thick ; but how
thin and how thick, and exactly where, is nowhere writ
down, nor can be, because nowhere for handy reference are
recorded the densities of all pine and pear and sycamore
and maple planks that have or shall come into the maker's
hands.
The sound-bar is a strip of pine wood running obliquely
under the left foot of the bridge. It not only strengthens
the belly for the prodigious pressure of the four strings,
whose direction it is made to follow, for vibrational reasons,
but it is the nervous system of the violin. It has to be cut
and adjusted to the whole framework. A slight mistake in
position, a looseness, an inequality or roughness of finish,
will produce that hollow, teeth-on-edge growl called the
" wolf."
It takes the greatest cunning and a life of practical study
to know how long, how thick, and exactly where, the sound-
bar should be in each instrument. The health and morale of
many an old violin has been impaired by its nervous system
being ignorantly tampered with. Every old violin, with
the exception of the " Pucelle," has had its sound-bar re-
placed, or it would never have endured the increased tight-
ness of strings brought in with our modern pitch. Many
good forgeries have thus been exposed, for, in taking the
reputed Stradivarius to pieces, the rough, clumsy work in-
side, contrasting with the exquisite finish of the old masters,
betrays at once the coarseness of a body that never really
held the soul of a Cremona.
The sound-post, a little pine prop like a short bit of cedar
pencil, is the soul of the violin. It is placed upright inside,
about one-eighth of an inch to the back of the right foot of
the bridge, and through it pass all the heart-throbs or vibra-
tions generated between the back and the belly. There the
56
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
short waves and the long waves meet and mingle. It is
the material throbbing centre of that pulsating air column,
defined by the walls of the violin, but propagating those
mystic sound-waves that ripple forth in sweetness upon ten
thousand ears.
Days and weeks may be spent on the adjustment of this
tiny sound-post. Its position exhausts the patience of the
repairer, and makes the joy or the misery of the player.
As a rough general rule the high-built violin will take it
nearer the bridge than the low-built, and a few experiments
will at once show the relation of the " soul " to tightness,
mellowness, or intensity of sound. For the amateur there
is but one motto : " Leave well alone."
The prodigious strain of the strings is resisted first by the
arch of the belly, then by the ribs, strengthened with the
upright blocks, the pressure amongst which is evenly dis-
tributed by the linings which unite them ; and, lastly, by the
supporting sound-bar, sound-post, and back. Many people,
on observing the obvious join between the neck and the head
of old violins, fancy that the head is not the original. It is
the neck that is new. All the necks of old violins have thus
been lengthened, and the old heads refixed, for the simple
reason that Corelli's finger-board will not do for Paganini,
and mightier execution requires an ampler field for its
eccentric excursions.
The scroll, or head, fitted with its four simple screws of
ebony, box, or rosewood, is the physiognomy of the violin.
At first all fiddle-heads look alike, as do all pug-dogs, or
all negroes ; and, indeed, England, Wales, Italy, Holland,
and most other countries have their general faces ; so have
violins ; but a practised eye sees the difference at a glance.
Look for half an hour every day at a late Joseph Guarnerius,
an early Nicolas Amati, and a grand pattern Strad., and
you will be surprised that you could ever have confounded
their forms. What is called the " throwing" of the scroll
betrays the master's style like handwriting, and he lavs
down his type in every curve, groove, and outline. A keen
eye can almost see the favorite tool he worked with, and
how his hand went. These subtleties are like the painter's
" touch ; " they can hardly be imitated so as to deceive
one who has mastered the individual work of the great
makers.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
57
The ebony finger-board must be nicely fitted, as also the
neck, to the hand of the player ; on its even smoothness and
true curve depends the correct stopping of the notes. You
cannot, for instance, stop fifths in tune on a rough or uneven
finger-board. The button to which the tail-piece is fastened
is full of style, and not, like the pegs, a thing to be dropped
and changed at will. It is a critical part of the violin, takes
a good third of the leverage of the whole strain, is fixed like
a vice, rooted in the very adamant of the wood, carefully
finished, and cut round, pointed, or flat, according to the
taste of the maker.
The purfling, more or less deeply embedded, emphasizes
the outline of the violin. It is composed of three thin strips
of wood, ebony, sometimes whalebone, the centre of two
white strips. It is often more or less embedded, and betrays
the workman's taste and skill. The double purfling and
purfling in eccentric patterns of some of the old violins is
very quaint, but a doubtful adjunct to the tone. But,
strange to say, prior to 1600 appearances were more
thought of than tone. The old guitars and viols are often
so profusely carved or inlaid with tortoise-shell, ivory, and
silver, that they have but little sound, and that bad. I do
not think that this has ever been noticed before ; but it is
undoubtedly a fact that attention to tone only dates from
the rise of the violin proper, in the sixteenth century, and
is, in fact, coincident with the rise of the art of modern
music.
I come now to the Cremona varnish. What is it? About
1760 it disappeared, and never reappeared. All the Cre-
monas have it. Was it a gum, or an oil, or a distillation
from some plant, or some chemical once largely in use and
superseded, as the old oil lamps have gone out before gas
and paraffine? How was it mixed? Is the recipe lost? No
one seems to be able to answer these questions definitely.
There it lies, like sunlit water, mellow, soft, rich ; varying
in color, — golden, orange, or pale red tint on the Guarne-
rius ; rich gold, deep orange, or light red on the Stradi-
varius back, — and when it rubs softly away rather than
chips off hardly, like the German and French imitations, it
leaves the wood seasoned, impregnated, and fit to resist
heat, cold, and the all-destroying worm for ages. Mr.
Charles Reade gives one account of the matter. He thinks
^S MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE.
the wood, cut in winter, varnished in the hot summer
months, was first bathed several times in oil ; thus, he
savs, were the " pores of the wood filled, and the grain
shown up." The oil held in solution some clear gum.
k ' Then upon this oil varnish, when dry, was laid some
heterogeneous varnish, namely, a solution in spirit of some
sovereign, high-colored, pellucid, and, above all, tender
gum." These gums were reddish-yellow, and yellowish-
red, and are accredited with coloring the varnish. On the
other hand, it must be stated that, although the difficulties
in the amber theory are great, Mr. Perkins, the eminent
chemist, has discovered amber in the varnish of Joseph
Guarnerius, and he believes the coloring to be derived
from an herb common throughout Piedmont, and, following
out his conviction, Mr. Perkins has made a varnish which
certainly does resemble very closely the Cremonese hue and
gloss. Dod, who died in 1S30, professed to have got the
Ceemona recipe, and whilst employing John Lott and Ber-
nard Fendt to make his violins, always varnished them him-
self; and, indeed, his varnish is very superior, and his
violins are highly prized ; but perhaps, in a general descrip-
tion like this, to "discuss further the varnish theory would be
superfluous.
The bridge of the violin is to many a true Asses' Bridge ;
you may try and try again, and its true position will still
be represented by an unknown x. It is but a small piece
of hard boxwood, 2 inches by iji in size ; it is quaintly
perforated ; it clings closely to the violin's belly with its
two little thin feet ; is about as thick, where thickest, as a
five-shilling piece, thinning steadily towards the top, which
obeys the curve of the finger-board and lifts the strain of the
four strings. The bridge is movable ; but it is so impor-
tant and all-essential to the propagation of any sound at all
that it may be called the wife of the violin. All old violins
have had "many bridges in their time, but there is no reason
why the union, if happy, should not last for forty or fifty
years. A perfectly harmonious marriage is as rare between
violins and their bridges as it is between men and women,
though in either case there is a considerable margin for the
gradual adjustment of temperaments. Although the old
violin is very capricious in his choice, and often remains a
widower for years, he does not object to elderly bridges,
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
59
and, when he finds one he can get on with, will obstinately
resent any rash interference with the harmony of his domes-
tic arrangements.
This is a point not nearly enough considered, even by
wise violin doctors and repairers. The heartless substi-
tution of raw young bridges for old and tried companions
is common and much to be deplored, and a sensitive old
Strad. will never cease to spar with the fresh, conceited,
wayward young things, utterly incapable of entering into
his fine qualities, and caring naught for his two hundred
years of tonal experience ; and the jarring and bickering go
on until he gets rid of one after another and settles down, if
not with his old favorite, at least with some elderly and
fairly dessicated companion. I do not believe in bridges
being worn out. After a year or two the hard box-fibre
yields very little under the cutting of the strings ; there is a
considerable margin for the shifting of the strings, and no
string but the first will materially grind. Rather than
change so precious a thing as a congenial partner, glue,
mend, patch, repair her, just as you would her priceless
old husband ; if he is in the prime of life at about one
hundred and fifty, she may well be a little made up at sixty
or seventy. Thirty years ago my Stradivarius, 171 2, grand
pattern, came by gift into my possession. I soon found it
did not get on with its bridge, — a new, sappy, crude, thick
thing, which seemed to choke and turn sour its mellow
vibrations. About that time I received the present of a very
old bridge from the violin of F. Cramer. It was delicate,
exquisitely finished, evidently very old. I thought its build
too slight, but clapped it on at once, and the old violin
waked as out of a long sleep, like a giant refreshed with
wine. It was then some time before I found exactly the
right place, and for several years, on and off, I fidgeted
about with the bridge. One day, in shifting it, I snapped
it ; but, after trying other bridges, I glued the old one
together, and once more the violin found its old sweetness
and solace. Years passed ; I left off playing, the Strad. lay
neglected, got damp, and its joints loosened. I lent it to a
cunning doctor; he "fixed it up" again, but sent it back
with a new bridge, and sounding — well, like files and
vinegar ! I recovered the old bridge, that he declared now
worn out. I restored it to its beloved husband, now only in
6o MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE.
his one hundred and seventy-first year ; he received his lost
wife with effusion, and I think the harmony made by the
two was never more perfect than it is now.
ABOUT STRINGS.
A word about violin strings. The positive thickness of
the strings depends upon the temperament and build of
the violin, providing that the playei*'s fingers are equal to
thick or thin strings. Thick strings will mellow the
screaminess of a Stainer, elicit the full tone of a Joseph
Guarnerius or grand Strad., whilst the older violins of
Brescia, and even the sweet Nicolas Amati, will work
better with thinner strings ; but in such matters the player
must come to the best compromise he can with his fingers
and his fiddle, for the finger will often desire a thin string
when the fiddle cries out for a thick one. New violins, as a
rule, will take thicker strings than the fineold sensitives of the
sixteenth or seventeenth centuries. Of the English, French,
German, and Italian strings the Italian are the best ; and
of the Italian, the Roman hard and brilliant, a little rough,
and Neapolitan smooth, soft, and pale, are preferred. Pa-
duans are strong, but frequently- false. Veronese are softer
and deeper in color. The German now rank next, and the
white, smooth Saxon strings are good substitutes for, but
no rivals of, the Italians. The French firsts are brittle, the
Italian strings sound well, and the French patent fourth
silver string, perfectly smooth and shining, is preferred by
some soloists to the old covered fourth. The English
strings, of a dirtv green and yellow color, are very strong,
and good enough for hack work in the orchestra. The best
and strongest strings are made from the intestines of spring
lambs killed in September, and the superiority of the Italian
over others is explained by the climate ; for in Italy the sun
does what has to be done artificially in more northern
latitudes.
The demand for the interior of the September lamb being
out of all proportion to the supplv, there is a vast sale of
inferior strings always going on at high prices. In string
selection the objects are three : —
i . To suit the constitution of your instrument, and
choose that thickness and quality of string which will de-
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE. 61
velop tone with the greatest ease, roundness, and free-
dom.
2. To choose strings which will give good fifths, — a
matter sometimes a little dependent on the shape of your
own fingers and the cut of your finger-board, but also con-
trolled by the relative thickness of your strings.
3. To avoid false strings, — an epidemic which rages in-
continently amongst E violin strings. Spohr's recipe for
detection was to hold the string between the fingers and
thumbs, and, if when he set it vibrating from one end to the
other only two lines appeared, he decided that it was true ;
if a third, it was deemed false, Once on, however, there
can never be any doubt.
It is only necessary to glance at the enormous variety
of shapes that the viol tribe has assumed, both before and
after the creation of the violin, to judge of the inexhaustible
dominion which the conception seems to have exercised
over the human mind. The collector who cannot play,
and the player who cannot collect, are alike victims of this
mania for violins. Of what interest can they be to the col-
lector, who keeps dozens of them, unstrung and unmended,
in cupboards and cabinets, and shows them about to his
bewildered guests like old pots or enamels?
Look at a fine specimen or two, on and oft', when you
have the chance, and the mystery may possibly dawn upon
you too.
There, in a small compass, lies before you such a wonder
of simplicity, subtlety, variety, and strength as perhaps no
other object of equal dimensions can possess. The eye is
arrested by the amber gloss and glow of the varnish ; the
infinite grace of the multitudinous curves ; the surface,
which is nowhere flat, but ever in flowing lines, sunlit
hollows of miniature hills and vales, irregular, like the fine
surface of a perfectly healthy human body; its gentle
mounds and depressions would almost make us believe that
there is a whole underlying system of muscle, a very living
organism, to account for such subtle yet harmonious irregu-
laritv of surface. It is positively alive with swelling and
undulating grace.
Then the eye follows with unabating ardor the outline —
dipping in here or bulging there — in segments of what
look like an oval or a circle, but which are never any part
62 MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE.
of an oval or a circle, but something drawn unmechanically,
like a Greek frieze, after the vision of an inward grace.
Its voice may be as fair as its form and finish ; yet, un-
strung and silent, more truly can it he said of a violin than
of any human creature, that " it is a thing of beauty and a
joy forever," for its beauty grows with the mellowness of
age ; its voice is sweeter as the centuries roll on, and its
physical frame appears to be almost indestructible.
And the player, — who is not always a judge of a genuine
violin, but goes by the sound qualities which suit him, — he
naturally adores what is, within its limits, scientifically the
most perfect of all instruments.
The four strings, of course, limit and define its harmonic
resources ; in combination and viewed collectively in the
quartet alone is it able to compass the extended develop-
ments of harmony in bass, tenor, and treble clef, but as a
tone-producing instrument it has no rival. It possesses
accent combined with sustained and modified tone. The
piano has accent, but little sustained, and no modified, tone ;
the organ has accent, and sustained, but in a very imperfect
sense modified, tone ; the violin possesses in perfection all
three. With the stroke of the bow comes every degree of
accent ; with the drawing and skilful sostenuto of up and
down bowings the notes are indefinitely sustained to a
degree far exceeding the capacity of the human lungs ;
whilst eveiv pulse of emotion is, through the pressure of
the finger, communicated to the vibrating string, and the
tone trembles, shivers, thrills, or assumes a hard, rigid
quality, passing at will from the variety of a whisper to a
very roar or scream of agony or delight.
Can the soul of the musician fail to yield loving or utter
allegiance to the sovereign power of the violin, which is so
willing and ideal a minister of his subtlest inspirations,
equal to the human voice in sensibility and expression, and
far superior to it in compass, execution, variety, and dura-
bility?
The violin is not an invention, it is a growth. It is the
survival of the fittest. The undeveloped elements of the
genus Viol, out of which grew the species Violin, are to be
found latent in the rebek, the crowth, and the rotta. In the
struggle for existence each succumbed, leaving only its use-
ful and vital elements to be recombined.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 6^
The rebek bequeathed its rounded form pierced in the
belly with two sound-holes, the bridge, tail-piece, screw-
box, doubtless a sound-post, and that odd crook of a violin-
bow often seen in the hands of stone angels in cathedrals of
the fourteenth century.
The crowth gives the all-important hint of the two vibrat-
ing boards joined by ribs ; whilst from the rotta, or guitar
tribe, comes the lower end, and the upper end comes from
the rebek ; the elongated neck separate from the body, the
frets, which for one hundred and fifty years delayed the
advent of the violin, and the two concave side-curves so
needful for the manipulation of the bow. " Music and
Morals," contains diagrams illustrating the genesis of the
violin.
This viol — of no particular size or settled shape, or
rather of all shapes and sizes, usually with a flat back and
round belly — was made in great profusion in the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries. Any one who will glance at the
case of ancient viols in the South Kensington Museum will
be surprised at the fancy and fertility of form displayed.
There was the Knee Viol, the Bass Viol, the Viol di
Gamba, the Violone, and the Viol d'Amore. Some of these
were inlaid with tortoise-shell and ivory, others elaborately
carved and over-purfled, — facts most interesting to the con-
noisseur, and marking a period when cabinet-work was at
its zenith and jnusical sound in its infancy. Sound was the
carver's humble servant. The well-known violin given by
Queen Elizabeth to the Earl of Leicester, riddled through
and through like Ceylonese furniture or a Chinese ivory
junk, is quite absurd as a sound vehicle. By and by the
carver and fine cabinet-worker would have to place all the
treasures of their art at the disposal of music, and would not
be allowed one join, or purfle, or pattern inimical to tone.
I shall develop these hints later.
The variety and number of strings in these old viols are
often childish. It looks like (what it was) playing with
newly discovered resources, the real wealth of which it
took two hundred years more to learn. If in bowed instru-
ments you have more strings than fingers the hand with
difficulty overlays them ; of course in the guitar tribe the
work is divided between ten fingers instead of four. Tn the
Viol d'Amore an odd attempt was made to improve the
64 MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIEE.
timbre by a set of steel wires tuned sympathetically, and
running beneath the gut-strings. It took two hundred years
to convince people that the timbre lay with the wood, not
the wires ; nor could the old masters see that tone would
only arrive with an extended study in the properties of wood
and a radical change of model.
I showed some years ago, in the Contemporary Review,
what it is difficult to trace step by step, but what we know
must have been the history of the violin tribe in its earlier
stages. I placed the lesson for the eye, — showing how the
smaller viols or violettes of the seventeenth century fell into
the violins, the larger ones into the Tenor, and the Viol di
Gambas into the Violoncello. The double-bass, a genuine
viol, and the only one which retains its flat back, was made
extensively by Gaspar di Salo, and has been entirely
adopted by the modern orchestra ; indeed, whilst innumera-
ble other large viols are merely preserved as curiosities, the
double-bass retains its ancient tvpe, and in the Beethoven
and Wagnerian orchestra exercises an influence and promi-
nence second only to the violin itself.
As we look intently at the confused nebulas of sixteenth-
century viols, we notice the modest constellation of the
violins slowly detaching itself from that host of tubby stars
which it was soon destined to supersede forever. The
rise of the violin tribe — by which of course I mean the
violin, tenor, violoncello, and double-bass — is, in fact,
coincident with the rise of modern music. A definite art
required a definite instrument — more mechanical, more
constant, more reliable, than the human voice.
Between Carissimi, 1570, and Monteverde, 1672, the
foundations of the art of modern music were laid by the
discovery of the perfect cadence and the modern octave.
With a system of fixed tonality the art began those strides
of progress which in about two hundred years seemed to
leave nothing new to be discovered. It first recast and
used the human voice. The voice was noticed to fall
naturally into treble, alto, tenor, and bass, and was so or-
ganized in the singing-schools of Pistocchi, at Bologna, in
1659.
Now the chief of the Amati worked from 1596-16S4, and
the division of violin, viola, violoncello, and double-bass
corresponded with tolerable closeness to the four divisions
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 65
of the human voice, the rise of singing-schools, and the
exigencies of the new musical art. The Procrustean bed
upon which the poor viols of the period were now stretched
forms one of the most interesting and instructive episodes
in the history of the art. Viol di Gambas were converted
into violoncellos, the viollettes enlarged and patched into
violins, viols cut down — sadly, brutally cut down — into
tenors. No lover of the art could help dropping a tear over
a matchless specimen of Linarelli in 1 400-1 500, exhibited
at South Kensington, which had been so cut down ; and I
could point to one or two viols now passing as Amati
tenors which have received similar treatment and strut in
borrowed plumes. The cabinet-work is often so fine that
only an experienced eye, with the aid of a microscope, can
discern the joints and refittings beneath the new wash of
dirty brown varnish habitually used to conceal the deed.
But all this only proves the imperative fitness of a new
combination. We have at last arrived at the modern violin,
and the reason of its natural supremacy. Its right to
survive is clearly to be found in its perfect ministry to
the art of modern music. I have dwelt upon its compass,
which is to all intents and purposes unlimited, and its other
especial merits are not far to seek.
The number and the tension of the strings is the happy
mean between the one or two strings of the Japanese or
Persian fiddle and the many-stringed viol. Add a fifth
string to the violin, and the tension is not only too great, but
unnecessary, for the E string will yield sound as shrill as
the human ear can bear ; add a string on the other
side, and the tension will be too feeble to yield a good
quality of sound. And similar remarks may apply to the
tenor, violoncello, and double-bass ; each is sufficient and
complete, and where it ends its companion steps in to con-
tinue the varied function.
Each is distinct and full of character ; the charm of
variety is constitutionally involved. In each the strings are
of different thicknesses, with different tensions, acting upon
different vibrating surfaces, enclosing different-sized columns
of air.
We pause for a moment with feelings of profound satis-
faction and survey the violin kingdom of the past. This
fourfold valuable selection — this crowning of violin, tenor,
66 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
violoncello, and double-bass — has not been the work of any
one man, or age, or even country ; it is the inexorable,
empirical, yet logical outcome or evolution of thousands of
experiments made in France, Germany, and Italy, by
hundreds of workers, extending over centuries of time, and
resulting in the survival of the fittest.
# THE ITALIAN SCHOOLS.
Although Duiflbprugcar was certainly not an Italian,
yet, coming from the Tyrol, he settled at Bologna, after-
wards migrating to Lyons, in France, where he spent most
of his life and died. He was undoubtedly one of the
fathers, if not the father, of the violin. It has been ques-
tioned whether Duiflbprugcar ever made violins, but there
is no reason for doubting that Palestrina played on a
Duiflbprugcar violin, which is said to have borne this
couplet : —
" Viva fui in sylvis, sum dura occisasecuri
Dum vixi tacui mortua dulce cano."
There is, besides, a large-sized violin bearing date 1539,
said to be the only extant specimen ; but, lately, Mr. Hill
obtained from Lyons a very excellent and perfect specimen,
which he believed to be an undoubted Duiflbprugcar, and
which I exhibited at the Royal Institution. It is quaint,
undecided, and antique in outline, the S's curiously cut, and
the back over-purfled. When opened it was found backed
with old canvas and oddly primitive in construction. It
ought to be put under a glass case in the South Kensington
Museum. Indeed it is incredible, but true, that not a single
museum in Europe that I know of has thought it worth
while to procure specimens of the violin art from Duiflb-
prugcar to Bergonzi.
But it is not to Bologna or Lyons, but to Brescia, that
we must look for the rise of the first great violin school.
GASPAR DI SALO.
Note first Gaspar di Salo, who worked between iS5° an d
161 2. It has been my privilege to live for some weeks with
Mr. Amherst's fine old Gaspar di Salo. He was in splen-
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
6 7
did condition, still bulgy, but a notable and significant
reduction from the old viol type, which Gaspar doubtless
continued to make. The head is charmingly long, and
queer, and antique. The idea of putting character and
great finish into the scroll belongs to a later period.
Human and animal heads were no doubt common enough
in the place of a scroll ; but they belong to the carving,
cabinet-decoration, over-purfling period, when tone was
second to ornament.
As the great tone period approached, carving for the sake
of carving was abandoned ; ornament was kept simple,
subordinate, but full of finish, and avowedly the mark of
sign-manual. The exquisite, yet unpretending and simple,
scrolls of Amati and Stradivarius arose along with the rise
of violin tone. But why such finish, such evident intention
to be noticed, such distinct cachet and appeal to the eye?
I think this is the natural explanation. As the art of violin-
playing improved, violinists took to holding their fiddles
well up, and to playing without notes ; the head of the violin
was thus the first thing which caught the eye ; whereas
before there is every reason to believe that the old viol-
players held their instruments down, like bad orchestral
players now, with violin scroll or head almost between their
knees and 7i)iseen. That head might, indeed, be a finely
carved human head ; but, if so, it could only be seen as an
ornament when the violin was hanging up ; it could only be
seen, if at all, upside down when the violin was being
played. Look at all old violins ; they are rubbed by the
beard on both sides. Now we never place the chin on the
oft-side — always on the inside ; but if a man has to crouch
in dim churches over flickering oil-lamps, and scrape old
chants, he will get slovenly ; his violin-head will droop
between his knees, and his chin will most naturally slip
over the tail-piece and lie on the oft-side, whilst his ear
reposes on the tail-piece, and the top of his violin has a
tendency to disappear over his left shoulder !
Compare this old, slovenly method, inimical to tone, to
style, to execution, and to grace, — which buried the scroll,— -
with the noble, upright pose of Joachim or Neruda when
playing, where the scroll is constantly thrown up, as if itself
addressing the audience, and instead of looking upside-down
or ungraceful, as would a human or animal head in that
68 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
position, comes out towards you like the prow of an
ancient galley, and impresses upon the eye, with every
motion of the player's wrist, its fine verve and individual
character.
Gaspar di Salo may almost be said to have invented violin
tone. Mr. Tyssen Amherst's unique early Gaspar violin,
with its long, pointed y-like black-letter sound-holes, al-
though of the high model abandoned in later life, is surpris-
ing in tone, considering its build, which is generally sup-
posed to favor a smothered and tubby sound. Although the
first and fourth strings are rather rough, the whole is very
sonorous and fresh, and the D and A strings very rich and
pure. We must not look for the finish of the Amatis at this
early period. The build of this early Gaspar is round and
full, both in back and belly, and the chisel has gone wrong
more than once in the back grooving, whilst the purfling is
not good. Probably one and the same cunning workman has
repaired the purfling in places, patched the head, and posi-
tively mosaiced the worn-out screw-box, and, alas ! carried
a brown varnish over several parts of the instrument,
through which the rich golden tints of Gaspar still peep,
and almost dazzle the eye. Still, whoever has put on the
new neck has worshipped at the shrine of old Gaspar ; he
has made his purfling a little too good, left a little too much
of his glue and his brown varnish ; but his patched head is
such a masterpiece, such care and labor to keep every line
of Gaspar, — except on one side of the screw-box, where
about two inches of line is new, but the join so good as
only to be seen under a microscope.
All this, when one lives with a fiddle, one gets io notice
and to love, whilst the uninitiated, standing by in bewilder-
ment, may well feel tempted to order the violin and the con-
noisseur oft' to the nearest lunatic asylum.
MAGGINI.
Maggini (Giovanni Paolo), 1590-1640, of Brescia, fol-
lowed Gaspar, but carried farther the art of rich, clear tone.
It is the glory of the Brescians to have hit upon this secret,
lost as soon as found, that for tone — good, round tone — the
belly and back must be brought down flatter upon ribs of
diminished height. Maggini's violins, though lacking in
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 69
some of the quaint grace of Gaspar (especially his double-
basses), approach the perfected Cremona model of the later
rather than the earlier days ; his scroll is grooved and fin-
ished ; his sound-holes are still the long black-letter SS ;
the varnish rich brown or yellow. He is often confounded
with Barak Norman, or, still worse, with any obscure Ger-
man imitator who has chosen to a little over-purfle and inlay
his back. The Brescians, Mariani, Venturini, Budiani,
Mateo Bente, cannot further be alluded to here ; in time
they will all be treasured more as antiquities than as tone-
masters.
The hotter suns and splendid river supplying the fine
wood-market, and the commercial prosperity enjoyed by
Cremona, seem now to have attracted and fixed the manu-
facture of the violin ; and there was now a growing demand,
not only from all the churches, but also throughout the pal-
aces of Italy. We must ever view that central square of
Cremona, where stood the Church of St. Dominic, with
feelings of the deepest interest. Standing opposite the
facade on our right hand lies the house of the Amati ; there
worked Andrew, the founder of the school, making, in 1550,
close copies of the Brescians, Gaspar and Maggini.
There were the boys, Anthony and Jerome, who after-
wards made jointly those violins so much sought after ; but
oddly enough reverted to the tubbier model, and over-
grooved the sides of their bellies and backs, thinning their
tone, until the genius of Jerome discerned the error and
reverted to the Brescian type.
Here was born the great Nicolas Amati, 1 596-1 684, who
struck out his own model, flattened, and in his best time
scarcely retaining a trace of the vicious side-groove of the
earlier Amatis.
On the same work-bench, as students in the school of the
immortal Nicolas, sat Andrew Guarnerius and the incom-
parable Stradivarius, finishing their master's violins and
copying for years his various models with supreme skill and
docility.
STRADIVARIUS.
Almost next door, probably on the death of Nicolas
Amati, Stradivarius set up his shop, opposite the west
front of the big church ; there for fifty years more he worked
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
with uninterrupted assiduity ; and next door to him the
family of the Guarnerii had their work-rooms, and in that
little square were all the finest violins made in the short
space of about one hundred and fifty years. The bodv of
Stradivarius lies in the Church of the Rosary, not a stone's-
throw from his own house : and so these great men died.
and were buried, working in friendly rivalry, and leaving
their echoes to roll from pole to pole.
I have a delicate Andrew Guarnerius of 1665. which
shows admirably the transition between the full form of the
earlier Amatis and the superior flat model of Nicolas
Amati.
It was made, doubtless, under the eye of Nicolas, and
perhaps criticised by Stradivarius, who probably worked at
the same bench and shared Andrew's glue-pot.
In my Andrew Guarnerius the drooping Brescian cor-
ners have vanished, and the lower angles are turned up
sharp ; but the middle lengths fail to attain the pleasantly
balanced curves and the graceful upper width and freedom
of Mr. Amherst's later Nicolas Amati, of 1676, a true gem,
despite the apparent plainness of the back.
Andrew Guarnerius has also quite got rid of the rough.
coarse, thick Brescian S, which was always ugly and too
wide, and in its place the eye is rejoiced to find a lovely
and delicately rounded S, unlike at top and bottom, but
only a shade less graceful than the freehand writing of
Nicolas himself.
The great Nicolas (1596-16S4) began to change his
model, reverting to the later Brescian in all but his sound-
holes and two curves, about 1625. His violins increased in
size, and would have increased in power had it not been
for a remnant of the early Amati side-grooving, which is
said to thin the tone. The dip from the foot of the bridge
is thought to be too great, but the upper part of the grand
pattern is truly noble. Some of his scrolls have been criti-
cised as too small and contracted ; but there is nothing of
this in a 1676 specimen before me. and, although the corners
are pointed and highly elegant, there is nothing weak ; yet
the whole is full of feminine grace.
The varnish, when not, as is usual, rubbed off. inclines to
light orange with clear golden tints. The tone is so sweet
and sensitive that it seems to leap forth before the bow has
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. p
touched the strings, and goes on like a bell long after the
bow has left them. To a fine Joseph Guarnerius you have
sometimes to lay siege, and then you are rewarded ; but the
Nicolas Amati is won almost before it is wooed.
The incomparable Antonius Stradivarius, or Stradivari,
lived between 1644-1737. His latest known violin bears
date 1736, and mentions his age, ninety-two. He worked
without haste and without rest. His life was interrupted
only by the siege of Cremona in 1702. But his art knew
no politics, and the foreign courts of Spain and France were
quite as eager to get his violins as the Governor of Cre-
mona, or the Duke of Modena.
Up to about 1668 he was simply the apprentice of
Nicolas ; we find scrolls and sound-holes cut by the pupil
on the master's violins. He even made and labelled for
Nicolas.
In 1668 he leaves his master's shop and sets up for him-
self. But for thirty years this consummate student, whilst
making every conceivable experiment with lutes, guitars,
and violins, practically copied closely the best models of
Nicolas Amati.
Still we notice that from 1686-1694 his sound-holes be-
gin to recline, his form grows flatter, his curves extended,
his corners tossed up and pointed, the scroll bolder, varnish
inclining away from the browns and light orange to the rich
yellows and light reds. Notice the way in which his pur-
fling at the corners, like a little curved wasp's sting, follows
no outline of the violin, and is not in the middle of the
angle, but points freely towards the corner of the angle.
What chic I as the French say.
In 1687 the master makes his long pattern, — not really
longer, but looking longer because of the contracted sides.
The Spanish Quatuor, inlaid with ivory, illustrates the
fancy and skill of the workman, as did also an exquisitely
carved lute by Stradivarius, exhibited at the South Ken-
sington Museum.
It was not until Stradivarius had entered upon his fifty-
sixth year that he attained his zenith, and fixed his model
known as the grand pattern.
Between 1700 and 1725 those extraordinary creations
passed from his chisel, even as the masterpieces on canvas
passed from the brush of Raphael.
7 2
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
The finest of these specimens — like that possessed by Mr.
Adams, the Dolphin, and by Mr. Hart, the Betts Strad. —
fetch from £300 to £1,000.
To try and describe these instruments is like trying to
describe the pastes, glazes, and blues of Nankin, China.
Beneath the tangible points of outline, scroll, character, and
variety of thickness and modification of form, dependent on
qualities of wood known to the master, there lie still the
intangible things which will hardly bear describing, even
when the violin is under the eye — one might almost say
under the microscope. A rough attempt b} 7 contrast may
be made in detail. Take but one detail for the benefit of
the general reader, the inner side curves and angles of the
middle boughts.
In Gaspar and Maggini those curves are drooping at the
corners, longish and undecided in character ; in Duifloprug-
car it amounts almost to a wriggle. Nicolas Amati balances
the top and bottom of his hollow curve with a certain mas-
tery ; but it still has a long, oval sweep, with a definite
relation of balance between the top and the bottom angle.
Having mastered this sweep Stradivarius begins to play
with his curves and angles. He feels strong enough to
trifle, like a skilled acrobat, with the balance. He lessens
the oval, and tosses up his lower corner with a curious
little crook at the bottom ; the top angle towers proudly and
smoothly above it, yet it is always graceful, — delicious from
its sense of freedom, almost insolent in its strength and self-
confidence. There is a touch about Stradivarius here as
elsewhere ; it is that which separates the great masters
everywhere from their pupils, — Raphael from G^ulio Ro-
mano, Paganini from Sivori, Stradivarius from Carlo Ber-
gonzi. The freedom of Stradivarius becomes license in
Carlo Bergonzi and over-boldness in Joseph Guarnerius ;
for, although the connection between Joseph and Stradiva-
rius has been questioned, to my mind it is sufficiently clear.
Although Stradivarius made down to the last year of his
life, still after 1730, feeling his hand and sight beginning to
fail, he seldom signed his work. We can catch one, and
only one, glimpse of him as he lived and moved and had
his being at Cremona in 1730, Piazza Domenico. Old
Polledro, late chapel-master at Turin, describes " Antonius,
the lute-maker," as an intimate friend of his master. He
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
73
was high and thin, and looked like one worn with much
thought and incessant industry. In summer he wore a
white cotton nightcap, and in winter one of some woollen
material. He was never seen without his apron of white
leather, and every day was to him exactly like every other
day. His mind was always riveted upon his one pursuit,
and he seemed neither to know nor to desire the least
change of occupation. His violins sold for four golden
iivres apiece, and were considered the best in Italy ; and, as
he never spent anything except upon the necessaries of life
and his own trade, he saved a good deal of money, and the
simple-minded Cremonese used to make jokes about his
thriftiness, and the proverb passed, "As rich as Stradi-
varius."
A traveller who lately visited his house, still standing in
the square of Cremona, remarked that it was heated through
with the sun like an oven. He said you might sit and sweat
there as in a Turkish bath. That was how the Cremona
makers dried their wood, and so it was their oils distilled
slowly and remained always at a high temperature, their
varnish weltered and soaked into the pine bellies and syca-
more backs beneath the tropical heat of those seventeenth-
century summers !
GUARNERIUS.
Joseph Anthony Guarnerius del GesUjTTo (16S7-1745)
towers a head and shoulders above the other illustrious Guar-
nerii, viz., Andrew and Joseph, his sons, Peter, brother of
Joseph (son), Peter of Mantua, son of "Joseph Filius
Andreae." The loud and rich tone of the later Joseph del
Gesu violins makes him the formidable rival of Stradivarius.
Paganini preferred his Joseph, now in the Municipal Palace
of Genoa, to all others.
Who was Joseph's master? The idea that Joseph, or
any one who lived either in Amati's or Guarnerius's house,
— Amati on the right, Guarnerius on the left of Stradivarius,
in the same square at Cremona, — was entirely unaffected
by the great man's influence, has always seemed to me
absurd. That influence has been denied as vehemently in
late years as it used to be formerly taken for granted. Still,
the great Joseph is claimed as the pupil of Joseph, son of
74 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
Andrew, — that Andrew who sat by the side of Stradivarius
in Nicolas Amati's workshop. With this I find no fault ;
but, if the influence of Stradivarius cannot be seen in the
earlier Josephs, the later Josephs show undoubted signs of
the master, who between 1700 and 1730 had eclipsed all his
predecessors. In some details Joseph's undoubted reversion
to Brescian influence, and that early, is interesting, — the
flat model, the long sound-holes, and, it must be added,
often the rough work. Still, in Joseph's middle period there
occurs that very high finish which reminds one of Stradi-
varius. The elegance of the Strad. scroll is never attained,
perhaps not even aimed at. The Josephs of about 174° are
most in request. They are large and massively made, the
wood of finest acoustic property, the Brescian sound-hole
toned down and rounded more like Stradivarius. A fine
genuine violin of this period will not go for less than two
hundred guineas, and four hundred would not be an out-and-
out price. The Guarnerius head or scroll is often quaint and
full of self-assertion. The violin has the strongest make,
temper, and stamp ; the fourth string is often as rich as a
trumpet. His last period is troubled by certain inferior
violins, called prison fiddles. The tale runs that Joseph was
imprisoned for some political offence, and was supplied with
refuse wood, by the jailer's daughter. The prison fiddle is a
boon to forgers ; their bad fiddles pass freely for interesting
" prison Josephs."
BERGONZI AND GUADAGNINI.
With Carlo Bergonzi (171S— 1755) and Guadagnini (1710-
1750) the great Cremona school comes to an end. The
very varnish disappears, the cunning in wood-selection
seems to fail the pale reflectors of a dying art, and the
passion for vigor and finish has also departed.
The violin, although it culminated, is not exhausted at
Cremona, but it would lead me into a new branch of my
subject to deal with the other schools. These, after all, are
but reflections, more or less pale or perfect, of the incom-
parable Cremonese masters.
MEMORIES- OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
75
CHAPTER VI.
PAGANINI.
WHO is this man who rises up suddenly in the world
of music, and whose fame passes with the brightness
and rapidity of a meteor through the civilized world ;
who, at the moment when Baillot, Spohr, Rode, and Lafont
seemed to have explored the heights and depths of the violin,
opened up new vistas full of strange, unparalleled mysteries,
and gave us glimpses into a hell, purgatory, and paradise
beyond the dreams even of Dante ; whose gaunt and super-
natural figure startled and fascinated the crowds that thronged
about him, a solitary man amongst men, but so unlike them
that he seemed to belong to another race, and to discourse
in the weird music of another world ; who bowed to none,
yet was idolized by all ; whose engagements were nego-
tiated by kings and ministers ; who could spurn the prayers
of princes and grand duchesses, and yet received honor at
their hands, and was alternately decorated by the Pope, and
anathematized by the clergy, — who was this exceptional
being reigning supreme for forty years without a rival over
the conflicting schools of Italy, Germany, and France ; at
whose approach the greatest masters confessed themselves
vanquished ; who, although he set the fashions, infected
whole populations, invented a new school, vet, in his own
peculiar greatness, had no masters, no equals, and has left
no followers? This man who has stamped so indelible an
impression of himself upon the musical world, whilst his
name will survive as the synonym of wonder and mystery to
the remote ages, — this Hercules of the Violin was Nicolo
Paganini.
That a man's grandmother, or even his father and mother,
are of some consequence when he derives lustre or gain from
them of any kind, no one will deny ; but when he sheds
back upon them the onlv kind of reflex glory which they
are capable of receiving, the glory of an imperishable name,
-o MEMORIES OF A ifUSICAl LIFE
no one will blame the biographer for skipping ■ tew dull
and stupid antecedents.
Paganini rv'v mav have been a street porter, as som<
pretend : or a small tradesman, as others, probabl) in the
right, affirm. He was a sharp man ; he was a cruel n
he did overmuch to develop his son's talents, and overmuch
to ruin his health,, and. probably, is chargeable with hav-
ing .destroyed has mental and moral equilibrium for life.
Nicolo's mother was a sweet, amiable woman; she loved
her bo) . she believed in him. she often stood between,
and. the rod, she praved tor him, and saw one night in a
% ision :■. celestial being, who told her that the bov would
become the greatest violinist that ever lived. How far :' : -
dream. which she lost no time in communicating to father
and son. increased the father's severity, and fired the hov's
ambition, we cannot tell : but the dream seems to have been
a well-established fact, and vears a fter w ar ds, when the
m thei was old, and the son al his zenith, she reminded h m
of it. as of an incident which had been familial to bol
th< m thi oughout their lives.
Paganini was horn at Genoa on the roth February, 1784.
Affcei exhausting bis father's instruction he was taken in
hand by Signor Servetto, of the Genoese theatre; then
Giacomo Costa, chapel-master, taughl him, and the child
was ften seen pla\ og the Genoese church.es on a violin
si as large as himself; but. like Mozart before him.
: Mendelssohn aftei him, Nicolowas me despaii of his
masters, who were in (.v.::: angry with his innovations, and
..--. oished at bis prec ci as facility. In his ninth yeai m
appear* I at a c ocert, elect Bed everj one w I 1 varia-
: as ■ th< Fi 1 act air, La Ca 1 g fe. This b
impel", ed hisavaric is father 1 lis* versom* oewk .
••■ ; the young talent was : be press*
squec h ' ts tmost In I rder I 1 the golden
At Parma lived the celebrated musician. Ro'.la. To Rolla
was tin taken . ' at Rolls was ill. Whilst wail • _ in
iv. ' ttlc N ci ' : k up a violin, and played ofl
at sigh.t some difficult music which he found lying < v. the
ble. T 1 compt sei raised himself on his bi
listen, and eagerb the great master was w
had arrived, and was plaving in his anteroom : •• A mere
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE.
77
lad ! — impossible ! " But, on Paganini's making his appear-
ance as an humble pupil, Rolla at once told him that he
could teach him nothing. Then to Paer, who was glad to
make his difficult charge over to Ghiretti, and this master
gave him three lessons a week in harmony and counterpoint.
It is not clear that this extraordinary genius owed much
more to anyone but himself — his indomitable perseverance
and his incessant study. His method is to be noted. For
ten or twelve hours he would try passages over and over
again in different ways with such absorption and intensity
that at nightfall he would sink into utter prostration through
excessive exhaustion and fatigue. Though delicate, like Men-
delssohn, he ate at times ravenously, and slept soundly.
When about ten he wrote twenty-four fugues, and soon
afterwards composed some violin music, of such difficulty
that he was unable at first to play it, until incessant practice
gave him the mastery.
In 1797 Paganini, being then thirteen years old, made his
first professional tour ; but not as a free agent. His father took
him through the chief towns of Lombardy, and not unnatu-
rally prescribed the task and pocketed the proceeds. But
the young neck was already beginning to chafe against the
yoke. In 1798 he escaped, with his father's tardy consent,
to Lucca, where a musical festival in honor of St. Martin
was going on. He there gave frequent concerts, and was
everywhere met with applause, and, what was more to the
purpose, with money. Surrounded by men of inferior talents,
a mere inexperienced boy, without education, without knowl-
edge of the world, with nothing but ambition and his su-
preme musical genius, he now broke wildly away from all
wise restraints, and avenged himself upon his father's severity
by many youthful excesses. He gambled — he lost — he
was duped by his companions ; but he made money so fast
that he soon owned about £1,000. It is pleasant to think
that heat once thought of giving some of this to his father
and mother ; it is unpleasant to record that his father claimed,
and eventually got, almost the whole sum from him. But it
did not much matter now, for everything seemed literally
to turn into gold beneath those marvellous fingers, and bad
luck proved nearly as profitable to him as good.
By the time he had reached seventeen Paganini was a con-
firmed gambler. He had little left but his Stradivarius vio-
J$ MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE,
lin, and this he was on the point of selling to a certain prince,
who had offered him ,£So, a large sum at the beginning of
this century even for a Stradivarius. Times have changed,
and in this latter days we think nothing of giving £300 for
a genuine, instrument of the first class. But the reckless
youth determined to make a last stand for his violin. ''Jew-
els, watch, rings, brooches," to use his own words, " I had
disposed of all ; my thirty francs were reduced to three.
With this small remains of my capital I played, and won
160 francs ! This amount saved my violin, and restored
my affairs, From that time," he adds, " I abjured gaming,
to which I had sacrificed a part of my youth, convinced
that a gamester is an object of contempt to all well-regulated
minds." The violin he narrowly missed losing was given
him by Parsini, the painter, who on one occasion brought
him a concerto of extraordinary difficulty to read at sight,
and, placing a fine Stradivarius in his hands, said, "This
instrument shall be yours if you can play that concerto at
first sight in a masterly manner." — " If that is the case,"
replied Paganini, "you may bid adieu to it ;" and playing it
oft* at once he retained the violin. Easy come — easy go.
Some years later, at Leghorn, being again in great straits, he
was obliged to part, for a time at least, with this same .Strad-
ivarius ; but this disaster was the only means of procuring
him the favorite Guarnerius, upon which he ever afterwards
played. In his need Monsieur Livron, a distinguished
amateur, lent him this splendid instrument, and was so en-
raptured by his playing that he exclaimed, "Never will I
profane the strings that your fingers have touched. It is to
you that my violin belongs." This violin is still shown at
Genoa under a glass case.
At the age of seventeen Paganini appears to have been
entirely his own master, weak in health, nervous, irritable,
and excitable ; his wild and irregular habits and pursuits
were, at this critical age, threatening to hurry him to an
early grave, when an event occurred which, although but
too characteristic of the looseness of Italian manners, prob-
ably saved his life.
.Suddenly, in the midst of new discoveries and unexam-
pled successes, Paganini ceased to play the violin. He re-
tired into the depths of the country, and devoted himself
for three years to agricultural pursuits, and to the society of
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
79
a lady of rank who had carried him off to her Tuscan es-
tate, and to the guitar. With the sole exception of the late
Regondi no such genius had ever been concentrated upon
this limited and effeminate instrument. But the lady's
taste ran that way, and the great violinist lavished for a
time the whole force of his originality and skill upon the
light guitar. He wrote music for it, and imitated it on the
violin, but seldom touched it in after-life until quite the close,
although, as we shall presently see, he was able to produce
a prodigious effect upon it when he chose. These days of
country life and leisure, during which he was delivered from
the pressure of crowds, the excitement of public perform-
ances, and, most of all, the grinding anxieties of life, had
the effect of bracing him up in health, and prepared him for
that reaction towards intense study and exhausting toil
which left him without a rival, — the first violinist in the
world.
In 1S04 he returned to Genoa, where he seems, amongst
other things, to have given lessons to a young girl of fifteen,
named Catherine Calcagno, who appears to have caught
something of his style, and to have astonished Italy for a
few years, but after 1S16 we hear no more of her. And
now the neglected violin was taken up once again, but this
time with maturer powers and settled intentions. There is
a strange thoroughness about Paganini, — nothing which
any previous musician knew or had done must be unknown
or left undone by him ; there was to be no hitting him be-
tween the joints of his armor ; no loophole of imperfection
anywhere. He now occupied himself solely with the study
of his instrument, and with composition, — wrote four grand
quartettes for violin, viol, guitar, and violoncello ; and
bravura variations with guitar accompaniment. At the age
of twenty-one (1805) he made a second professional tour,
passing through Lucca and Piombino, and in one convent
church, where he played a concerto, the excitement was so
great that the monks had to leave their seats to silence the
uproar in the congregation. It was at the end of this tour
that Napoleon's sister, the Princess Eliza, offered the new
violinist the direction of the Court music, and gave him the
grade of captain in the Royal Guard, with the privilege of
wearing that officer's brilliant uniform on state occasions.
Between 1805 and 181 2, whilst in the service of the
80 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
Princess Eliza, afterwards Grand Duchess of Tuscany,
Paganini probably reached his acme of power, if not of
fame. He had for years been at work upon new effects and
combinations ; but, at the very time when each new exploit
was being greeted with frantic applause, he betook himself to
an exhaustive study of the old masters. Something he seemed
to be groping after — some clue he wished to find. How
often had he thrown over Viotti, Pugnani, Kreutzer ! How
often had he returned to their works ! All were found
utterly inadequate to suggest to him a single fresh thought,
and it was nothing short of a new world that he was bound
to discover.
In studying the ninth work of Locatelli, entitled " L'Arte
de Nouva Modulazione " his brain was set suddenly a-going
in the peculiar direction of his new aspirations. Every
original genius seeks some such clue or point of departure.
Something in Locatelli's method inflamed Paganini with
those conceptions of simultaneous notes struck in different
parts of the instrument; the hitherto unknown management
of the screws, in which the violin was tuned all sorts of
ways to reach effects never heard before or since ; the har-
monic flying out at all points, the arpeggios and pizzicatos,
of which more anon, — these, which were in after-years
brought to such perfection, were born out of infinite study
and practice, under the stimulating influence of the Grand
Duchess and her Court.
It is at this season of his life that Paganini appears most
like other people ; the idol of the Court, untouched as yet
by any definite malady, occupying an official post, and sys-
tematically laboring to perfect a talent which already seemed
too prodigious to belong to anyone man, — all conditions
seemed most favorable to his peace and pleasure, could they
have only lasted ; but this was not possible. They continued
until he had achieved the last step in the ladder of con-
summate skill, and no longer. Probably all his executive
peculiarities were developed at this time. It was at Flor-
ence, for instance (and not in a prison), that Paganini first
played upon onlv two — the first and fourth — strings, and
then upon one — the fourth — string. Being in love with a
lady of the Court, who reciprocated his attachment, he gave
out that he would depict upon his violin a Scene Atnon-
reuse; the treble string, we presume, was the lady, and the
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 8l
fourth string the gentleman. The emotional dialogue was
carried on between the two in a manner which fairly over-
came the audience with delight, and led to the Grand
Duchess requesting him to try one string alone next time.
How he succeeded in that exploit is known to all the world,
for he ever afterwards retained an extreme partiality for the
fourth string.
In 1S08 he obtained from the Grand Duchess leave to
travel. His fame had preceded him. Leghorn, where
seven years before he had forfeited his famous Stradivarius
and won a Guarnerius, received him with open arms,
although his appearance was marked by an amusing con-
tretemps. He came on to the stage limping, having run a
nail into his heel. At all times odd-looking, he. no doubt,
looked all the more peculiar under these circumstances, and
there was some tittering among the audience. Just as he
began, the candles fell out of his desk — more laughter.
He went on playing ; the first string broke — more laughter.
He played the rest of the concerto through on three strings,
but the laughter now changed to vociferous applause at this
feat. The beggarly elements seemed of little consequence
to this magician. One or more strings, it was all the same
to him ; indeed, it is recorded that he seldom paused to
mend his strings when they broke, which they not unfre-
quently did. Whether from abstraction or carelessness he
would allow them at times to grow quite ragged on the
finger-board, and his constant practice of plucking them,
guitar-like, with the left hand, as well as harp-like, with
the fore-finger of the right hand, helped, no doubt, to wear
them out rapidly.
At Ferrara both he and his violin met with a different
reception. A singer had failed him, and he had induced a
danseuse who had a pretty voice to come to the rescue.
Some graceless fellow in the audience hissed her singing,
which caused Paganini to take a revenge little suited to the
occasion. In his last solo he imitated the cries of various
animals, and, suddenly advancing to the foot-lights, caused
his violin to bray like an ass, with the exclamation, " This
is for him who hissed !" Instead of laughter, the pit rose in
fury and would have soon made short work of him and his
violin, had he not escaped by a back door. It appears
that the country folk round Ferrara called the town's
Sz MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
people, whom they hated, " asses," and were inthe habit of
singing out " Hee-haw ! " whenever they had to allude to
them ; hence the angry reception of Paganini's musical
repartee.
We get but fugitive glances of the great artist during this
professional tour ; but it is too true that at Turin he was
attacked with that bowel complaint which ever afterwards
haunted him like an evil demon, causing him the most
frightful and protracted suffering, and interrupting his
career sometimes for months together. His distrust of
doctors, and lack of quack medicines, no doubt made
matters worse, and from this time his strange appearance
grew stranger, his pallor more livid, his gauntness and
thinness more spectral and grotesque ; whilst, greatly no
doubt, in consequence of suftering, his face assumed that
look of eagle sharpness, sometimes varied by a sardonic grin,
of a look of almost demoniacal fury, which artists have cari-
catured, and sculptors have tried to tone down. Indeed,
he must have been altogether an exceptional being to behold
in the flesh. People who knew him say that the figure
which used still to be exhibited at Madame Tussaud's. same
twenty-five years ago, was a remarkable likeness. He
looked like an indifferently dressed skeleton, with a long
parchment face, deep, dark eyes, full of flame, long, lank
hair, straggling down over his shoulders. His walk was
shambling and awkward ; the bones seem to have been
badly strung together ; he appeared as if he had been fixed
up nastily on wires and the wires had got loose. As he
stood, he'settled himself on one hip. at a gaunt angle, and
before he began, the whole business looked so unpromising
that men wondered how he could hold his violin at all,
much less play it.
It must have been at his first visit to Florence, before his
appearance was familiar, as it afterwards became, to the
inhabitants of that city, that we get one of those side-
views of the man which are more precious than many dates
and drier details.
Slowly recovering from illness, Paginini repaired to
Florence, probably in May of the year 1809. He must
have then lived in almost complete solitude, as he does not
appear to have been recognized there before the month of
October, when he was officially recalled to his duties by the
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE. £3
late princess, now Grand Duchess at the Court of Flor-
ence.
Those who have wandered in spring-time about the en-
virons of Florence know the indefinite charm there is in the
still and fertile country, without the walls of the city. Out-
side the gate of the Pitti, on the summit of a steep hill,
stands Fiesole, bathed in clear air and warm sunshine.
How many an invalid has walked up that winding and
rugged path, gathering, here and there, a sweet wild-flower,
resting from time to time to drink in the delicious air, until
pure health seemed borne back to the feeble frame upon the
soft and fragrant breeze !
Alone, on a bright morning, a tall, ungainly figure goes
slowly up the hill towards Fiesole. He pauses at times ; he
looks round abstractedly. He is talking to himself out loud,
unconscious of any one near him ; he gesticulates wildly,
then breaks out into a loud laugh ; but stops suddenly, as
he sees coming down the hill a young girl, carrying one of
those large baskets full of flowers so commonly seen in the
streets of Florence. She is beautiful with the beauty of the
Florentine girls ; the brown flesh-tints mellowed with re-
flected light from the white road strewn thick with marble-
dust : under the wide straw hat the free curls flow dark and
thick, clustering about her temples, and lowering the fore-
head. Suddenly the large black eyes, so common amongst
the Italian peasants, seemed transfixed with something
between wonder and fear, as they fall upon the uncouth
figure approaching her. In another moment, conscious of
the stranger's intense gaze, she stands motionless, like a
bird charmed by a serpent ; then she trembles involuntarily,
from head to foot. A strange smile steals over the pale and
haggard face of Paganini ; was he, then, conscious of exer-
cising any mesmeric power? At times he seemed so full
of some such influence that individuals, as well as crowds,
were irresistibly drawn and fascinated by his look.
But the strange smile seemed to unloose the spell ; the
startled girl passed on, and the solitary artist resumed his
walk towards Fiesole.
Heavy clouds, riven with spaces of light, were driving
before the wind. Over the bridge Delle Grazie, up the hill
once more without the gates of Florence, we pass towards a
S4 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
ruined castle. A storm seems imminent ; the wind whistles
and howls round the deserted promontory ; the bare ruin
that has braved the storms of centuries stands up dark
against the sky, and seems to exult in the fury of the ele-
ments, so much in harmony with its own wild and desolate
look. But what are those low wailings? Is it the wind, or
some human being in anguish? The traveller rushes for-
ward ; in a cavity of the deep ruin, amongst the tumbled
stones, o'ergrown with moss and turf, lies a strange figure,
— a lonely, haggard man. He listens to the wind, and
moans in answer, as though in pain. Is he the magician
who has conjured up the tempest, and is the scene before us
all unreal? or has the tempest entered into his soul, and
filled him with its own sad voice? Indeed, as he lies there,
his pale, almost livid face distorted, his wet hair streaming
wildly about his shoulders, his uncouth form writhing with
each new burst of the hurricane, he looks the very imperson-
ation of the storm itself. But, on being observed, his look
becomes fixed ; the stranger insensibly recoils, and feels
awkwardly the sense of intrusion. If the strange man is in
pain he wants no help ; thus rashly exposed to the weather,
hardly recovered from his grievous malady, he may well be
actually suffering ; but most likely he is merely possessed
for the time by certain emotions impressed upon his sensitive
and electric organization by the tempest from without. He
is drinking in the elementary forces which, by-and-by, he
will give out with a power itself almost as elemental.
Some of us may have walked in the soft moonlight under
the long avenue (Cascine) that runs by the brink of the
rushing Arno straight out of Florence. We can remember
how the birds love those trees, and the broken underwood
beneath them. When the city sleeps the heart of those
woods is alive ; even the daylight birds are sometimes
aroused by the nightingales, as they answer each other in
notes of sweetness long drawn out, and tender raptures that
seem to swoon and faint into the still more tender silences
of the summer night. But suddenly the birds' song is
checked ; other strains of incomparable sweetness arise in
the wood. The birds are silent ; they pause and listen : the
notes are like theirs, but more exquisite ; they are woven
by a higher art into phrases of inspiration beyond even the
nightingale's gift. The strange whistler ceases, and the
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 85
birds resume, timidly, their song ; again the unearthly mu-
sic breaks forth, and mingles with theirs. As we push
apart the bushes, we discover the same weird figure that
but lately lay moaning in the storm among the ruins upon
yonder hill.
The person to whom we owe, substantially, the above
glimpses, met this extraordinary man again in the streets of
Florence a few days later. A merry party of young people,
laughing and shouting, pass by towards the Uffizzi ; we
listen to their ringing voices, occupied with themselves, and,
youth-like, caring for nothing at the time but their own
gayety, when suddenly the voices fall, the twanging of the
guitar ceases, a curious murmur runs through the merry
throng, and not a pleasant murmur: a tall, pale man, with
eyes on fire, and strange, imperious look, has pushed
brusquely in amongst them. He seizes the guitar, and,
sweeping its strings with passion, causes it to wail like a
zither, then peal out like the strains of a military band, and
finally settle into the rich chords and settled cadences of a
strong harp. All resistance and murmuring cease as the
astonished party follow him, spellbound. His cravat flies
loose, his coat-tails wave madly to and fro : he gesticulates
like a maniac, and the irresistible music streams forth
louder, wilder, more magical than ever ; he strides, leaps,
dances forward with the guitar, which is no longer a
guitar, but the very soul of Nicolo Paganini. A few days
later still the mystery was cleared up. Paganini had been
officially called to Florence by the Grand Duchess to super-
intend the Court concerts, and the whole of the town was
soon ringing with his name.
About the age of thirty, at which time, as we shall
presently narrate, Paganini became free, never again to be
bound by any official appointment, the great violinist had
exhausted all the possible resources of his instrument.
From this time Paganini, incredible as it may appear,
seldom, if ever, played, except at concerts and rehearsals,
and not always even at rehearsals. If he ever practised, he
always used a mute. Mr. Harris, who for twelve months
acted as his secretary, and seldom left him, never saw him
take his violin from its case. At the hotels where he
stopped the sound of his instrument was never heard. He
$6 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
used to say that he had worked enough, and had earned his
right to repose ; yet, without an effort, he continued to over-
come the superhuman difficulties which he himself had
created with the same unerring facility, and ever watched
by the eager and envious eyes of critics and rivals. In vain !
No false intonation, no note out of tune, no failure, was ever
perceptible. The Times critic, reviewing him in London
some years before his death, says his octaves were so true
that they sounded like one note, and the most enormous
intervals with triple notes, harmonics, and guitar effects,
seem to have been invariably taken with the same precision.
In the words of a critical judge, M. Fetis, " his hand was a
geometrical compass, which divided the finger-board with
mathematical precision." There is an amusing story told
of an Englishman, who followed him from place to place,
to hear him play in private, in the hope of discovering his
'• secret." At last, after" man}- vain attempts, he managed
to get lodged in the next room to the great artist. Looking
through the keyhole, he beheld him seated on a sofa, about
to take his violin from its case — at last ! He raises it to
his chin — but the bow? — is left in the case. The left
hand merely measures with its enormous wiry fingers a few
mechanical intervals, and the instrument is replaced in
silence ; not even then was a note to be heard.
Yet every detail of rehearsal was an anxiety to him.
Although he gave a prodigious number of concerts he was
always unusually restless and abstracted on the morning of
the day on which he had to perform. He would be idle for
hours on his sofa ; or, at least, he seemed to be idle — per-
haps the works were then being wound up before going to
rehearsal ; he would then, before starting, take up his
violin, examine it carefully, especially the screws, and,
having satisfied himself, replace it in its shabbv, worn case
without striking a note. Lastly, he would sort and arrange
the orchestral parts of his solos, and go off to rehearsal. He
was very unpunctual, and on one occasion kept the whole
band waiting for an hour, and was at last found sheltering
from the rain under a colonnade, rather than take a cab.
This was in London. At the rehearsal there was always
the most intense eagerness on the part of the band to hear
him play, and when he came to one of his prodigious
cadenzas the musicians would rise in their seats, and lean
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. S7
forward to watch every movement, arid follow every sound.
Paganini would then just play a few commonplace notes,
stop suddenly, and, turning round to the band, wave his
bow, with a malicious smile, and say, " Et caetera,
messieurs ! " If anything went wrong he got into a
paroxysm of fury ; but when things went well he freely
showed his satisfaction, and often exclaimed, " Bravissimo
sieti tuti virtuosi ! " He could be very courteous in his
manner, and was not personally unpopular with his fellow-
musicians, who stood greatly in awe of him. No one ever
saw the principal parts of his solos, as he played by heart,
for fear of the music being copied. The rehearsal over, he
carried even the orchestral parts away with him. He
would then go straight home, take a light meal, throw him-
self on his bed, and sleep profoundly until his carriage
arrived to take him to the concert. His toilet was very
simple, and took hardly any time ; his coat was Luttoned
tightly over his chest, and marked the more conspicuously
the impossible angles of his figure ; his trousers hung loose
for trousers of the period ; his cravat was tight about his
neck. He sweated so profusely over his solos, that he
always carried a clean shirt in his violin trunk, and changed
his linen once at least during the concert. At concert time
he usually seemed in excellent spirits. His first question on
arriving was always, " Is there a large audience?" If the
room was full he would say, "Excellent people! good,
good ! " If by any chance the boxes were empty he would
say, " Some of the effects will be lost." He kept his
audience waiting a long time, and he would sometimes say,
" I have plaved better," or, " I have played worse." and
occasionally his first solo would be more effective than his
last. After once or twice trying the music of Kreutzer
and Rode in public, he decided never to play any but his
own, and said to his secretary, Mr. Harris, " I have my
own peculiar style ; in accordance with this I regulate my
compositions. I had much rather write a piece in which I
can trust myself entirely to my own musical impressions."
" His art," observes M. F6tis, " was an art born with him,
the secret of which he has carried to the grave."
Some have pretended that, as Paganini never cared to
play except in public, his art was nothing to him but a
means of making money. It would be, perhaps, nearer the
88 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
truth to say that his art was so entirely himself, that he did
not require, except at seasons, and chiefly for others, to
give it outward expression. He needed no more to play
than Beethoven needed to hear. Happier than Beethoven,
he was not deprived of the power of realizing outwardly the
art in which he inwardly lived ; but probably the creations
of his spirit infinitely outstripped the utmost limits even of
his executive powers, until in his eyes they seemed, after
all, the faint and inadequate symbols of his wild and
inspired dreams. There are times when the deepest feeling
is the most silent — music may come to the aid of words ;
but there is a point at which music itself is a mere heggarlv
element. What made Paganini so exceptionally great was
the portentous development, the strength and independence
of the emotional fountain within. The whole of life was to
him nothing but so many successions of psychological heat
and cold. Incidents immediately became clothed with a
psychic atmosphere ; perhaps the life of emotion was never
so completely realized in itself, and for itself, as in the soul-
isolation of Paganini. That life, as far as it could be in-
dividually expressed, was uttered forth by his violin. On
his concert bills he used to put : —
"Paganini fara sentire il suo violino."
What the tempest had told him his violin would proclaim ;
what the summer night had whispered was stereotyped in
his soul, and the midnight song of birds came forth from
the Cremona depths at his bidding. Nor was there any
phase of passion unknown to him, save, alas ! the phase of
a pure and lasting love. His wild soul had early consumed
itself with unbridled excesses, and, although in his maturer
years he grew more sober in such matters, it was not before
he had fathomed the perilous depths of more than one
gratide passion, and made himself master of all its subtle
expressions.
When, then, we are told that he seldom played, we must
remember that his inmost life was itself one vast cosmos ot
imaginary concord and discord : he was music, although
only at times " the tides of music's golden sea " would burst
forth with incomparable splendor, and gather a kind of
concrete existence in sound ; yet to him his own inspirations
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 89
were as real — perhaps more real — without it. For music
exists apart from physical vibrations, nor can such vibra-
tions, however subtle and varied, express it wholly as it
lives in the creative heart. The ear of the soul hears what
no ear of sense can hear, and a music fairer than anything
on earth is often sounding in the spirit of the true musical
seer. Nay, does he not feel, like Beethoven, the bitter
descent when he formulates his thoughts upon paper, strikes
the keys, or sets in vibration the strings which, after all, are
but feeble apologies for the ideal beauty, the intense, the
subtle, or exalted harmonies of the inner life?
Shall we now assist at one of Paganini's performances?
How many descriptions have been written, and how inade-
quate ! It is hardly possible to do more than describe a few
salient peculiarities. But even our pale sketch would be
incomplete without such an attempt.
Enter Paganini : a shudder of curiosity and excitement
runs through the crowded theatre ; the men applaud, the
women concentrate a double-barrel fire of opera-glasses
upon the tall, ungainly figure that shuffles forward from the
side scenes to the foot-lights, with such an air of haughti-
ness, and yet so many mechanical bows. As the applause
rises again and again, the apparition stands still, looks
round, takes in at a glance the vast assembly. Then,
seizing his violin, he hugs it tightly between his chin and
chest, and stands for a few seconds gazing at it in motion-
less abstraction. The audience is now .completely hushed,
and all eyes are riveted upon one silent and almost gro-
tesque form. Suddenly Paganini raises his bow and dashes
it down like a sledge-hammer upon the strings. The open-
ing of the concerto abounds in solo passages, in which he
has to be left almost without accompaniment ; the orchestra
is reserved for the tuttis and slight interludes. Paganini
now revels in his distinctive and astonishing passages,
which hold the audience breathless. At one time torrents
of chords peal forth, as from some mimic orchestra ; har-
monic passages are thrown off with the sharpness and
sonority of the flute accompanied by the guitar, indepen-
dent phrases being managed .by the left hand plucking the
strings, whilst the right is playing legato passages with the
bow. The most difficult intervals are spanned with ease ;
the immense, compass-like fingers glide up and down every
9°
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE.
part of the key-board, and seem to be in ever so many places ■
at once. Heavy chords are struck indifferently with the
point or heel of the bow, as if each inch of the magic wand
were equally under control ; but, just when these prodigious
feats of skill are causing the senses to reel with something
like a painful strain, a low, measured melody steals forth
and penetrates the souls of all present, until some of the
audience break out into uncontrollable applause, whilst
others are melted to tears, overpowered by the thrilling
accents. Then, attenuated as it were to a thread, — but still
distinctly audible and resonant, — thedivine sound would die
away, and suddenly a grotesque flash of humor would
dart up from a lower sphere, and shift the emotional atmos-
phere, as the great maestro too soon dashes, with the im-
petuosity of a whirlwind, into the final ' k rondo" or " moto
perpetuo."
Paganini was not inexorable about encores ; he was
always gratified by applause. After the concert the people
often waited outside to accompany him to his hotel. He
seemed delighted with this kind of homage, and would go
out at such seasons and mix freely with them ; but he
was often quite inaccessible, and bent upon absolute seclu-
sion.
Let us now resume the chronological narrative. Towards
the end of 1812 Paganini quarrelled with his royal patron-
ess, the Grand Duchess of Tuscany. She had given him
leave, as above mentioned, to wear at Court the uniform of
captain of the body-guard, and one night he appeared in the
orchestra attired in this splendid costume. The duchess
seems to have thought this inappropriate, and sent word
desiring him to change his uniform for an ordinary dress.
The offended artist declined point-blank, and that evening
threw up his appointment and left the Florentine Court and
all its works forever. It is not at all improbable that Paga-
nini, who could now command any sum of money, had
grown tired of official duties, which could no longer shed
any new lustre upon him, and that, longing to be free, he
gladly availed himself of the first ready pretext for flight.
In vain his royal mistress sent after him, imploring him to
return. Paganini was inexorable, and it was even whis-
pered that the duchess's entreaties were prompted by a
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE.
9 1
feeling still more tender than the love of music, — a feeling
which Paganini had ceased to reciprocate.
Faginini was very fond of Milan, and he stayed there
during the greater part of 1S13. He visited that city three
times in five years, staying often for several months, and
giving in all thirty-seven concerts, most of them at the
Scala.
It was in 1S14 that he first made the acquaintance of
Rossini, at Bologna. The great composer, like every other
connoisseur, regarded him with admiration and astonish-
ment, and a friendship was then begun which was strength-
ened when the two celebrities met in 181 7 at Rome, and in
1 S3 1 at Paris.
Paganini treated his fellow-musicians and rivals with sim-
ple and unaffected courtesy. He expressed his great admira-
tion of Spohr's violin-playing, and he went all the way from
Genoa to Milan to hear Lafont. When they met, Lafont
proposed that they should give a concert, in which each
should play a solo. " I excused myself." says Paganini,
" by saying that such experiments are always impolitic,
as the public invariably looked upon them as duels.
Lapont, not seeing it in this light, I was compelled to
accept the challenge." Commenting upon the results, he
added, with singular candor and modesty, " Lafont prob-
ably surpassed me in tone ; but the applause which followed
my efforts convinced me that I did not suffer by com-
parison." Although unusually anxious, more for the sake
of others than for himself, to avoid such contests, he
never declined them; and a similar trial of skill look
place between him and the Polish violinist, Laprinski. in
181S, at Plaisance, the two artists remaining excellent
friends.
At this time Paganini's health seems to have been in an
unusually critical condition. We have noticed that he
seldom consulted doctors, and when he did so he was not
in the habit of following their advice ; but his credulity was
worse than his scepticism. He dosed himself immoderately
with some stuff called " Leroy ; " he believed that this
could cure anything. It usually produced a powerful agita-
tion in his nervous system, and generally ended in upsetting
the intestinal functions. Sometimes it seems to have de-
prived him of the power of speech.
9-
MEMOHIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
In 1S16 he went to Venice, where he seems fairlv bo
have collapsed after giving a few concerts. However, in
the following year (1S17) he was much better, and went to
Genoa to see his mother, taking: Milan en route. He has
been called avaricious, suspicious of his kind, and devoid
of natural affection. He. no doubt, loved money, and had
a general distrust of his friends : but it is certain that
he was attached to his mof id took care to supply
her with every comfort. She write? to him. some years
later : —
I am delighted to find that after vour travels to Paris and London
you purpose visiting Genoa expressly :o embrace me. Mr dream
-n fulfilled, and that which God promised me has been accom-
plished, — vour name is great, and Am with the heip of G'
placed you in a position of independence. We are ail welL In the
name of all your relations I thank you for the sums of money vou
hive sent. Omit nothing that will rer.cer your name immortal.
v the vices of great cities, remembering that yon have a mother
who loves you affectionately. She will never cease her supplica-
tions to the All-powerful tor your preservation. Embrace vour
amiable companion for me. ar.d k:-s little Achille. Love me "as I
love you.
Your ever affectionate mother.
Theresa Paoaxini.
The "amiable companion" seems to have been a canta-
trice, Antonia Blanchi di Como, with whom he appes • I
have lived at one time, and who bore him his or.lv son,
the •• little Achille."
In the same year 1 S 1 7 . he arrived in Rome in time for
the Carnival, where he excited the greatest enthusiasm.
He was frequently to be found at the palace of Count de
Kaunitz. the Austrian Ambassador, where he met all the
great people in Rome, and among them M. de Metternich.
who did his utmost to persuade him to visit Vienna. From
this time Paginini determined, sooner or later, to visit the
principal cities in Germany and France : but the state of his
health was still very precarious In, [818—19 ^e ? ave oon-
certs at Verona. Plaisance, Turin, and Florence, after which
he visited Naples for the first time. Hi- advent had 'ten
long looked for with feelings of jealous expectation and dis-
trust. The chief professors and musicians of the place, who
had never heard him. were not very favorablv disposed.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 93
Thev, however, gave him a reception, on which occasion a
piece of music was casually placed before him. full of the
most ingenious difficulties that could be devised. Pagani n i
was not unaccustomed to this kind of trap. and. upon being
requested to play it at sight, he merely glanced at it and
plaved it off with* the greatest ease.
But he had even worse foes than the professors. He
seems to have got into damp apartments close under St.
Elmo, and his lungs, at no time very strong, now showed
unmistakable signs of consumption. The landlord, fearing
that he would die in his house, actually turned him and all
he possessed out into the street, where his friend, Ciandelli.
happening to come by at the very nick of time, administered
a sound thrashing to the brutal host with a stick, and took
the invalid artist to a more comfortable lodging. In 1820
he returned to his favorite city. Milan, where he founded
a musical societv. conducted several concerts, and received
various crowns, medals, and decorations. In December of
the same vear he returned to Rome, and in the following
vear. 1821, paid a second visit to Naples, giving concerts at
the Fondo and the Theatre Nuovo. At the end of the year
he crossed over to Sicilv : but the people of Palermo hardly
appreciated him. and in 1822 he is again at Venice and
Plaisance. From thence he would have gone straight to
Germany, in accordance with the proposals of Metternich :
but on his way to Pavia. in 1S23. he was attacked by his old
complaint, and for some time it did not seem likely that he
would recover. He was advised to go to Genoa for rest,
and whilst there he recovered sufficiently to give concerts at
the Theatre St. Augustine, when the prophet in his own
country for once attracted enthusiastic crowds. The Milan-
ese, who had never expected to see him alive again, gave
him an enthusiastic reception at the Scala. on the 12th of
June. 1S24. He seems to have been still unable to tear
himself away from Italy : for in the same month he returned
to Genoa, then passed to Venice, and in 1825 he was at
Trieste. Then he proceeded, for the third time, to Naples,
and going over to Palermo for the second time, he now met
with a most astonishing success. He remained in Sicily
for a whole vear. and seems in this delicious climate to have
recovered his health sufHcientlv to undertake a long profes-
sional tour. He was then detained in Italv for nearlv two
94
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
years more, for in 1S26 he visited again Trieste, Venice,
and gave five concerts at Rome. In 1S27 he was decorated
by Pope Leo XII. with the Order of the Golden Spur. He
then repaired to Florence, where a disease in one of his legs
stopped his progress for several months. It was only in the
spring of 1S28 that he went on to Milan, where he at length
gave his farewell concert, before starting on his long-pro-
jected visit to Vienna.
To dwell upon the reports of his first appearance at
Vienna would be only to repeat what has already been
said. "The first note that he played on his Guarnerius,"
writes M. Schilling, in the Lexique Universel de Musique,
" indeed from his first step into the room, his reputation
was decided in Germany. Acted upon as by an electric
spark, a brilliant halo of glory appeared to invest his whole
person ; he stood before us like a miraculous apparition in
the domain of Art ! " He gave concerts in the capital of
Austria on the 13th, 16th, and iSth of April, 1S28. The
greatest players and musicians from all parts flocked to hear
him. Mayseder, Jansa, Slawich, Strebinger, Bohm, united
in extolling the new prodigy. In a very few days Vienna
seemed to be turned upside down, — no class of people was
unmoved by the presence of this extraordinary man. The
newspapers were full of verses and articles on Paganini.
Cravats, coats, gloves, hats, shoes, and even cigar-cases and
snuff-boxes,- — everything was now a la Paganini. The
fashionable cooks called new dishes by his name ; any great
stroke at billiards was a coup a la Pagafi/iii '.
• He stayed several months at Vienna, bit time did not
iiijure : his popularity: his talent bore the most critical
inspection all round, — he was at once colossal in the breadth
and majesty of his effects, and microscopic in the perfection
and'subtlety of his details. At the acme of his fame he
left Vienna, and commenced a tour through Austria.
Bohemia, Saxony, Poland, Bavaria, Prussia, and the
Rhenish Provinces. Prague was the only city which failed
to appreciate him. There was a stupid rivalry, of which
we find traces in the days of Mozart, between Vienna and
Prague, and it was generally understood that whoever
was applauded at Vienna was to be hissed at Prague, and
-'ice versa. But on reaching Berlin the great artist was
received -with such an ovation that he is said to have
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 95
exclaimed, on his first appearance, " Here is my Vienna
public ! "
From this time to the end of his life the wildest stories
began to be circulated about him, chiefly in the Italian and
French newspapers ; but the Leipzig Gazette du Monde
Elega?it cannot be held quite blameless, for it inserted one
of the most extravagant of these tales. One man gravely
affirmed that Paganini's miracles of skill were no longer
to be wondered at, because he had seen the devil standing
close behind him moving his arms for him. Another eye-
witness wrote that he had for some time observed a beauti-
ful woman at Paganini's concerts; he went to the 'theatre
in the hope of again seeing her on the occasion of Paga-
nini's last performance. The master appeared, played
divinely ; the house was crammed, but where was the lady?
Presently, in one of the soft pauses, a deep sigh was
heard, — it proceeded from the beautiful lady ; tears were
streaming down her cheeks ; a mysterious person was
seated by her side, with whom Paganini exchanged a ghastly
smile ; the lady and her cavalier soon rose ; the strange
cavalier grasped her hand — she grew deadly pale : they
proceed out of the theatre ; in a narrow by-path stands a
carriage with coal-black steeds ; the horses' eyes seem on
fire; the two enter, the carriage • vanishes — where, ap-
parently, there is no road at all ; the inference of all which
is that Paganini was in league with the devil ! It is
strange, but true, that these absurd legends gained some
credence amongst the ignorant populace of Italy and
France, though they were probably laughed at in Germany.
But other stories of a different kind annoyed him far
more. He was a ruffian who had murdered one mistress,
and decamped with another man's wife ; he was an escaped
convict ; he was a political busybody. He was a spy,
a thief, an immoral swindler ; he had been in prison, it was
said, for years, and had thus learned his skill upon one
string, all the others having got broken. It is necessary,
even at this time of day, to give a distinct denial to this last
legend. Paganini's morals were not above, but they were
not below, the average of the somewhat dissolute state of
society in which it was his misfortune to have been born
and bred. He never committed a murder, or fought a duel,
or betrayed a friend, or left without provision those whom
9 6
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
he had given just claims upon him. As to politics he knew
nothing and cared nothing for them ; and he never read the
newspapers except when they contained something about
himself. In Paris they pasted up a coarse wood-cut of
Paganini, chained in a dungeon, about the walls and hoard-
ings of the city. Paganini describes himself as having
stood before it in mute astonishment, until a crowd gath-
ered round him, and, recognizing the likeness, mobbed
and hustled him in the most inconvenient manner. It was
these reports that he afterwards bitterly complained of, and
M. Fetis, at his request, drew up a letter, which was after-
wards published throughout Europe, in which the aggrieved
violinist vindicates his character from the current calumnies.
His protestations, however, were far from stilling the ru-
mors, and, when he arrived in London, some years later,
there was no absurd and extravagant tale about him that
was not eagerly caught up and circulated throughout the
length and breadth of the land. A lesser man might have
courted this sort of notoriety ; but Paganini, who could do
without it, was intensely annoyed and wounded. We cannot
follow the great violinist in detail through his German cam-
paign, in the years 1S2S-29-30 ; but some notion of his way
of life may draw his personality a little closer to the reader
ere we prepare to greet him on our own shores.
Ill-health, at times acute suffering, which turned his pale,
bony face to a green, livid hue ; an intensely susceptible
nervous system ; an outward life alternating between scenes
of highly wrought excitement, amazing exertion, and fitful
repose, — these causes combined to produce a character
singular for its mingled abstraction and plasticity. At
times he seemed in the body, at other times out of the
body ; sometimes he appeared to be only semiconscious
of life ; at other times more intensely conscious than any
dozen people put together. Physical causes acted at times
oddly and instantly upon his brain ; at others they found
him like stone. He was not always open to impressions,
which at certain moments would find him so receptive that
he became the utter incarnation of them. He was full of
contradictions, which he cared little to explain either to
himself or to others. He travelled with the utmost speed
from place to place ; in the hottest weather he would have
all the carriage-windows closed. Although latterly his
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
97
lungs affected his voice, which became thin and feeble,
he delighted to talk loudly when rattling over the roads ;
the noise of the wheels seemed to excite him, and set his brain
going. He never entered an inn on the road, but would sit
in his carriage until the horses were ready, or walk up and
down wrapped in his great cloak, and resent being spoken
to. Arrived at his hotel he would throw all his doors and
windows open, and take what he called an air-bath ; but he
never ceased to abuse the climate of Germany, and said that
Italy was the only place fit to live in. His luggage was ex-
tremely simple, — a small napkin might have contained the
whole of his wardrobe, — a coat, a little linen, and a hat-
box, — a small carpet-bag, a shabby trunk, containing his
Guarnerius violin, his jewels, a clean shirt, and his money,
— that was all. He carried papers of immense value in a
red pocket-book along with concert tickets, letters, and
accounts. These last no one but himself could read, as he
knew hardly any arithmetic, and calculated, but with great
accuracy, on some method of his own. He cared little
where he slept, and seldom noticed what he ate or drank,
lie never complained of the inns; every place seemed
much alike to him — out of Italy ; he detested them all
equally. He seldom noticed scenery, or paid attention to
the sights of foreign towns. To himself he was the only
important fact everywhere. He often started without food
in the early morning, and remained fasting all day. At
night he would take a light supper, and some camomile
tea, and sleep soundly until morning. At times he ate
ravenously. He remained taciturn for days, and then he
would have all his meals sent up to his room ; but at
some hotels he would dine at the table d'hote, and join
freely in conversation. He lay on his sofa doing nothing
the greater part of every day ; but when making plans for
the publication of his works, or the founding of a musical
institution, which at one time occupied much of his thoughts,
he would stride up and down his room, and talk in a rapid
and animated manner. After dinner he habitually sat in
his room in total darkness until half-past ten, when he
went to bed. Sometimes from sixty to eighty people,
eager to see him, would wait upon him at his hotel in
the course of the day. When compelled to see visitors
he was polite ; but the intrusion of strangers fatigued and
cjS MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
annoyed him, and he often refused himself to every one.
lie would bolt his door, and not take the least notice of
any knocks.
He would sit for hours almost motionless in a kind of
trance, and apparently absorbed in deep thought ; but he
was not always averse to society. He was fond of convers-
ing with a few friends, and entered into whatever games
and recreations were going on with much zest ; but if any
one mentioned music he would relapse into a sullen silence,
or go off to some other part of the room. He disliked
dining out ; but when he accepted he usually ate largely of
everything on the table, after which he was generally
attacked by his old bowel-complaint. At the time, how-
ever, he would eat and drink largely without any incon-
venience. Although he mixed freely with the world, like
Chopin, he was a solitary man, and reserved to the last
degree. Xo one seemed to be in his confidence. lie had
an excellent memory ; yet certain faces seemed to pass from
him absolutely. His fidelity to both his parents was not
the least remarkable point in his strange character, and,
although ardentlv attached to money, he could be generous
at the call of what he considered duty, and even lavish
when charity was concerned ; indeed, he frequently gave
concerts for the benefit of the poor, remembering the time
when he had been a poor man himself.
Paris, always eager for novelty, the self-elected critic of
the civilized world in all matters appertaining to art, was
by this time imperative in her demand to see and hear
Paganini ; so, early in the spring of 1S31, he set out for
that fashionable capital. Fame had preceded him with
everv kind of strange rumor ; he could not only play on
one string, it was said, but his fiddle still gave forth strange
music when all the strings were removed. The old calum-
nies revived. The town was placarded with villanous
wood-cuts of him in prison ; others represented him in
caricature, playing on one string. In short, expectation
was wound up to its highest pitch, when he suddenly ar-
rived, in bad health, and immediatelv gave a performance
at the Opera-house, on March 9, 1S31. The calm and
judicious veteran of the Royal Conservatory of Music, in
Belgium, M. Fetis, who knew him well, and heard him
often, and to whose work I am so much indebted for the
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. qo .
present sketch, can rind no other words to express the sensa-
tion which he created on his first appearance at Paris than
" universal frenzy." The whole city flocked to hear him ;
the professors and virtuosi crowded round him on the plat-
form, as near as they dared approach, in order to watch him
play, after which they were no wiser than before. At the
end of each piece the whole audience, it is said, rose en
masse to recall him ; the tongue of envy forgot to wag, and
rivalry was put out of court. It was hoped he might have
thrown some light upon certain prodigious violin studies
which he had published, and which had long been known
at Paris. No one could play them, or even conjecture how
some of them were to be played ; nor did Paganini reveal
the secret, which lay, no doubt, partly in a peculiar way of
tuning the instrument, as well as in a length and agility of
ringer which he alone possessed.
About the middle of May he left Paris for London, and
the Times newspaper, which, at that time, hardly ever no-
ticed concerts, devoted half a column in a vain attempt to
give some idea of his first performance at the King's Theatre.
Paganini, to save himself trouble, had agreed, for an enor-
mous sum of money, to let himself to a speculator during
his stay in England, who made all arrangements for him and
took the proceeds. This plan has since been adopted by
several illustrious artists, M. Joachin amongst them ; and,
although it has been stigmatized as wanting in dignity, it is
probably, on the whole, the most satisfactoiy to the artist,
though not always to the public. An attempt was made to
double the prices at the Opera-house, which raised great
indignation ; the prices ultimately charged were the usual
opera charges, — no more and no less, — and this was doubt-
less thought exorbitant for a concert, although the solo per-
former was supported by an orchestra and some of the best
opera-singers, the famous Lablache amongst them. The
crowd at the doors on the first night was excessive, and the
pit was full to overflowing; but the boxes were thin. Pa-
ganini was suffering at that time from the inroads of his old
complaint, aggravated by the rapid encroachments of his
last fatal malady, consumption. He appeared contrary to
the advice of his physicians, and was received with the usual
tumult of applause. From a heap of contemporary criticism,
struggling vainly with the difficulty of the subject, we ex--
IOO MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
tract a few passages from the pen of an eye-witness, which
strike us as unusually graphic.
Mr. Gardner, of Leicester, writes : " At the hazard of my
ribs I placed myself at the Opera two hours and a half
before the concert began. . . . The concert opened
with Beethoven's second symphony, admirably played by
the Philharmonic band, after which Lablache sang ' Largo
al Factotum,' with much applause, and was encored. A
breathless silence, and every eye was watching the action
of this extraordinary violinist; and as he glided from the
side scenes to the front of the stage an involuntary cheer-
ing burst from every part of the house, many rising from
their seats to view the spectre during the thunder of this
unprecedented cheering; his gaunt and extraordinary
appearance being more like that of a devotee about to
sutler martyrdom than one to delight you with his art.
With the tip of his bow he sent off the orchestra in a grand
military movement with a force and vivacity as surprising
as it was new. At the termination of this introduction he
commenced with a soft, streaming note of celestial quality,
and with three or four whips of his bow elicited points of
sound that mounted to the third heaven and as bright as the
stars. . . . He has long legs and arms, and his hands
in his playing often assume the attitude of prayer, with the
fingers pointed upwards. It was curious to watch the faces
of Lindley, Dragonetti, and the other great players, who
took up places on the platform to command a good view of
him during his performance ; they all seem to have agreed
that the like had never been heard before, and that, in addi-
tion to his mai'vellous eccentricities and novel effects, he had
transcended the highest level of legitimate art that had ever
been reached."
It has often been asked in what respects Paganini's play-
ing differed from that of other great violinists ; in what
has he enriched the art ; what has he discovered or in-
vented? These questions have been to some extent an-
swered by the painstaking professor of music, Guhr, who
had many opportunities of watching him closely.
He was peculiar, first, in his manner of tuning. Some-
times the first three strings were tuned half a note higher,
the G string being a third lower. Sometimes he tuned his
G to B ; with a single turn of his peg he would change the
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
pitch of his G string, and never fail in his intonation. These
artifices explain, no doubt, many of his extraordinary inter-
vals.
Secondly, in his management of the bow he has had many
imitators, though none have approached him in the romantic
variety and " fiend-like power with which he ruled over the
strings." His ordinary staccato, played with a very tight
bow, was prodigiously loud and firm, like the strokes of a
hammer ; whilst his method of dashing the bow on the
strings, and letting it leap through an infinity of tiny staccato
notes with unerring precision, was wholly his own inven-
tion.
Thirdly, his tremolo use of the left hand exceeded any-
thing which had been attempted up to that time. This
effect has been, like every other one of his inimitable effects,
driven to death by subsequent violinists.
Fourth, his use of harmonics, now universally known to
violinists, was then absolutely new ; formerly only the open
harmonics had been used, and that very charily ; but Paga-
nini astonished the world by stopping the string with the
first finger, and extracting the harmonic simultaneously
with the fourth. By sliding up the first finger together
with the fourth, he played entire melodies in harmonics,
and got, on an average, about three octaves out of each
string ; his use of double harmonics in rapid passages, and
such trifles as four simultaneous A flats, are still problems
which few, if any hands but his, have been able to solve.
Lastly, his habit of plucking the strings, sometimes with
the right, sometimes with the left hand, and producing
those rapid pizzicato runs, on an accompaniment of a harp
or guitar, was absolutely new ; beyond these things it was
found impossible much farther to analyze his playing. His
secret, if he had any, died with him ; his music does not
reveal it. Although he wrote quartets, solos, duets, and
sonatas, fragments of about twenty-four of which are in
existence, only nine were found complete ; of these the
Rondo known as " Clochette," and often played by M.
Sivori, and " Le Streghe," are perhaps the best known.
The celebrated variations on the " Carnival de Venise" do
not appear to have been published as he played them,
though both Ernst and Sivori claim to play the Paganini
Carnival. M. Fetis considers his finest compositions have
102 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
not been preserved ; amongst those he reckons a magnifi-
cent concerto played at Paris in 1S13, and a grand military
sonata for the fourth string only.
The rest of Paganini's story is soon told. Broken in
health, after an absence of six years he returned to Italy,
where he was now nearly worshipped by his countrymen.
He had grown immensely rich, and bought various proper-
ties in Tuscany. He played at concerts from time to time,
and was always most generous in giving his talents for the
benefit of the poor.
Mr. Dubourg, in his valuable work on the violin, asserts
that he went to America ; but of this I can find no trace in
the biography of M. Fetis, nor in any other documents which
I have as yet come across. In 1S35 Paganini lived much
between Milan and Genoa. The Duchess of Parma had
conferred the order of St. George on him in 1S34.
In 1836 he got into bad hands. He lent his great name
to the establishment of a Casino in Paris, which failed.
He was obliged to go to Paris, and the journey, no doubt,
hastened his end. His consumption grew worse ; he could
not bear the cold ; he was annoyed by the unscrupulous
speculators, who tried to involve him in their own ruin, and
then refused to bear the burden with him. They even suc-
ceeded in mulcting him in the sum of 50,000 francs, and he
was actually detained by legal proceedings until he had
paid the whole sum.
But his days of speculation and glory were alike num-
bered. In 1S39 he was a dying man. He struggled with
indomitable energy against his deadly foe. He now often
took up the guitar, which, in the spring-time of his life,
had been so intimately associated with his first romantic
attachment. He was a great admirer of Beethoven, and
not long before his death he played one of that master's
quartets, his favorite one, with astonishing energy. In
extreme weakness, he labored out to hear a requiem of
Cherubini for male voices, and soon afterwards, with all his
last energies, he insisted upon being conveyed to one of the
churches in Marseilles, where he took part in a solemn
mass of Beethoven. His voice was now nearly extinct, and
his sleep, that greatest of consolations, was broken up by
dreadful fits of coughing, his features began to sink, and
he appeared to be little more than a living skeleton, so
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
103
excessive and fearful was his emaciation. Still he did not
believe in the approach of death. Day by day he grew
more restless, and talked of passing the winter at Nice ;
he did live on till the spring.
On the night of May 27, 1840, after a protracted
paroxysm, he suddenly became strangely tranquil. He
sank into a quiet sleep, and woke refreshed and calm. The
air was soft and warm. He desired them to open the win-
dows wide, draw the curtains of his bed, and allow the
moon, just rising in the unclouded glory of an Italian sky,
to Hood his apartment. He sat gazing intently upon it for
some minutes, and then again sank drowsily into a fitful
sleep. Rousing himself once more, his fine ear caught the
sound of the rustling leaves as they were gently stirred by
some breath of air outside. In his dying moments this sound
of the night wind in the trees seemed to affect him strangely,
and the summer nights on the banks of the Arno long ago
may have flashed back upon his mind, and called up fading
memories. But now the Arno was exchanged for the wide
Mediterranean Sea, all ablaze with light. Mozart, in his
last moments, pointed to the score of the Requiem, which
lay before him on his bed, and his lips were moving, to in-
dicate the effect of kettle-drums in a particular place, as he
sank back in a swoon ; and it is recorded of Paganini that
on that fair moonlight night in May, as the last dimness
came over his eyes, he stretched out his hand to grasp his
faithful friend and companion, his Guarnerius violin, and
as he struck its chords once more, and found that it ceased
to speak with its old magic power, he himself sank back
and expired, like one broken-hearted to find that a little
feeble, confused noise was all that was now left of those
strains that he had created and the world had worshipped.
He left £80,000 to his son, Baron Achille Paganini, and
about £45 a year to Antonia Bianchi, with whom he had
long since quarrelled. He had previously provided for
his mother. His violin he left to his native city, Genoa,
with directions that no other artist should ever play upon it.
We have no heart to dwell upon the wretched strife over
his dead body. Paganini, who had no great opinion of the
Catholic religion or the Catholic priests, died without con-
fession and the last sacraments. He was, accordinglv,
refused burial in consecrated ground by the Bishop of
104 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
Parma. For a long time his corpse remained at a room in
the hospital at Nice. The body then lay for four years at
Villa Franca, when, owing, it was affirmed, to the ghostly
violin sounds that were heard about the coffin, his son, by
paying large sums of money, got permission to bury his
father with funeral rites in the village church, near what had
been his' favorite residence, the Villa Gajona. This last
tribute was tardily paid to the ashes of the immortal musi-
cian in May of 1845.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
I05
CHAPTER VII.
RICHARD WAGNER.
WAGNER is the most powerful personality that has
appeared in the world of music since Beethoven.
But indeed he seems to me, in his wide range as
poet, dramatist, musician, and philosopher, almost alone in
the history of Art.
Beethoven was a musician only. His glory is to have
carried the art of music to its extreme limits of development :
no one has yet gone beyond him.
Wagner said, " I have invented nothing." You cannot
invent metre after the Greeks, or the modern drama after
Shakespeare, or coloring and perspective after the Italians,
— there is a point at which an art ceases to grow and stands
full-blown like a flower.
Most people admit that in music, as in other arts, that
point has been reached. What, then, remained? T'/iis,
according to Richard Wagner : to concentrate into one
dazzling focus all the arts, and, having sounded and de-
veloped the expressional depth, and determined the peculiar
function of each, to combine them at length into one perfect
and indivisible whole.
Words seem childishly inadequate to render all at once
such a conception as this. Slowly we may master some of
its details and allow them to orb into a perfect whole. If
you stand at the foot of one of the Alps you can see but a
little portion of it, — a hamlet, a sloping patch of vineyard,
and a pine copse beyond ; but as you ascend the winding
path the prospect opens to right and left ; cascades leap by
to lose themselves in the torrent below ; you plunge into
the gloom of a forest, and emerge on to the higher meadows
and pleasant scenes of pastoral life ; yonder the soil grows
rocky, and tumbled boulders lie around you ; the cloud
lifts, and a vista of mountains and vallevs is suddenly opened
up, and, pressing forward, you leave far below the murmurs
ic6 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
of one world, and raise your enraptured eyes to the black
eagle, as he wheels aloft in the golden air beyond the stain-
less and eternal snows.
So, when we are brought face to face with such a varied,
complex, and immense intelligence as that of Richard
Wagner, we are apt to dwell on a part, — a peculiarity of
the music ; a turn of the drama ; a melody, a situation, an
eccentricity. But the secret lies, after all, in the unity of
effect. Close your eyes after a day in the Alps, and, as the
visions pass before you, all will grow clear to your inner
consciousness, and the varied scenes you have realized only
in succession will at last arrange themselves into one great
and majestic whole.
Wagner was always prodigious in his ability. Like those
very fast trotters that flash along the highways of England
and America, he has been in the habit of passing every one
on the road, and passing them easily. But the conscious-
ness of power bred in him a singular wilfulness. At school
he could learn anything ; but he would learn only as he chose
and what he chose. When his time came he mastered,
with incredible rapidity and accuracy, Greek, Latin, my-
thology, and ancient history. As for his music-master he
soon sent him to the right-about, telling him he would learn
music his own way. Indeed, the variety of influences, and
the rapidity with which he absorbed them, one after the
other, quite unfitted him for going into harness early in any
one direction.
At the age of seventeen he had dipped into most litera-
tures, ancient and modern ; glanced at science, learned
English in order to read Shakespeare, weighed several
schools of philosophy, studied and dismissed the contending
theologies, absorbed Schiller and worshipped Goethe (then
eighty-four years old), turned away from the conventional
stage of Kotzebue and Iffland, tasted politics, and been
deeply stirred by the music of Beethoven.
There was doubtless a great indistinctness about his aims
at this time. To live, to grow, to feel, to be filled with new
emotions, and to sound his enormous capacities for receiv-
ing impressions and acquiring facts, — this had hitherto been
enough ; but the vexed question was inevitable : to what
end ?
The artistic temperament could give but one answer to
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
that, — "Expression!" Creation itself, man, the world,
the universe, is nothing but that. There is ever this im-
perious, divine necessity for outward expression. This is
the lesson of the ages and of the universe, of which we see
but a little speck realized upon our tiny and overcrowded
planet.
Wagner was willing to be led ; but he could not help
feeling that an artist now is the heir of all the ages ; that now
for the first time he can stand and gauge the creation of the
past in poetry, painting, drama, and music, and ask him-
self, how far, through these, has the inner world of the
mind found utterance. Wagner had the unconscious, but
inflexible hardihood to take up each art in turn, weigh it,
and find it wanting. Each fell short of the whole reality in
some respect.
Those who have traced Wagner's career from boyhood
know how patiently he was questioned every art, how pas-
sionatelv he has surrendered himself to it for a time ; how
willing he would have been to rest ; how inexorably experi-
ence and feeling have urged him on until, like the hardy
navigators of old, he broke at last into a new and undiscov-
ered ocean. At the age of eleven he had read Shake-
speare. Surely dramatic expression of thought and feeling
could go no farther. But he would test it as a form of art by
experiment, and see how it worked. He immediately con-
structed a drama, horrible and thorough, — a cross between
Hamlet and King Lear. Forty-two characters suffered
death in the first four acts, so that in the fifth, in order to
people his stage at all, most of them had to reappear as
ghosts.
Excited, but oppressed, by the complex inner life of the
Shakespearian drama, Wagner still felt the need of wedding
the personal life to some larger ideal types, and intensifying
the emotional element by the introduction of musical sound.
Then the cramped wooden stage of the Globe Theatre van-
ished, and in its place rose the marble amphitheatre, open
to the sky, embedded in the southern slope of the Athenian
Acropolis. In the classical drama nothing was individual ;
the whole life of Greece was there, but all was summed
up in large and simple types. The actors speak through
fixed masks. All fine inflection is lost; all change of facial
expression sacrificed to massive groupings and stately poses,
ioS MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
regulated by the shrill pipe and the meagre harp. But still
there is in the dramas of ,/Eschylus, Euripides, and Sophocles
a breadth of expression which enables the soul to shake it-
self free from its accidental surroundings and enter into gen-
eral sympathy with the wider life of humanity. It is this
escape into the ideal which the modern self-conscious spirit
most needs; this merging of discordant self in the universal
harmony which drew Wagner towards the theatre of the
Greeks.
For what the Greek was and for what he saw, his theatre
found an almost perfect art-form. The dance or science of
pantomimic motion was part of his daily education. His
body was trained in the Palaestra, or gymnasium, and his
life was one of constant drill to enable him to take part in
the games and national festivals. The elastic tongue of
Homer had been enriched and fired by a hundred poets be-
fore the full development of the Greek drama, and hymns
and songs, set to rhythmic and choral melodies of every
character and variety, supplied him with ready emotional
utterance upon all occasions. Add to this the profound en-
thusiasm which still accompanied the ancient rites, the Del-
phic oracles, and the Eleusinian mysteries, and we have all
materials which were woven into one harmonious whole by
yEschylus, — poet, warrior, stage manager, and religious
devotee.
The soul of the Greek drama, freed from accidental asso-
ciations, must now be melted down in the new crucible.
Wagner found there an intense earnestness of purpose ;
the devout portrayal of a few fundamental types ; the large,
clear outline, like the frieze of the Parthenon ; a simple
plot and well-developed phases of feeling as pronounced
and trenchant as the rhythmic motions of the drcmatis
ftersoncc ; and lastly he found — what he found not in
Shakespeare — the Greek chorus. This gave its binding
intensity to the whole drama ; this provided the universal
element in which the actors lived and moved and had their
being. The chorus ever in motion, — a band of youths or
maidens, priests or supernatural beings, fluid and expres-
sive, like the emotions of the vast and earnest assemblv. —
the chorus bore aloft a wail over the agonies of Philotetes,
a plaint for Iphigenia, a questioning of the gods for Cas-
sandra ; it enveloped the stage with floods of passionate
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
109
declamation ; it rushed, it pointed, it swayed, it sighed and
whispered in broken, pathetic accents ; it was like the sob-
bing of the sea on a rocky strand, the sound of the waves
in Ionian caves, the wild sweep of the tempest answering
back man's passionate plaint, and fitting the simple feelings
of the great types on the stage with an almost elemental in-
tensity of expression. The mysterious variety of Greek me-
tres, the various spasmodic rhythms, can only be understood
when the vision of the Greek chorus rises before us in its
eager bursts of appropriate, but fitful, activity. That chang-
ing chant, that harsh, ringing progression of notes on the
Greek scales, of which Gregorians are still the Christian rel-
ics — we should not call it music ; it was not melody, much
less harmony ; but it was sound inflections, marvellously used
to drill declamation, posture, and pantomime. The soul of
it has transmigrated in these latter days, — it has become
the Wagnerian Orchestra.
Turn back now, for a moment, to the Shakesperian
drama. Chorus, musical sound, band, song, all the voices of
universal nature environing man — appalling, consoling,
inspiring him — have vanished. A new inner-world,
unknown to the Greeks, has taken their place, and man is
absorbed with himself. Yet without that universal voice'
which he can make his own, how he shrinks, dwarfed by
his narrow individuality ; no longer a part of the great
whole and soul of things ; nature no longer his mother, the
winds no more his friends, the sea no more his comforter !
The ideal atmosphere of the Greek chorus is missed ; the
power of music, however rudimentary, is absent ; Shake-
speare seems to have felt it ; it passes over his sublime crea-
tions as an invocation to Music in Twelfth Night, or in
Ophelia's plaintive song. And this is the point of contact
between the old drama of yEschylus and the new drama of
Shakespeare ; the two stand forever for the opposite poles
of dramatic art, — the universal type, the individual life, —
and both are necessai'y. The individual is naturally evolved
from the universal ; but, once evolved and developed, it
must be restored to the universal and be glorified by it.
At this crisis, in his quest after a perfect art-form, Wag-
ner found himself confronted with Beethoven's music. He
did not believe that drama could be carried farther than
yEschylus, Sophocles, and Shakespeare, or music any far-
HO MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
ther than Beethoven ; but he did conceive the project of
leading the whole stream of the Beethovenian music into the
channels of the Shakespearian drama. The Greek chorus
might have been inadequate to the simple types of Greek
tragedy ; but modern life, with its self-conscious spirituality,
its questions, its doubts, its hopes, and its immense aspira-
tions, — this seemed to require quite a new element of
expression. The voice of this inner life had been preparing
for four hundred years ; when it was ready it turned out to
be no inflexible mask, through which a human voice might
speak, nor even a mobile chorus, but a splendid and com-
plex organ of expression, fitted so closely about the soul of
man as to become the very yEolian harp upon which the
breath of his life could freely play.
In the great world-laboratory of Art, Wagner found al-
ready all that he required. There was, as he remarked,
nothing left for him to invent ; the arts of poetry, music,
painting, and pantomime had been explored separately
and perfected ; nay, one step more had been made, —
the arts had actually been combined at different times
in different ways. Music with pantomime and poems by
the Greeks ; music with pantomime, drama, painting, and
every conceivable effect of stage scenery and costume, as
in modern opera ; music and words, as in oratorio or the
cantata.
But in Greece music was wholly undeveloped as an art:
acting had never sounded the depths of individual life and
expression. The Shakespearian drama left out music. The
cantata and oratorio omitted pantomime and painting ;
whilst modern opera presented a meretricious and maimed
combination of the arts, resulting from a radically defective
form.
With a surprising vigor of intellect Wagner has analyzed
the situation, and explained exactly why he felt dissatisfied
with the best operatic efforts of the past, and why he seeks
to supersede opera with the " musical drama."
I think his critical results may be briefly summed up
thus : In the musical drama, poetry, music, scenery, and
acting are to be so blended as that each shall have its own
appropriate share, and no more, as a medium of expres-
sion. The acting must not be cramped by the music, as in
common opera, where a man has to stand on one toe till he
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
has done his roulade, or pauses in the dead of night to shout
oui a song about "Hush! we shall be discovered" when
there is not a moment to spare. The music must not be
spoiled for the acting, as in ballet and pantomime, where act-
ing is overstrained to express what the sister arts of poetry
and music are better fitted to convey. And poetry, which,
after all, supplies the definite basis and answers the inevitable
4 'Why?" must not be sacrificed as in our opera libretti,
to the demands of singers for aria and scena, whilst the
scenery must only attempt effects and situations which can
be made to look real. The object of the grand musical
drama is, in fact, to present a true picture of human feeling
with the utmost fulness and intensity, freed from every con-
ventional expression by the happy union of all the arts,
giving to each only what it is able to deal with ; but thus
dealing with everything, leaving nothing to the imagina-
tion. The Wagnerian drama completely exhausts the
situation.
Filled with this magnificent conception Wagner looked
out upon the world of modern opera — and what did he
see ? First, he noticed that the opera had made a false
start. It sprang, not from the earnest feeling of the miracle
plays, but from the indolent desire of the luxurious Italian
nobles to listen to the delicious popular melodies in a refined
form. The spontaneous street action (which may to this
day be admired in Naples or Florence) was exchanged for
a sort of drawing-room stage, and poets were hired to reset
the Italian melodies, as Moore reset the Irish melodies,
for ears polite. This new aristocratic mongrel art had
nothing to do with the real drama. Metastasio himself
was only an Italian Mr. Chorley, — the very humble ser-
vant of everybody's tunes ; but these tunes had to be strung
together, so the recitative, used for centuries in church, was
borrowed ; then the product was naturally a little dull, so
the whole had to be whipped up with a dance ; hence the
ballet, and there you have the three fixed points of the
opera — aria, recitative, and ballet — which to this day
determine the form of modern opera. Thus opera, whilst
it had no connection with the real drama, did not even
spring from the best musical elements. " From the pros-
perity of opera in Italy," says Wagner, " the art-student
will date the decline of music in that country. . . . No
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
one who has any conception of the grandeur and ineffable
depth of the earlier Italian church music — Palestrina's
' Stabat Mater,' for instance — will ever dream of main-
taining that Italian opera can be looked upon as the legiti-
mate daughter of that wondrous mother."
As ear-tickling, and not truth of expression, was the
chief thing, and as there was nothing much to be expressed,
the arias got wider and wider of the words, and at last the
words became mere pegs, and the music totally irrelevant —
as who should dance a jig over a grave.
Gluck's reform consisted in making the operatic tunes
once more true to the words ; but the improvment touched
the sentiment only, without reaching the defective form.
In France the form was slightly redeemed by the superior
libretti and more elaborate pantomime ; whilst in Germany
opera arrived as a finished foreign production, and Mozart
and others had to go to Italy to learn it. " In expressing
my highest admiration of the exquisite beauty of our great
masters," says Wagner, " I did not detract from their fame
in showing that the cause of their weaknesses lay in the
faultiness of the genre." And the defect of genre lav
chiefly in the immolation of the libretto, to the exigences of
fixed aria, scena, and recitative. The drama which has
to be stretched upon that Procrustean bed must necessarily
become disjointed and lifeless in the process. Rossini re-
tarded the progress of the musical drama for at least fifty
years through the absolute triumph of melody, in the most
fascinating abundance, over the resources of the orchestra
and the inspirations of the poet.
" His opera," writes Edward Dannreuther, to whose
pamphlet on Wagner I am so much indebted, " is like a
string of beads, each bead being a glittering and intoxicat-
ing tune. Dramatic and poetic truth — all that makes a
stage performance interesting — is sacrificed to tunes. Poet
and musician alike had felt this. Goethe and Schiller both
found the operatic form, and even the existing stage, so
uncongenial, that they took to writing narrative and de-
scriptive plays, not to be acted at all, and have been
followed in this by Byron, Tennyson, Browning and Swin-
burne. Beethoven wrote but one opera, "Fidelio," in which
the breadth of the overture, seems to accuse the narrowness
of the dramatic form, although the libretto of" Fidelio " is
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE.
"3
very good, as times go. Mendelssohn and Schumann
could never find a suitable libretto.
The conclusion of all this is obvious. The perfect me-
dium which was to combine the apparently unmanageable
arts was yet to come, and Wagner proposed to himself the
task of harnessing these fiery steeds to his triumphal car,
and driving them all together. He must choose his own
subject, with a simple plot and a few strong passions and
great situations. He must write his own drama, which,
without being either orthodox verse or fixed metre, would
aim in its mobile and alliterative pathos at following the
varied inflections of natural feeling. He must arrange his
own scenery, perfect in detail, and within the limits of
stage possibility ; and, finally, he must compose his own
music, and drill his band, chorus, and characters.
Whilst these aims were slowly maturing in him Wagner
found himself constantly at war with his age and his sur-
roundings. At sixteen he had resolved to devote himself
to music, finding in it the ineffable expression for emotions
otherwise mainly inexpressible. Musical notes and inter-
vals were to him radiant forms and flaming ministers.
Mozart taught him that exquisite certainty of touch which
selects exactly the right notes to express a given musical
idea. Weber taught him the secret of pure melody : how
to stamp with an indelible type a given character, as in the
return of the Samiel motive in "Der Freyschutz ;" he also per-
ceived in that opera the superiority of legend and popular
myth, as on the Greek stage, to present the universal and
eternal aspects of human life in their most pronounced and
ideal forms. Beethoven supplied him with the mighty or-
chestra, capable of holding in suspension an immense crowd
of emotions, and of manipulating the interior and complex
feelings with the instantaneous and infallible power of a
magician's wand. Schubert taught him the freedom of song ;
Chopin, the magic elasticity of chords ; Spohr, the subtle
properties of the chromatic scale ; and even Meverbeer
revealed to him the possibility of stage effect through
the Grand Opera. Shakespeare, Goethe, and Schiller sug-
gested the kind of language in which such dramas as
"Lohengrin" and " Rheingold " might be written ; whilst
Madame Schroder Devrient revealed to him what a woman
might accomplish in the stage presentation of ideal passion
ii4
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
with such a part as Elsa in " Lohengrin" or Briinnhilde in
" Walkiire."
But the immediate result of this, as I have said, was not
promising. Contrary to the advice of his friends he had
thrown himself, heart and soul, into the study of music as a
profession. Under the Cantor Weinlig, at Leipsic, and
whilst at the University, he produced an overture and sym-
phony, which were played, and not unfavorably received, at
the Gewandhaus ; but his early work, with here and there an
exceptional trait in harmony, was nothing but a pale copy
of Mozart, as maybe seen from a poor little piano sonata
lately republished by Breitkoff.
His health now broke down. He was twenty years old
(1833), anc ' ' ie wen t to his brother, a professor of music at
Wurzburg, where he stayed a year, at the end of which time
he was appointed musical director at the Magdeburg theatre,
where, under the combined influence of Weber and Beet-
hoven, he produced two operas, " The Fairies," and kk The
Novice of Palermo," neither of which succeeded. He left
his place in disgust, and obtained another post at the Ko-
nigsberg theatre. There he married an actress, — a good
creature, who, without being much to blame, does not seem
to have materially increased his happiness, but who decid-
edly shared the opinion of his friends that the composition
of " pot-boilers" was superior to the pursuit of the Ideal.
The Ideal, however, haunted Wagner, and — Poverty.
In 1836 he left with Mina for Riga on the shores of the
Baltic, and there, as chef cForchestre at the theatre, he
really appears to have enjoyed studying the operas of Mehnl,
Spontini, Auber ; for, whilst suffering what he describes as
a dull, gnawing pain at the frequent irrelevance of the senti-
ment to the music, the nobler correspondences and beauti-
ful inspirations gave him far-off glimpses of that musical
drama to which he even now dimly aspired.
In the midst of his routine duties Bulwer's novel, "Rienzi,"
struck his imagination. There, as on a large and classic
stage, was portrayed that eternal revolt of the human spirit
against tyranny, routine, selfishness, and corruption, of
which the Polish insurrection of 1S31 and the revolution of
July were the modern echoes. Rienzi, a tribune of the
people, dreaming of the old, austere Republic in the midst
of corrupt Papal Rome, — a noble heart, a powerful will at
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
115
war with a brutal and vulgar age, supported, cheered, by the
enthusiasm of a devoted and patriotic sister ; raised by a
wave of popularity to the highest summit of human power,
then hurled down by the Papal anathema, betrayed by a
mean and cowering aristocracy, banished by the mob that
had so lately hailed him as a deliverer, and at last falling by
a treacherous hand upon the charred and crumbling ashes
of his own homestead, the last great tribune of Rome, —
here was a subject with immense outlines, full of situations
in which the greatest breadth might be joined to the most
detailed inflections of feeling. In it Wagner, whilst not de-
parting avowedly from the form of the grand opera then in
vogue in Paris, has in fact burst the boundaries. " Rienzi "
is already the work of an independent master ; it is, at
least, prophetic of" Lohengrin" and " Tristan," whilst com-
paring favorably in pure melody and sensational effects with
any of the current operas. What rush, triumph, aspira-
tion about the large outlines and tramping measures of the
overture ! what elan and rugged dignity in the choruses !
what elevation in Rienzi's prayer, "God of Light"!
what fervor and inexhaustible faith in the phrase, " Thou
hast placed me as a pilot on a treacherous and rocky strand ! "
what imagery as of vast buildings and ranged towers dimly
seen athwart the dull red dawn, in the music of " Scatter
the night that reigns above this city," and what chastened
exaltation, free from all Italian flourish or ornament, of
" Rise, thou blessed sun, and bring with thee resplendent
liberty" !
But in 1839, which saw the text and the completion of
the two first acts, we are far indeed from the production
of " Rienzi ; " it struck, however, the key-note of a most im-
portant, and little understood, phase in Wagner's career, —
the political phase.
Musicians, poets, and artists are not, as a rule, politicians.
Their world is the inner world, — the world of emotion
and thought, which belongs to no special age or clime, but
is eternal and universal. Goethe and Beethoven cared little
for revolutions, and have even been deemed wanting in pa-
triotism. But Wagner was a hot politician. He was at one'
time a mob orator, and was seduced by his illustrious friend
Rockel, who was afterwards put in prison, to throw himself
at Dresden into the rise of Saxony and the agitations of 1S4S.
1 1 6 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
He was proscribed and banished from German soil, and
years afterwards, when he had, if not recanted, at all events
aquiesced in things as they were, he was obliged to fly
from Munich, warned by the friendly king that his life was
in danger. The title of but one of his numerous semi-polit-
ical pamphlets, " Art and the Revolution," gives us the real
clue to all this. People have accused Wagner of time-serv-
ing and change in politics ; but the fact was that he favored
social revolution, because he thought it needful to art revolu-
tion. Conventionality and stagnation in art seemed to
him the natural outcome of conventionality and stagnation
in society ; the world must be recalled to feeling and
reality before art could again become the ideal life of the
people as it was once in Greece. But when, through royal
patronage, later on, all impediment to the free develop-
ment of his art-work disappeared, his revolutionary tenden-
cies also disappeared. He, too, was, first and foremost,
artist, and he came to realize his vocation, which had to do
with Art, and with "the Revolution" only in so far as it
affected "Art."
But, in fact, no ardent soul could escape the romantic and
revolutionary contagion that swept over France, Germany,
and even England, between 1S30 and 1850. Europe
seemed to breathe freely once more after the iron hand of
Napoleon I. had been lifted from her oppressed bosom ;
but then, like a wayward child, she burst into all kinds of
excesses.
The atheism of the first revolution, the brutality of
Napoleon Bonaparte's administration, the- dulness of Louis
Philippe's ; the revived taste for Greek art combined with
the inflexible dogmatism of the Papal creed, — all these
conspired to fill the ardent youth of the period with a deep
revolt against things as they were. With this came a
settled longing for a return of some sort to nature and free-
dom, and a vague, but intense, aspiration towards the ideal
and immaterial world, which in other times might have
taken the form of a religious revolution, but in 1S30 broke
out in what has been called " Romanticism " in art. It
was seen in the -writings of Mazzini and the mutterings of
Italian freedom, in the insatiable and varied developments
of Madame Sand's genius, in the wild and pathetic cries of
Alfred de Musset, in the sentimentalism of Lamartine, in
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE. 1 17
the vast scorn and bitter invective of Hugo, in the heart-
broken submission of Lacordaire, and in the despair of De
Lammenais. Byron, Shelley, and Tennyson caught both
the most earthly and the most heavenly echoes of the roman-
tic movement in England ; whilst its inner life and genius
have found, after all, their most subtle expression in the
music of Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, Berlioz,
Chopin, Wagner, Liszt, and Rubinstein.
Wagner had left Magdeburg for Riga, but he soon came
to the end of his tether there. A stupid little provincial
town was not likely to become then what Wagner has made
Bayreuth since, — the stage for turning upside-down the
art-theories of the civilized world. Pushed by what he
calls "despair," without money and without friends, but
with that settled faith in himself which has made him inde-
pendent of both until it has won both, the obscure chef
d? orchestre resolved to go to Paris and storm the Grand
Opera ; then at the feet of Rossini and that strange, unscru-
pulous bric-a-brac composer, Meyerbeer ! The small vessel
in which he sailed was blown about the Baltic for three
weeks, put into many desolate coast-nooks, and nearly
wrecked. After many hardships, shared with the rough
and often starving crew, the lonely musician arrived in
London (1840), with his head full of Paris and the Grande
Opera, and with " Rienzi " in his carpet-bag.
Whilst here he playfully seized the musical motive of the
English people. It lay, he said, in the five consecutive
ascending notes (after the first three) of " Rule Britannia :"
there was expressed the whole breadth and downright bluff
" go " of the British nation. He threw " Rule Britannia "
into an overture, and sent it by post to Sir George Smart,
then omnipotent musical professor in London ; but, the
postage being insufficient, the MS. was not taken in, and at
this moment is probably lying in some dim archive of the
post-office, "left till called for."
WAGNER IN PARIS.
Wagner passed two terrible years, 1S40-42, in Paris.
Meyerbeer had given him introductions, and introduced
him later to M. Joly, a stage-director at Paris, who was on
the point of bankruptcy, and who suspended the rehearsal of
Il8 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
the "Novice of Palermo" at the last moment. But this
was but the end of a series of checks. He wrote an overture
to " Faust." His good friend and faithful ally, Schlesinger,
editor of the Gazette Musicale, got it rehearsed at the Con-
servatoire. It sounded quite too strange and bizarre to
those ears polite, and was instantly snuffed out.
He submitted a libretto, " Lo\e Forbidden," to a theatri-
cal manager ; but it had not a chance, and dropped. Schles-
inger now employed him to write, and he wrote articles
and novels, and so kept body and soul together. No one
would listen to his music ; but he was not a bad hack, and
was hired for a few francs to anange Halevy's " Queen of
Cyprus " for the piano, and the latest tunes of Donizetti and
Bellini for piano and cornet a piston.
At night he stole into the Grand Opera, and there, as he
tells us, felt quite certain that his own works would one day
supersede the popular efforts of Rossini and Meyerbeer.
He does not seem to have been dejected like a lesser soul ;
in what the French called his im?nense orgueil, he was
sorry for their want of appreciation, but never dreamed of
altering his ideas to suit them. " Je me flattais," says the
unpaid musical hack, " d'imposer les miennes." Mean-
while the splendid band of the Conservatoire, under Habe-
neck, consoled him, and on the Boulevards he often met
and chatted with Auber, for whom he had a sincere respect
and admiration. Auber was at least a conscientious mu-
sician of genius, who knew his business, and did not debase
what was at no time a very exalted, but still a legitimate,
branch of his art, the opera comique ; and, besides, Auber
was a bon comarade* and liked Wagner, probably without
understanding him.
After months of drudgery, and chiefly pennv-a-lining for
the Gazette Musicale, Wagner felt the imperious necessity
for a return to his own art. He took a little cottage outside
Paris, hired a piano, and shut himself up. He had done
for a time, at least, with the mean, frivolous, coarse world
of Paris ; he did not miss his friends, he did not mind his
poverty. He was again on the wild Norwegian coast,
beaten about with storms, and listening to the weird tales
of mariners, as in broken and abrupt utterances, or with
bated breath, they confided to him the legend common in
one form or other to seafaring folk in all parts of the world.
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIEE.
119
— the legend of the " Flying Dutchman." The tale sprang
from the lives and adventures of those daring navigators of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and reflects the desper-
ate struggle with the elements, the insatiable thirst for the
discovery of new lands athwart unknown seas ; and it seems
to embody forever the avenging vision of men who, resolved
to win, had so often dared and lost all. A famous captain,
mad to double the Cape of Storms, beaten back again and
again, at length swears a mighty oath to persevere through-
out eternity. The devil takes him at his word. The cap-
tain doubles the Cape, but is doomed to roam the seas for-
ever from pole to pole, — as the Wandering Jew to tread
the earth, — his phantom vessel the terror of all mariners,
and the dreadful herald of shipwreck. Here was a legend
which needed but one inspired touch of love to make it a
grand epitome of seafaring life, with its hard toils, its for-
lorn hopes, and its tender and ineffable sweet respites. The
accursed doom of the Flying Dutchman can be lifted by
human love alone. The captain, driven by an irrepressible
longing for rest, may land once in seven years, and if he can
find a woman who will promise to be his, and remain faith-
ful to him for one term of seven years, his trial will be over
— he will be saved.
The legend thus humanized becomes the vehicle for the
expression of those intense, yet simple, feelings and situ-
ations which popular myth, according to Wagner, has the
property of condensing into universal types. Immense
unhappiness, drawn by magnetic attraction to immense
love, tried by heart-rending doubt and uncertainty, and
crowned with fidelity and triumphant love, the whole em-
bodied in a clear, simple story summed up in a few situations
of terrible strength and inexorable truth, — such is Wagner's
conception of the drama of the " Flying Dutchman," with its
damnation motive belonging to the captain, and its salva-
tion motive given to the bride ; its sailor's subject, its pilot's
song, its spinning-wheel home-melody, and its stormy
"Hoeho" chorus. The whole drama is shadowed forth
in the magic and tempestuous overture, and stands out as
this composer's first straightforward desertion of history
proper, and adoption of myth as the special rule of the new
musical drama. Six weeks of ceaseless labor, which to
Wagner were weeks of spontaneous and joyful production,
120 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
sufficed to complete the music of the " Flying Dutch-
man." The immediate result in Paris was ludicrous. The
music was instantly judged to be absurd, and Wagner was
forced to sell the libretto, which was handed over to
Frenchman, one M. P. Fouche, who could write music.
It appeared with that gentleman's approved setting, under
the title of " Le Vaisseau Fantome."
This was enough ! No lower depth could well be
reached, and Wagner was preparing to leave Paris to the
tender mercies of Rossini, Meyerbeer, and M. P. Fouche,
when news reached him from Germany that " Rienzi,"
flouted in the capital of taste, had been accepted in Ber-
lin and Dresden.
It was the spring of 1842, and it was also the rapid and
wondrous turn of the tide for Wagner. He hurried to
Dresden, to find the rehearsals of "Rienzi" already
advanced. The opera was produced with that singular
burst of enthusiasm which greets the first appreciation of an
important, but long-neglected, truth, and Wagner, having
become the favorite of the Crown Prince, was elected
Kapellmeister at Dresden, and found himself for the first
time famous. Some might now have rested on their lau-
rels, but to Wagner's imperious development "Rienzi"
was already a thing of the past. He had drank of the crys-
talline waters of popular myth, and was still thirsty. The
" Flying Dutchman" had opened up a new world to him,
more real because more exhaustive of human feelings and
character than the imperfect types and broken episodes of
real history. He seemed to stand where the fresh springs
of inspiration welled up from a virgin soil ; he listened to
the childlike voices of primitive peoples, inspired from the
simple heart of Nature, and babbling eternal verities with-
out knowing it. Legend was the rough ore ; the plastic
element he could seize and remould, as yEschylus re-
moulded Prometheus, or Sophocles CEdipus, adding philo-
sophic analvsis and the rich adornments of poetic fancy
and artistic form.
The legend of" Tannhauser" now engrossed him. The
drama was soon conceived and written. There he summed
up. in a few glowing scenes, the opposition between that
burst of free, sensuous life at the Renaissance, and the hard,
narrow ideal of Papal Christianity. Christ not only crowned
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
with thorns, but turned into stone, is all the answer that
Christianity had to give to that stormy impulse which at last
poured its long-pent-up torrent over Europe. The deep
revolt still stares us in the face from the Italian canvases,
as we look at the sensuous figures of Raphael or Titian, —
the free types of fair, breathing life, surrounded with the
hard aureole of the artificial saint, or limned as in mockery,
like the dreams of a Pagan world upon the walls of the
Vatican.
Tannhauser, a Thuringian knight, taking refuge with
Venus, no longer the beneficent Holda, joy of gods and men,
but turned by the excesses of the ascetic spirit into a malign
witch, and banished to the bowels of the earth in the Venus-
berg ; Tannhauser, with a touch eternally true to nature,
bursting the fetters of an unruly sensual life, and sighing for a
healthier activity ; Tannhauser seeing for a moment only, in
the pure love of woman, the reconciliation of the senses with
the spirit, a reconciliation made forever impossible by the
stupid bigotry of a false form of religion, but which is ulti-
mately sealed and accomplished by love and death in hea-
ven, ■ — this is the human and sublime parable of the drama,
wrought out with the fervor of a religious devotee, and
epitomized in that prodigious overture wherein the dirge of
the church mingles with the free and impassioned song of
the minstrel knight, and clashes wildly with the voluptuous
echoes of the fatal Venusberg.
Wagner's progress was now checked by that storm of in-
vective which burst out all over the art- world of Germany,
— not on account of" Rienzi," but in consequence of the
"Flying Dutchman," and especially of "Tannhauser."
The reason is simple. The power of " Rienzi," the au-
dacity of its sentiment, the simplicity of its outline, and the
realism of its mz'se en scene, together with a general respect
for the old opera forms, ensured it a hearing which resulted
in a legitimate triumph. But in " Tannhauser " the new
path was already struck out, which singers, band, audience,
critics, and composers, in a body, refused to tread ; in short,
aria, recitative, and ballet were dethroned, and suddenly
found themselves servants where they had been masters.
In 1843 the "Flying Dutchman" was produced at
Dresden, and failed. "Rienzi" was still revived with
success. Wagner now sent the " Dutchman " and " Tann-
I2 2 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
hauser " to various theatres. The former was tried at Berlin
in 1844, and failed. Spohr had the intelligence to take it
up at Cassel, and wrote a friendly and appreciative letter to
VVagner ; but the MS. scores were, as a rule, returned by the
other theatres, and the new operas seemed to react on the
earlier success, for at Hamburg " Rienzi " failed.
Meanwhile, failure, together with the close sympathy of
a few devoted friends, convincing him that he was more
right than ever, Wagner now threw himself into the com-
pletion of that work which is perhaps of the whole his most
perfect, as it certainly is his most popular, creation, " Lohen-
grin." The superb acting and singing of Miles. Titiens,
Nilsson, and Albani will be fresh in the minds of many
readers. The choruses in England have never yet been up
to the mark ; but the band under Sir Michael Costa, at its
best, rendered the wondrxms prelude to perfection.
The whole of "•Lohengrin" is in that prelude. The
descent of the Knight of the Swan from the jasper shrines
of the sacred palace of Montsalvat, hidden away in a distant
forest land ; his holy mission to rescue/ Elsa from her false
accusers ; his high and chivalric love ; his dignified trouble
at being urged by her to reveal his name, that insatiable
feminine curiosity which wrecks the whole ; the darker
scenes of treachery by which Elsa is goaded on to press her
fatal inquiry ; the magnificent climax of the first act ; the
sense of weird mystery that hangs about the appearance and
reappearance of the swan, and the final departure of the
glittering Knight of the Sangraal : allegory of heavenly
devotion stooping to lift up human love and dashed with
earth's bitterness in the attempt. — to those who understand
the pathos, delicacy, and full intensity of the tw Lohengrin"
prelude, this and more will become as vivid as art and
emotion can make it. k ' Lohengrin," in its elevation,
alike in its pain, its sacrifice, and its peace, is the necessary
reaction from that wreck of sensual passion and religious
despair so vividly grasped in the scenes of the " Venus-
berg," in the pilgrim chant and the wayside crucifix of
" Tannhauser."
"Lohengrin" was finished in 1S47 ; but the political
events of the next few years brought Wagner's career in
Germany to an abrupt conclusion. His growing dissatis-
faction with society coincided, unconsciously no doubt, with
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
123
:he failure of his operas after that first dawn of success. He
low devoted himself to criticism and politics.
In 1855, owing to the earnest advocacy of such friends as
VI. Ferdinand Praeger, who for thirty years, through evil
report and good report, had never ceased to support VVagner,
he Philharmonic Society invited him over to London, and
whilst here he conducted eight concerts. He was not popu-
ar ; he was surprised to find that the band thought it un-
lecessary to rehearse, and the band was surprised that he
should require so much rehearsal. But he drove the band
n spite of itself, and the band hated him. They said he
nurdered Beethoven with his baton, because of the freedom
md inspiration of his readings. Mendelssohn's Scotch
symphony had been deliberately crushed, or it was the only
hing that went, according to which paper you happened
o read. He did not care for the press, and he was not
nuch surprised that the press did not care for him. The
infailing musical intelligence of the Queen and Prince Albert
vas the only ray of sunlight in this his second visit to our
nhospitable land ; but the power of the man could not be
lid, even from his enemies ; his culture astonished the half-
xlucated musicians by whom he was surrounded, his brilliant
originality impressed even his own friends, who saw hirn
struggling through an imperfect acquaintance with French
md English to make himself understood. One evening,
done in company with M. Sainton, Hector Berlioz, and
Ferdinand Praeger, Wagner surprised them all by suddenlv
aunching out on art, music, and philosophy. Berlioz was
m elegant speaker, accustomed to lead easily ; but Wagner,
vith his torrent of broken French and his rush of molten
deas, silenced, bewildered, delighted and astonished them
ill. Berlioz is gone ; but that night still lives in the memory
)f those who were present who survive, and from whose lips
[ have the incident.
In 1874 Herr Hans von Bulow, pupil of Liszt and great
exponent of Wagner's music, came over, and, by his wonder-
ul playing, aided steadily by the periodical Wagnerian and
^iszt concerts given by Messrs. Dann'reuther and Bache,
it which Biilow conducted Wagner's music, brought about
he rise of the new Wagner movement in England, which
eceived its development in the interest occasioned by the
Bayreuth Festival, and reached its climax in the Wagner
124 MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE.
Festival, actively promoted by Herr Wilhelmj, and under-
taken by Messrs. Hodges and Essex, in 1S77, at the Albert
Hall.
Mina, Wagner's first wife, was now dead. I cannot here
tell at length how Liszt (whose daughter, Cosima von
Biilow, became Wagner's second wife, in 1870) labored
at Weimar with untiring zeal to produce Wagner's works,
and how his efforts were at last crowned with success all
over Germany in 1849-50. It was a popular triumph. I
remember old Cipriani Potter, the friend of Beethoven, say-
ing to me at the time when the English papers teemed with
the usual twaddle about Wagner's music being intelligible
only to the few, "It is all very well to talk this stuff here,
but in Germany it is the people, the common people, who
crowd to the theatre when ' Tannhauser ' and ' Lohen-
grin ' are given." I have noticed the same at the Covent
Garden concerts ; it was always the pit and gallery who
called for the Wagner nights whilst the opera which had
the great run with Carl Rosa's English Company was the
" Flying Dutchman," whilst " Tannhauser " and "Lohen-
grin "at both houses were invariably the crowded nights.
In 1 86 1 the Parisians showed their taste and chic by
whistling " Tannhauser" off' the stage.
In 1863 Wagner appeared at Vienna, Prague, Leipsic,
St. Petersburg, Moscow, Pesth, and conducted concerts
with brilliant success. In 1864 his constant friend, the
Crown Prince, now Ludwigll., of Bavaria, summoned him
to Munich, where the new operas of " Tristan," in 1865,
and " Meistersinger," in 1868, "Das Rheingold," in 1869.
and " Die Walkiire," in 1870, were successfully given with
ever-increasing appreciation and applause.
The " Meistersinger," through which there runs a strongly
comic vein, deals with the contrast between the old, stiff*
forms of minstrelsy by rule and the spontaneous revolt of a
free, musical, and poetical genius, and the work forms a hu-
morous and almost Shakespearian pendant to the great and
solemn minstrelsy which fills the centre of" Tannhauser."
In Wagner's opinion it is the opera most likely to find favor
with an English audience, a point since established by the
German opera performances under Richter.
" Tristan and Iseult," in which the drama and analysis of
passion, love, and death is wrought up to its highest pitch,
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 125
was thrown off between the two first and two last great sec-
tions of the" Tetralogie,"andthe " Tetralogie," itself planned
twenty years ago and produced at Bayreuth in 1S76, seemed
the last most daring and complete manifestation of Wagner's
dramatic, poetic, and musical genius, until " Parsifal " re-
vealed still greater heights and depths in 18S2.
PERSONAL TRAITS.
Wagner offended a great many people in the course of
his life ; but, then, a great many people offended Wagner.
Those who hated him lied about him unscrupulously, but
not even his worst enemies ever accused Wagner of lying
about them. He was an egotist in the sense that he believed
in himself; but, then, one must remember that, in his own
estimation, for more than forty years Richard Wagner had
been the greatest figure in the musical world.
For nearly half a century there was no one to believe in
Richard Wagner except Richard Wagner. Then, by-and-by,
the crowned heads, and, what was more to the point, the
heads of opera-houses, came round, and we had bowing and
scraping on all sides ; and connoisseurs arrived, cap in
hand, to interview the great man, and tell him to his face,
" Richard Wagner, we deem you one of the greatest
musicians that ever lived." — " Bah ! " says Wagner, "I told
you that forty years ago ; I can do without you now."
Wagner's was certainly one of the strongest and most in-
dependent natures I ever came across. He cared neither for
money, nor for rank, nor for the opinions of his contempo-
raries.
Although the most intimate friend of the King of Bavaria,
he was not a man whom princes could order about or
control. I remember very well his refusing to exhibit him-
self to order in the box of a certain high personage at the
Albert Hall when he was in England, although he readily
availed himself of the privilege of visiting Her Majesty
at Windsor. Wagner never forgot that the Queen and
Prince Albert recognized his genius on the occasion of his
first visit to England, and his illustrious patrons were then
in a very small minority.
Wagner was adored by his household. His life in
Switzerland was as regular as it was laborious. He rose at
I2 6 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
six, bathed, then reclined and read till ten, breakfasted,
worked uninterruptedly from eleven till two, dined,
rested, always with a book in hand, drove from four till
six, worked from six till eight, supped, and spent the even-
ing in the midst of his family.
His poor relations took advantage of him. His rustic
family connections seemed to rise out of the earth wherever
he stood, and claim his assistance or protection. They
would come on a visit and forget to leave ; they would
drop in at meal-time ; they would use his name, order
things of his trades-people and forget to pay, travel under
his -prestige, and lodge at his expense.
He was very fond of animals, especially dogs ; his favorite
dog, "Mark," is buried not far from his own grave. The
" Meistersinger " was arrested for months in consequence of
attentions paid to a poor dog he had met Wandering sick
and masterless. The ungrateful animal bit his hand, and
for months Wagner was unable to hold a pen ; but the dog
was equally well cared for.
When not absolutely absorbed in his work he was most
thoughtful for others, and was always planning for their
comfort and happiness ; and, although quick and at times
irritable, he could bear suffering calmly.
He was naturally adored by his servants, who stayed
with him so long that they became like members of the
family. He had an extraordinary power of attracting
people to his person.
Liszt, de Biilow, Richter, Wilhelmj, and all his staff of
artists were absolutely devoted to him, and gave him years
of willing service which no money could have paid for or
secured. The talented painter, Paul Toukowski, left his
atelier at Naples to come and live at Bayreuth and paint the
" Parsifal " scenery ; and what scenery it is ! What dim
forests, what enchanted caves, what massive walls and
battlements, what enchanted bowers, what more than
tropical bloom and foliage ! It was long before the artist
could satisfy Wagner with that magic garden. The master
would have the flowers as large as the girls, and he would
have the girls exactlv like the flowers. It was difficult ; but
it is enough to say that Wagner willed it, and it was done.
His influence with the actors was supreme ; never would
they have attempted for another what they did for him.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
I2 7
The Rhine girls were terrified at the cages in which they
had to be swung up and down in the Rhine depths, singing
all the time. They refused at first to face a situation which
appeared more fit for acrobats than for dramatic artists.
They would not get into their cages at all, until the master,
with tears in his eyes, besought them to try, and then all
went easily, and more than well.
I confess I came fully under Wagner's spell. I spent a
delightful evening at his house in 1876. It was at the close
of the first Bayreuth Festival. All the corps dramatic were
present. Richter, the conductor, was chatting with Wil-
helmj, the leader of the orchestra, when I went up to him
and asked him whether he had recruited his strength well
at Nuremburg. There, a few nights before, I had met him in
company with Professor Ella, and in the quiet old city of
Albert Diirer we had spent an evening over a good bottle
of Rhine wine, amid the fumes of those detestable black
cheroots which Liszt was so fond of.
Then I caught sight of Walter Bache, who introduced me
to Liszt ; and presently Richter took me up and presented
me to Wagner.
His face beamed with kindness and geniality ; he spoke
French, said he had been in England long, long ago, and
would perhaps come again. He had great doubts whether
the English were sufficiently serious in art ever to appreciate
his tw Ring," and seemed pleased when I told him of the
great popularitv of his music at the Promenade Concerts,
and the increasing appreciation of " Lohengrin " and
" Tannhauser." " Earlier works," he said, shrugging his
shoulders.
Wagner's friendship with the King of Bavaria had no
doubt contributed largely to the realization of all his plans
during his own lifetime. The notion of building a special
theatre, where the orchestra should be out of sight ; the
seats arranged tier above tier, with a single row of boxes
and a gallery above them had been long in his mind.
The king was anxious for the theatre to be in Munich ;
but the opposition of the court, on account of Wagner's
political opinions, was then too great. Later on the hotel-
keepers offered to build a theatre there on their own
account, and to carry out Wagner's plans free of charge
as a speculation.
128 Af EMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
Wagner declined. He chose Bayreuth. He was beholden
to none save the king and his own followers. They had
stood by him, rehearsed his fame, produced his works,
and they built his theatre ; but every detail was directed by
Wagner, and the perfection which the Bayreuth perform-
ances have at last reached is due to the same exhaustive
and unremitting personal care.
It was only natural that the master should yield the baton
to a friend like Richter, whose experience, physique, and
consummate talent would enable him to perfect the execu-
tive part of the work ; but it was my privilege in England
to see Wagner himself conduct some of his own music at
the Albert Hall. Some said he had already lost nerve as
a conductor, and, indeed, had never possessed the requisite
patience. That may have been to some extent true, but
it did not strike me.
A French critic has written : " Wagner plays on the
orchestra as though it were a gigantic fiddle, with a firm-
ness of touch which never fails him, and sovereign authority
before which all are happy in bowing down. To have an
idea of so extraordinary a conductor one must have seen
him."
The close of Wagner's life was crowned by the two great
Olympian-like festivals in 1S76 and 1S82. The Memorial
Festival in 1S83 was his requiem ; whilst the whole of the
city was resounding with his name and fame the great
master's body lay at rest in a funereal bower adjoining the
Neue Schloss. The event of 1876 was, I suppose, unpre-
cedented in the annals of modern art. I have devoted to
it a separate notice. It was my privilege to witness the
first unfolding of those four colossal musical dramas of the
" Nibelung's Ring " on the Bayreuth stage. People had
assembled from all parts of the civilized world ; kings,
princes, and nobles mingled in that motley throng. The
dramas lasted every day from four till ten, with intervals
of an hour between the acts. The whole population lived
only in the life of that great cycle of tragedies in which
gods, demi-gods, and mortals acted out, with more than
earthly intensity, the perennially interesting dramas of
human life and passion.
It was between the festival of 1876 at Bayreuth, and the
performance of " Parsifal " in 1882, that Wagner came tc
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
129
England to assist at the presentation of the " Ring " music
at the Albert Hall. He was shaken in health, and exceed-
ingly indisposed to take any exertion not directly bearing
upon his work, which was the new " Parsifal" drama. He
was not satisfied with his reception at the Albert Hall. He
was much courted in society, but avoided anything like
public receptions, and was considered over-retiring and
reticent by casual observers.
The Wagner furor being now on the increase after his
departure, the two principal London theatres were opened
in the spring and summer of 1SS0, — Covent Garden for
the performance of the "Nibelung's Ring," and Drury Lane
for the presentation of all his other operas seriatim. Neither
proved a commercial success, the market being thus quite
overstocked. But the Wagner excitement was still on the
increase, and when the " Parsifal " came to be produced at
Bayreuth, in 18S2, Bayreuth was as thronged as in 1S76.
wagner's death.
Wagner died suddenly on the 13th of February, 1SS3, at
Venice, whither he had come to recruit after the " Parsifal "
performances in 18S2, and to prepare for their renewal in
the following year. He was cut oft* in the full vigor of his
productive genius. Time had not dimmed his eye, nor
shaken his hand, nor closed a single channel of thought
or emotion. He sank thus suddenly in the spring of the
year 1883, not without some warning, yet enjoying life up
to its latest hour. l ' I will bear no longer the gray clouds
and wintry skies of Bayreuth," he had said to his friends in
the autumn of 1882.-
A suite of apartments in the Palace Vendramin at Venice
had been secured for him, and his children — Daniel, Eva,
Isolde, and Siegfried (now twelve years old) were already
there. Venice was in the greatest excitement on his arrival.
Italy had been in the strangest way won over to Wagner at
Bologna, under the able and enthusiastic baton of a lamented
maestro ; indeed, Liszt told me he had never heard Wag-
ner's operas more effectively given, except at Bayreuth.
Between four and six o'clock he might often be seen in
the arcades and streets, with all the family, buying little
presents for friends, or sipping coffee or the good, fresh beer
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
beloved of all true Germans. The military band, which
played occasionally in the great square, had produced a ver-
sion of the " Lohengrin " overture in his honor ; but played it
in such fashion that poor Wagner was constrained to take
refuge in the pastry-cook's shop and stop his ears with both
hands.
On another occasion, however, he went up to the band-
master, in his great-coat and slouched hat, and asked him
to play something out of Rossini's " Gazza Ladra." The con-
ductor, not recognizing Wagner, answered civilly that he
had none of the music there, and otherwise could not well
derange the programme. On Wagner retiring, a musician
told the band-master who the stranger was. Filled with
confusion and regret, the worthy man instantly sent for
copies of the k ' Gazza Ladra " selection, and played it for two
consecutive days. W^agner was much pleased, and, again
going up to the band, expressed his thanks, and praised
especially the solo cornet, who had much distinguished
himself.
On November 19, 1882, Liszt came to see him at Venice.
The two old men embraced each other affectionately on the
marble stairs. They sat long hours together in deep and
friendly converse. Joukovski, the artist, who had painted
the " Parsifal " scenery, and for whom the genius of Wagner
had an irresistible attraction, was also there. He painted a
remarkable portrait of Liszt, and a "•Sacred Family "of
Jesus, Joseph, and Mary. The guardian angels in the air
above were all portraits of Wagner's children.
Liszt was usually up at four o'clock, and both Wagner
and Liszt got through a great deal of serious work in those
small hours.
HIS POPULARITY.
Wagner's personal popularity at Venice was extraordinary.
In a short time he and every member of his family were
known even to the children of the poor. The master was
open-handed and sympathetic to all. He seemed ever about,
— now with his wife, or with little Eva, his pet daughter,
or Siegfried. He mixed with the people, chatted and
joked, and was ever ready to relieve the poor. He was
worshipped by his gondoliers. k ' He patted me on the
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
l 3*
back," said one, " asked me if I was tired, and said ' Amico
tnio, so the Carnival has come to an end.' " The man re-
peated the incident everywhere, as if it had been the great
event of his life. "They say he is greater than a king;
isn't it so ? " was the common talk in the streets as he passed.
On December 23, 1SS2, Wagner conducted his earliest
symphony, at the request of a small circle of friends, in cele-
bration of Madame Wagner's birthday. On taking the
bdton he turned to the musicians and said : —
" This is the last time I shall ever conduct."
"Why?" they asked.
" Because I shall soon die."
This was not at all his usual mood ; he spoke sometimes
of living till ninety ; he said that he could hardly finish the
work he had in his mind even then. His doctor knew that
his heart disease must one day carry him off, but hoped the
end might be delayed for five or six years at least.
February 13th came black with clouds. The rain poured
in torrents. Wagner rose as usual, and announced his
wish not to be disturbed till dinner-time, — two o'clock.
He had much to do, much to finish ; overmuch, indeed, and
the time was short.
The master did not feel quite well, and Cosima, his wife,
bade Betty, the' servant, take her work and not leave the
anteroom in case her master should call or ring.
The faithful creature seemed to have some presentiment
that all was not right. She listened hour after hour ; heard
the master striding up and down as was his wont.
Wife Cosima came in from time to time. " The master
works ever," said Betty, " and has not called for anything;
now he walks to and fro."
At one o'clock Wagner rang his bell and asked, " Is the
gondola ordered at four o'clock ? Good ; then I will take a
plate of soup up here, for I don't feel very well."
There was nothing unusual about this, for when absorbed
in work he would often thus have his light luncheon alone.
The servant brought in a plate of soup and retired. All
seemed quiet for some time. Then suddenly a hurried pac-
ing up and down the room was heard. The footsteps ceased
— a sharp cough, checked. Betty threw down her work,
walked on tiptoe to the door, and listened with all her ears.
She heard one deep groan ; she stood for a moment divided
132
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
between a resolve to call Cosima or break through her
master's orders and go into his room at once. The suspense
was soon over. "Betty!" It was Wagner's voice, very-
faint. Betty rushed in. Wagner was leaning back on his
sofa ; his fur coat was half off, his feet rested on a footstool.
His face was fearfully changed, — his features cadaverous
and drawn down with pain evidently ; with the utmost
difficulty he contrived to murmur, but almost inaudibly,
"Call my wife and the doctor." He never spoke again.
The terrified Betty rushed off to tell wife Cosima. The
instant she saw him she cried, " To the doctor, Betty ! "
About half an hour afterwards the doctor came. One
glance was enough. After feeling for the pulse that was
never to beat again he gently took the body of Wagner in
both his arms and carried it to his bed.
Dr. Keppler then turned to Cosima and said, with irre-
pressible emotion, " He is dead ! " The poor wife, who
had been so absolutely one in body, soul, and mind with
her husband, fell prostrate with a great cry upon his lifeless
body, nor for some time could any persuasion induce her to
leave the corpse, which she continued to embrace.
No sooner had Dr. Keppler pronounced the words
" Richard Wagner is dead !" from the steps of the " Vend-
ramin Palace," than the vast throng assembled outside to
hear the news dispersed with cries of " Dead ! dead ! " It
was commonly said that since Garibaldi's death no such
sensation had been felt in Venice.
Soon after death Wagner s body was embalmed by his
devoted medical attendant, Dr. Keppler, and a cast of his
face was taken by Signor Benvenuto.
The bronze coffin, which arrived from Vienna, was carried
upstairs by Hans Richter, the painter Joukovsky, Dr.
Keppler, Passini, and Ruben ; and the dead master was
borne to his funereal gondola by the same devoted friends.
The general expressions of sympathy were confined to no
class.
The Italian Government had offered the family a public
ceremony, which was declined ; yet I know not what greater
honor could have been paid him than the spontaneous grief
of all Venice. The canals were crowded with gondolas
draped in crape.
In all the ports through which the coffin passed the flags
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
133
floated half-mast high. At every town where there was a
stoppage the municipalities sent deputations, and the coffin
was strewn with fresh flowers.
At the head of the bier there was one enormous wreath,
sent by the King of Bavari: , Wagner's close friend, and at
Munich the king sent his representative to accompany the
funeral cortege to Bayreuth.
On the 17th the bier was received at the station by the
inhabitants of Bayreuth en masse. It was a solemn moment
when the widow and her children stepped out of their car-
riage, and all the people silently uncovered their heads.
Arrived at Wagner's house, " Vahnfried," — only a
select company were admitted to the garden, — the coffin
rested for a space at the entrance, but was not taken into
the house.
It was Madame Wagner's express wish that no speeches
or prayers should be made at the grave, which had long
since been dug, by Wagner's orders, in a retired spot of
his own garden, surrounded by thick bushes and fir-trees.
A simple blessing in the name of the Church was to be given,
and the coffin then lowered in silence.
An immense slab of gray polished granite rested above it,
and the vault door was to be opened on one side. Hither
was the body now brought by a silent and sorrowing
throng of attached friends, among them Liszt, Biilow, Rich-
ter, Joukovsky, and many more. On either side walked
Wagner's children.
Then Herr Caselmann, in the simplest words, committed
the departed and all his family to the care of Christ, and
blessed the assembly and the grave in the name of the
Church. A few took a leaf or a flower as it fell from the
piled-up heap, and the body was lowered silently into its
last resting-place — earth to earth — dust to dust!
Great spirit ! thy dream-life here is past, and face to face
with truth, " rapt from the fickle and the frail," for thee
the illusion has vanished ! Mayst thou also know the ful-
ness of joy in the unbroken and serene activities of the eter-
nal Reality!
134 MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIEE.
CHAPTER VIII.
" PARSIFAL."
THE blood of God ! — mystic symbol of Divine life ;
" for the blood is the life thereof." That is the key-
note of " Parsifal," the Knight of the Sangrail. Wine
is the ready symbolical vehicle the material link between the
Divine and human life. In the old religions, that heightened
consciousness, that intensity of feeling produced by stimu-
lant, was thought to be the very entering in of the "god, "
— the union of the Divine and human spirit ; and in the
Eleusinian mysteries the " sesame " — -the bread of Deme-
ter, the earth mother; the " kykeon" or wine of Dionysos,
the vine god — were thus sacramental.
The passionate desire to approach and mingle with Deity
is the oae mystic bond common to all religions in all lands.
It is the " cry of the human : " it traverses the a^es ; it ex-
hausts many symbols and transcends all forms.
To the Christian it is summed up in the " Lord's
Supper."
The mediaeval legend of the Sangrail (real or royal
blood) is the most poetic and pathetic form of transubstan-
tiation ; in it the gross materialism of the Roman Mass
almost ceases to be repulsive ; it possesses the true legen-
dary power of attraction and assimilation.
As the Knights of the Round Table, with their holy
vows, provided mediaeval chivalry with a centre, so did the
Lord's table, with its Sangrail, provide mediaeval religion
with its central attractive point. And as all marvellous
tales of knightly heroism circled round King Arthur's
table, so did the great legends embodying the Christian
conceptions of sin, punishment, and redemption circle round
the Sangrail and the sacrifice of the " Mass."
In the legends of "Parsifal " and "Lohengrin," the knightly
and religious elements are welded together. This is
enough. We need approach " Parsifal " with no deep knowl-
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
1 35
edge of the various sagas made use of by Wagner in his
drama. His disciples, whilst most eager to trace its
various elements to their sources, are most emphatic in
declaring that the " Parsifal " drama, so intimately true to
the spirit of Roman Catholicism, is, nevertheless, a new
creation.
Joseph of Arimathea received in a crystal cup the blood
of Christ as it flowed from the spear-wound made by the
Roman soldier. The cup and the spear were committed to
Titurel, who became a holy knight and head of a sacred
brotherhood of knights. They dwelt in the Vizigoth moun-
tains of Southern Spain, where, amidst impenetrable
forests, rose the legendary palace of Montsalvat. Here they
guarded the sacred relics, issuing forth at times from their
palatial fortress, like Lohengrin, to fight for innocence and
right, and always returning to renew their youth and
strength by the celestial contemplation of the Sangrail, and
by occasional participation in the holy feast.
Time and history count for very little in these narratives.
It was allowed, however, that Titurel, the Chief, had grown
extremely aged ; but, as it was not allowed that he could die
in the presence of the Sangrail, he seemed to have been laid
in a kind of trance, resting in an open tomb beneath the
altar of the Grail ; and whenever the cup was uncovered his
voice might be heard joining in the celebration. Mean-
while, Amfortis, his son, reigned in his stead.
Montsalvat, with its pure, contemplative, but active
brotherhood, and its mystic cup, thus stands out as the
poetic symbol of all that is highest and best in mediaeval
Christianity.
The note of the wicked world — Magic for Devotion,
Sensuality for Worship — breaks in upon our vision, as the
scene changes from the halls of Montsalvat to Klingsor's
palace. Klingsor, an impure knight, who has been re-
fused admittance to the order of the Sangrail, enters into
a compact with the powers of evil ; by magic acquires
arts of diabolical fascination ; fills his palace and gardens
with enchantments, and wages bitter war against the holy
knights, with a view of corrupting them, and ultimately, it
may be, of acquiring for himself the Sangrail, in which
all power is believed to reside. Many knights have already
succumbed to the "insidious arts" of Klingsor; but the
^6 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
tragical turning-point of the " Parsifal" is that Amfortis, him-
self the son of Titurel, the official guardian of the Grail, in
making war upon the magician, took with him the sacred
spear, and lost it to Klingsor.
It came about in this way. A woman of unearthly
loveliness won him in the enchanted bowers adjoining the
evil knight's palace, and Klingsor, seizing the holy spear,
thrust it into Amfortis' side, inflicting therewith an incura-
ble wound. The brave knight Gurnemanz dragged his
master fainting from the garden, his companions of the
Sangrail covering their retreat- But, returned to Montsalvat,
the unhappy king awakes only to bewail his sin, the loss of
the sacred spear, and the ceaseless harrowing smart of an
incurable wound. But who is Parsifal?
The smell of pine-woods in July ! The long avenue
outside the city of Bayreuth, that leads straight up the
hill, crowned by the Wagner Theatre, a noble structure,
architecturally admirable, severe, simple, but exactly
adapted to its purpose .... I join the stream of
pilgrims, some in carriages, others on foot. As we ap-
proach, a clear blast of trombones and brass, from the terrace
in front of the grand entrance, plays out the Grail
motive. It is the well-known signal, — there is no time
to be lost. I enter at the prescribed door, and find myself
close to my appointed place. Every one — such is the
admirable arrangement — seems to do likewise. In a few
minutes about one thousand persons are seated without con-
fusion. The theatre is darkened, the footlights are low-
ered, the prelude begins.
ACT I.
The waves of sound rise from the shadowy gulf sunken
between the audience and the footlights. Upon the sound
ocean of " wind " the " Take eat," or " Love-feast " motive
floats. Presently the strings pierce through it, the Spear
motive follows, and then, full of heavy pain, " Drink ye all
of this," followed by the famous Grail motive, — an old
chorale also used by Mendelssohn in the Reformation Sym-
phony. Then comes the noble Faith and Love theme.
As I sit in the low light, amidst the silent throng, and
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 137
listen, I need no interpreter. I am being placed in posses-
sion of the emotional keynotes of the drama. Every subject
is hist distinctly enunciated, and then all are wondrously
blended together. There is the pain of Sacrifice — the
mental agony, the bodily torture ; there are the alternate
pauses of Sorrow and respite from sorrow long drawn
out, the sharp ache of Sin, the glimpses of unhallowed
Joy, the strain of upward Endeavor, the serene peace of
Faith and Love, crowned by the blessed Vision of the
Grail. 'Tis past. The prelude melts into the opening
recitative.
The eyes have now to play their part. The curtain rises,
the story begins. The morning breaks slowly, the gray
streaks redden, a lovely summer landscape lies bathed in
primrose light. Under the shadow of a noble tree the
aged knight Gurnemanz has been resting, with two young
attendants. From the neighboring halls of Montsalvat the
solemn reveille — the Grail motive — rings out, and all
three sink on their knees in prayer. The sun bursts forth
in splendor, as the hymn rises to mingle with the voices of
universal nature. The waves of sound well up and fill the
soul with unspeakable thankfulness and praise.
The talk is of Amfortis, the king, and of his incurable
wound. A wild gallop, a rush of sound, and a weird
woman, with streaming hair, springs towards the startled
group. She bears a phial, with rare balsam from the
Arabian shores. It is for the king's wound. Who is the
wild horsewoman? Kundry, a strange creation, a being
doomed to wander, like the Wandering Jew, the Wild Hunts-
man, or Flying Dutchman, always seeking a deliverance
she cannot find; Kundry, who, in ages gone by, met the
Saviour on the road to Calvary, and derided him. Some
said she was Herodias' daughter. Now filled with remorse,
yet weighted with sinful longings, she selves by turns the
Knights of the Grail, then falls under the spell of Klingsor,
the evil knight sorcerer, and in the guise of an enchantress
is compelled by him to seduce, if possible, the Knights of
the Grail.
Eternal symbol of the divided allegiance of a woman's
soul ! She it was who, under the sensual spell, as an incar-
nation of loveliness, overcame Amfortis, and she it is now,
who, in her ardent quest for salvation, — changed and squalid
138 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
IB appearance. — serves the Knights of the Grail, and seeks
to heal Amfortis' wound !
Xo sooner had she delivered her balsam to the faithful
Gurnemanz. and thrown herself exhausted upon the grass,
where she lies gnawing her hair morosely, than a change
in the sound atmosphere, which never ceases to be generated
in the mystic orchestral gulf, presages the approach of
Amfortis.
He comes, borne on a litter, to his morning bath in the
shining lake hard bv. Sharp is the pain of the wound —
weary and hopeless is the king. Through the Wound
motive comes the sweet woodland music and the breath of
the blessed morning, fragrant with flowers and fresh with
dew. It is one of those incomparable bursts of woodland
notes, full of bird-song and the happy hum of insect life and
rustling of netted branches and waving of long-tasselled
grass. I know of nothing like it save the forest music in
" Siegfried."
The sick king listens, and remembers words of hope and
comfort that fell from a heavenly voice — what time the
glory of the Grail passed : —
" Wait for my chosen one,
Guilele>s and innocent,
Pity-enlightened."
Thev hand him the phial of balsam, and presently, whilst
the lovelv forest music again breaks forth, the king is
carried on to his bath, and Kundry. Gurnemanz, and the
two esquires hold the stage.
As the old knight, who is a complete repertory of facts
connected with the Grail tradition, unfolds to the esquires
the nature of the king's wound, the sorceries of Klingsor.
the hope of deliverance from some unknown " guileless
one," a sudden cry breaks up the situation.
A white swan, pierced bv an arrow, nutters dying to
the ground. It is the swan beloved of the Grail brother-
hood, bird of fair omen, svmbol of spotless purity. The
slaver is brought in between two knights. — a stalwart youth,
fearless, unabashed. — whilst the death music of the swan,
the slow distilling and stiffening of its life-blood, is
marvellouslv rendered bv the orchestra. Conviction of
his fault comes over the vouth as he listens to the re-
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE
[ 39
proaches of Gurnemanz. He hangs his head, ashamed and
penitent, and at last, with a sudden passion of remorse,
snaps his bow, and flings it aside. The swan is borne
oft', and Parsifal (the "guileless one," for he it is), with
Gurnemanz and Kundry, — who rouses herself and surveys
Parsifal with strange, almost savage curiosity, — hold the
stage.
In this scene Kundry tells the youth more than he cares
to hear about himself: how his father, Gamuret, was a
great knight killed in battle ; how his mother, Herzeleide
(Heart's Affliction), fearing a like fate for her son, brought
him up in a lonely forest ; how he left her to follow a troop
of knights that he met one day winding through the forest
glade, and being led on and on in pursuit of them never
overtook them and never returned to his mother, Heart's
Affliction, who died of grief. At this point the frantic
youth seizes Kundry by the throat in an agony of rage and
grief, but is held back by Gurnemanz, till, worn out by the
violence of his emotion, he faints away, and is gradually
revived by Kundry and Gurnemanz.
Suddenly Kundry rises with a wild look, like one under
a spell. Her mood of service is over. She staggers across
the stage; she can hardly keep awake. "Sleep," she
mutters, " I must sleep — sleep ! " and falls down in one of
those long trances which apparently lasted for months, or
years, and formed the transition periods between her mood
of Grail service and the Klingsor slavery into which she
must next relapse in spite of herself.
And is this the" guileless one" ? This wild youth who slays
the fair swan; who knows not his own name, nor whence
he comes, nor whither he goes, nor what are his destinies?
The old knight eyes him curiouslv ; he will put him to the
test. This youth had seen the king pass once ; he had
marked his pain. Was he " enlightened by pity " ? Is he
the appointed deliverer? The old knight now invites him to
the shrine of the Grail. "What is the Grail?" asks the
youth. Truly a guileless, innocent one ; yet a brave and
pure knight, since he has known no evil, and so readily
repents of a fault committed in ignorance.
Gurnemanz is strangely drawn to him. He shall see the
Grail, and in the Holv Palace, what time the mv-tic light
streams forth and the assembled knights how themselves in
140
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIEE.
prayer, the voice which comforted Amfortis shall speak
to his deliverer and bid him arise and heal the king.
Gurnemanz and Parsifal have ceased to speak. They
stand in the glowing light of the summer-land. The tide
of music rolls on continuously, but sounds more strange
and dreamy.
Is it a cloud passing over the sky? There seems to be a
shuddering in the branches — the light fades upon yonder
sunny woodlands — the foreground darkens apace. The
whole scene is moving, but so slowly that it seems to change
like a dissolving view. I see the two figures of Gurnemanz
and Parsifal moving through the trees ; they are lost behind
vonder rock. They emerge further off, higher up. The
air grows very dim ; the orchestra peals louder and louder.
I lose the two in the deepening twilight. The forest is
changing, the land is wild and mountainous. Huge galleries
and arcades, rock-hewn, loom through the dim forest; but
all is growing dark. I listen to the murmurs of the" Grail,"
the " Spear," the " Pain," the " Love and Faith " motives,
— hollow murmurs, confused, floating out of the depths of
lonely caves. Then I have a feeling of void and darkness,
and there comes a sighing as of a soul swooning away in a
trance, and a vision of waste places and wild caverns ; and
then through the confused dream I hear the solemn boom
of mighty bells, only muffled. They keep time as to some
ghostly march. I strain my eyes into the thick gloom before
me. Is it a rock, or forest, or palace?
As the light returns slowly, a hall of more than Alhambra-
like splendor opens before me. My eyes are riveted on the
shining pillars of variegated marble, the tessellated pave-
ments, the vaulted roof glowing with gold and color ;
beyond, arcades of agate columns, bathed in a misty moon-
light air, and lost in a bewildering perspective of halls and
corridors.
I hear the falling of distant water in marble fonts ; the
large bells of Montsalvat peal louder and louder, and to
music of unimaginable stateliness the knights enter in
solemn procession, clad in the blue and red robes of the
Grail, and take their seats at two semicircular tables -which
start like arms to the right and left of the holy shrine.
Beneath it lies Titurel entranced, and upon it is presently
deposited the sacred treasures of the Grail itself.
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE. 1 4 1
As the wounded King Amfortis is borne in, the assembled
knights, each standing in his place, a golden cup before
him, intone the Grail motive, which is taken up by the
entering choruses of servitors and esquires bearing the holy
relics.
Gurnemanz is seated amongst the knights ; Parsifal stands
aside and looks on in mute astonishment, " a guileless one."
As the Holy Grail is set down on the altar before the
wounded king, a burst of heavenly music streams from the
high dome ; voices of angels intone the celestial phrases,
" Take, eat" and " This is my blood 7" and blend them with
the Faith and Love motives. As the choruses die away,
the voice of the entranced Titurel is heard from beneath the
altar calling upon Amfortis, his son, to uncover the Grail
that he may find refreshment and life in the blessed vision.
Then follows a terrible struggle in the breast of Amfortis.
He, sore stricken in sin, yet guardian of the Grail, guilty
among the guiltless, oppressed with pain, bowed down with
shame, craving for restoration, o'erwhelmed with unworthi-
ness, yet chosen to stand and minister before the Lord on
behalf of his saints ! Pathetic situation, which must in all
times repeat itself in the history of the Church ! The un-
worthiness of the minister affects not the validity of his
consecrated acts. Yet what agony of mind must many a
priest have suffered, himself oppressed with sin and doubt,
whilst dispensing the means of grace, and acting as a
minister and steward of the mysteries.
The marvellous piece of self-analysis in which the
conscience-stricken king bewails his lot as little admits of
description here as the music which embodies his emotions.
At the close of it angel voices seem floating in mid-air,
sighing the mystic words : —
"Wait for my chosen one,
Guileless and innocent,
Pity-enlightened."
And immediately afterwards the voice of Titurel, like one
turning restlessly in his sleep, comes up from his living
tomb beneath the altar: " Uncover the Grail!"
With trembling hands the sick king raises himself, and
with a great effort staggers towards the shrine ; the cover-
142
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
ing is removed — he takes the crystal cup — he raises it on
high — the blood is dark — the light begins to fade in the
hall — a mist and dimness come over the scene ; we seem
to be assisting at a shadowy ceremony in a dream — the
big bells are tolling — the heavenly choirs from above the
dome, which is now bathed in twilight, are heard :
''''Drink ye all of this I" Amfortis raises on high the
crystal vase ; the knights fall on their knees in prayer.
Suddenly a faint tremor of light quivers in the crystal cup,
then the blood grows ruby-red for a moment. Amfortis
waves it to and fro, the knights gaze in ecstatic adora-
tion. Titurel's voice gathers strength in his tomb : —
" Celestial rapture !
How streams the light upon the face of God ! "
The light fades slowly out of the crystal cup ; the miracle
is accomplished. The blood again grows dark ; the light
of common day returns to the halls of Montsalvat, and the
knights resume their seats, to rind each one his golden
goblet filled with wine.
During the sacred repast which follows, the brotherhood
join hands and embrace, singing : —
" Blessed are they that believe ;
Blessed are they that love ! "
and the refrain is heard again far up in the heights, re-
echoed by the angelic hosts.
I looked round upon the silent audience whilst these
astonishing scenes were passing before me ; the whole
assembly was motionless ; all seemed to be solemnized by
the august spectacle, — seemed almost to share in the devout
contemplation and trance-like worship of the holy knights.
Every thought of the stage had vanished ; nothing was
further from my own thoughts than play-acting. I was
sitting as I should sit at an oratorio, in devout and rapt
contemplation. Before my eyes had passed a symbolic
vision of prayer and ecstacy, flooding the soul with over-
powering thoughts of the Divine Sacrifice and the mystery
of unfathomable love.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. \ 43
The hall of Montsalvat empties. Gurnemanz strides
excitedly up to Parsifal, who stands stupefied with what he
has seen —
" Why standest thou silent?
Knowest thou what thine eyes have seen?"
The k ' guileless one " shakes his head. " Nothing but a fool ! "
exclaims Gurnemanz, angrily ; and, seizing Parsifal by the
shoulder, he pushes him roughly out of the hall, with : —
" Be off! look after thy geese,
And henceforth leave our swans in peace."
The Grail vision had, then, taught the " guileless one "
nothing. He could not see his mission ; he was as yet un-
awakened to the deeper life of the spirit : though blameless
and unsullied he was still the " natural man." Profound
truth! — that was not first which was spiritual, but that
which was natural : before Parsifal wins a spiritual triumph,
he must be spiritually tried ; his inner life must be
deepened and developed, else he can never read aright the
message of the Grail.
The life of God in the spirit comes only when the battle
for God in the heart has been fought and won.
Fare forth, thou " guileless one " ! thou shalt yet add to
the simplicity of the dove the wisdom of the serpent. Thou
art innocent because ignorant ; but thou shalt be weighed
anon in the balance and not be found wanting ; and then
shalt thou reconquer the holy spear lost in Sin, rewon in
Purity and Sacrifice, and be to the frail Amfortis the chosen
savior for whom he waits.
The foregoing events occupied about an hour and a
quarter. When the curtain fell the vast audience broke up
in silence.
The air outside was cool and balmy. In the distance lav
the city of Bayreuth, with the tower of the Alte Schloss and
the old church standing up gray against the distant Bavarian
hills.
All around us lay the pine woods, broken by the lawns
and avenues that encircle the theatre and embower it in a
H4
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
secluded world of its own ; even as the Palace of the Grail
was shut oft' from the profane world.
Here, indeed, is truly the Montsalvat of the modern
drama, — a spot purified and sacred to the highest aims and
noblest manifestations of Art.
In about an hour the Spear motive was the signal blown
on the wind instruments outside, and I took my seat for the
second act.
ACT II.
A restless, passion-tossed prelude. The " Grail " subject
distorted, the "Spear" motive thrust in discordant, the
" Faith and Love " theme fluttering like a wounded dove in
pain, fierce bursts of passion, wild shocks of uncontrolled
misery, mingling with the k ' carnal joy " music of Klingsor's
magic garden and the shuddering might of his alchemy.
The great magician, Klingsor, is seen alone in his dun-
geon palace, — harsh contrast to the gorgeous halls of Mont-
salvat. Here all is built of the live rock, an impenetrable
fastness, the home of devilish might and terrible spells.
Klingsor is aware of the coming struggle, and he means
to be ready for it. He owns the sacred spear wrested from
Amfortis ; he even aspires to win the Grail ; he knows the
" guileless one" is on his way to wrest that spear from him.
His only hope is in paralyzing the fool by his enchantments
as he paralyzed Amfortis, and the same woman will serve
his turn.
" Kundry ! " The time is come, the spells are woven ;
blue vapors rise, and in the midst of the blue vapors the
figure of the still sleeping Kundry is seen. She wakes,
trembling violently ; she knows she is again under the spell
she abhors, — the spell to do evil, the mission to corrupt.
With a shuddering scream she stands before her tormentor,
denying his power, loathing to return to her vile mission,
yet returning, as with a bitter crv she vanishes from his
presence.
Parsifal has invaded Klingsor's realm ; the evil knights
have fled before his prowess, wounded and in disorder.
Kundry is commissioned to meet the guileless youth in the
enchanted garden, and, all other allurements tailing, to
subdue him by her irresistible fascinations and hand him
over to Klinsrsor.
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE. 145
In a moment the scenery lifts, and a garden of marvellous
beauty and extent lies before us. The flowers are all of
colossal dimensions, — huge roses hang in tangled festoons,
the cactus, the lily, the blue-bell, creepers and orchids of
enormous size and dazzling color wave in mid-air, and
climb the aromatic trees.
On a bright hill appears Parsifal, standing bewildered by
the light and loveliness around him. Beautiful girls, dressed
like flowers, and hardly distinguishable from them at first,
rush in, bewailing their wounded and disabled knights ; but
on seeing Parsifal fall upon their new prey, and, surround-
ing him, sing verse after verse of the loveliest ballet music,
whilst trying to embrace him, and quarrelling with each
other for the privilege.
About that wonderful chorus of flower-girls there was
just a suggestive touch of the Rhine maidens' singing. It
belonged to the same school of thought and feeling, but
was freer, wilder, more considerable, and altogether more
complex and wonderful in its changes and in the marvellous
confusion in which it breaks up.
The "guileless one " resists these charmers, and they are
just about to leave him in disgust, when the roses lilt on
one side, and, stretched on a mossy bank overhung with
flowers, appears a woman of uneaithly loveliness. It is
Kundry transformed, and, in the marvellous duet which
follows between her and Parsifal, a perfectly new and
original type of love duet is struck out, — an analysis of
character, unique in musical drama; a combination of
sentiment and a situation absolutely novel, which could
only have been conceived and carried out by a creative
genius of the highest order.
First, I note that the once spell-bound Kundry is devoted
utterly to her task of winning Parsifal ; into this she throws
all the intensity of her wild and desperate nature, but in
turn she is strangely affected by the spiritual atmosphere of
the " guileless one " ; a feeling comes over her in the midst
of her witchcraft passion, that he is in some way to be her
savior too ; yet, woman-like, she conceives of her salvation
as possible only in union with him. Yet was this the very
crime to which Klingsor would drive her for the ruin of
Parsifal. Strange confusion of thought, feeling, aspiration,
longing ! — struggle of irreconcilable elements ! How
1^6 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
shall she reconcile them? Her intuition fails her not, and
her tact triumphs. She will win by stealing his love
through his mother's love. A mother's love is holy, — that
love she tells him of; it can nevermore be his, but she
will replace it ; her passion shall be sanctified by it ;
through that passion she has sinned ; through it she, too,
shall be redeemed. She will work out her own salvation
by the very spells that are upon her for evil. He' is pure ;
he shall make her pure, could she but win him ; both,
by the might of such pure love, Would surely be delivered
from Klingsor, the corrupter, the tormentor. Fatuous
dream ! How, through corruption, win incorruption ? How,
through indulgence, win peace and freedom from desire?
It is the old cheat of the senses, — Satan appears as an angel
of light. The thought deludes the unhappy Kundry her-
self; she is no longer consciously working for Klingsor;
she really believes that this new turn, this bias given to
passion, will purify both her and the guileless, pure fool
she seeks to subdue.
Throughout this scene Parsifal's instinct is absolutely true
and sure. Everything Kundry says about his mother,
Herzeleide, he feels ; but every attempt to make him accept
her instead he resists. Her desperate declamation is splen-
did. Her heart-rending sense of misery and piteous prayer
for salvation, her belief that before her is her savior could
she but win him to her will, the choking fuiy of baffled
passion, the steady and subtle encroachments made whilst
Parsifal is lost in a meditative dream, the burning kiss which
recalls him to himself, the fine touch by which this kiss,
whilst arousing in him the stormiest feelings, causes a sharp
pain, as of Amfortis' own wound, piercing his very heart.
All this is realistic if you will, but it is realism raised to the
sublime.
Suddenly Parsifal springs up, hurls the enchantress
from him, goes forth from Klingsor's realm. She is baffled ;
she knows it; for a moment she bars his passage, then
succumbs ; the might of sensuality which lost Amfortis
the sacred spear has been met ar.d defeated by the guile-
less fool. He has passed from innocence to knowledge
in his interview with the flower-girt girls, in his long
converse with Kundry, in her insidious embrace, in her
kiss ; but all these are now thrust aside ; he steps forth still
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 147
unconquered, still " guileless," but no more a " fool."
The knowledge of good and evil has come, but the struggle
is already passed.
" Yes, sinner, I do offer thee redemption," he can say to
Kundry ; " not in thy way, but in thy Lord Christ's way of
sacrifice ! "
But the desperate creature, wild with passion, will listen
to no reason ; she shouts aloud to her master, and Klingsor
suddenly appears, poising the sacred spear. In another
moment he hurls it right across the enchanted garden at
Parsifal. It cannot wound the guileless and pure one as it
wounded the sinful Amfortis. A miracle ! it hangs arrested
in the air above Parsifal's head ; he seizes it ; it is the
sacred talisman, one touch of which will heal even as it
inflicted the king's deadly wound.
With a mighty cry and the shock as of an earthquake
the castle of Klingsor falls shattered to pieces, the garden
withers up to a desert, the girls who have rushed in lie
about amongst the fading flowers, themselves withered up
and dead. Kundry sinks down in a deathly swoon, whilst
Parsifal steps over a ruined wall and disappears, saluting
her with the words, kt Thou alone knowest when we shall
meet again ! "
The long shadows were stealing over the hills when I
came out at the second pause. Those whom I met and
conversed with were subdued and awed.
As the instruments played out the Faith and Love motive
for us to reenter, the mellow sunshine broke once more
from the cloud-rack over city, and field, and forest, before
sinking behind the long, low range of the distant hills.
ACT III.
The opening prelude to the third and last act seems to
warn me of the lapse of time. The music is full of pain and
restlessness, — the pain of wretched years of long waiting
for a deliverer who comes not ; the restlessness and misery
of a hope deferred, the weariness of a life without a single
joy. The motives, discolored as it were by grief, work
up to a distorted version of the Grail subject, which breaks
off with a cry of despair.
14S MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
Is the Grail, too, then turned into a mocking spirit to
the unhappy Amfortis ?
Relief comes to us with the lovely scene upon which the
curtain rises. Again the wide summer land lies stretching
away over sunlit moor and woodland. In the foreground
wave the forest trees, and I hear the ripple of the wood-
land streams. Invariably throughout the drama, in the
midst of all human pain and passion, great nature is there,
peaceful, harmonious in all her loveliest moods ; a para-
dise in which dwell souls who make of her their own
purgatory.
In yonder aged figure, clad in the Grail pilgrim robe, I
discern Gurnemanz ; his hair is white ; he stoops with
years ; a rude hut is hard by. Presently a groan arrests his
attention, moaning as of a human thing in distress. He
clears away some brushwood, and beneath it finds, waking
from her long trance, the strange figure of Kundry. For
how many years has she slept we know not. Why is she
now recalled to life ? She staggers to her feet ; we see that
she, too, is in a pilgrim garb, with a rope girding her dress
of coarse brown serge. " Service ! service ! " she mutters,
and, seizing a pitcher, moves mechanically to fill it at the
well, then totters but half awake into the wooden hut.
The forest music breaks forth, — the hum of happy insect
life, the song of wild birds. All seems to pass as in a vis-
ion, when suddenly enters a knight clad in black armor
from top to toe.
The two eye him curiously, and Gurnemanz, approaching,
bids him lay aside his armor and his weapons. He carries
a long spear. In silence the knight unhelms, and, sticking
the spear into the ground, kneels before it, and remains
lost in devotional contemplation. The Spear and Grail
motives mingle together in the full tide of orchestral sounds
carrying on the emotional undercurrent of the drama. The
knight is soon recognized by both as the long-lost and dis-
carded Parsifal.
The " guileless one " has learned wisdom, and discovered
his mission ; he knows now that he bears the spear which
is to heal the king's grievous wound, and that he himself is
appointed his successor. Through long strife, and trial, and
pain he seems to have grown into something of Christ's own
likeness. Not all at once, but at last he has found the path.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
149
He returns to bear salvation and pardon both to Kundry and
the wretched king, Amfortis.
The full music flows on whilst Gurnemanz relates how
the knights have all grown weak and aged, deprived of the
vision and sustenance of the Holy Grail, whilst the long-
entranced Titurel is at last dead.
At this news Parsifal, overcome with grief, swoons away,
and Gurnemanz and Kundry loosen his armor, and sprinkle
him with water from the holy spring. Underneath his
black suit of mail he appears clad in a long white tunic.
The grouping is here admirable : Gurnemanz is in the
Templar's red and blue robe ; Parsifal in white, his auburn
hair parted in front, and flowing down in ringlets on either
side, recalls Leonardo's favorite conception of the Saviour's
head ; and, indeed, from this point Parsifal becomes a kind
of symbolic reflection of the Lord Himself. Kundry, sub-
dued and awed, lies weeping at his feet; he lifts his hands
to bless her with infinite pity. She washes his feet, and
dries them with the hairs of her head. It is a bold stroke ;
but the voices of nature, the murmur of the summer woods,
come with an infinite healing, tenderness, and pity, and the
act is seen to be symbolical of the pure devotion of a sinful
creature redeemed from sin. Peace has at last entered into
that wild and troubled heart, and restless Kundry, delivered
from Klingsor's spell, receives the sprinkling of baptismal
water at the hands of Parsifal.
The great spaces of silence in the dialogue, broken now
by a few sentences from Parsifal, now from Gurnemanz, are
more eloquent than many words. The tidal music flows
on in a ceaseless stream of changing harmonies, returning
constantly to the sweet and slumberous sound of the summer
land, full of teeming life and glowing happiness.
Then Gurnemanz takes up his parable. It is the blessed
Good Friday on which our dear Lord suffered. The Love
and Faith phrases are chimed forth, the pain-notesof the Cross
agony are sounded and pass, the Grail motive seems to
swoon away in descending harmonies, sinking into the
woodland voices of universal nature, — that trespass-pardoned
nature that now seems waking to the day of her glory and
innocence.
In that solemn moment Parsifal bends over the subdued
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
and humbled Kundry, and kisses her softly on the brow ;
her wild kiss in the garden had kindled in him fierce fire,
mingled with the bitter wound-pain ; his is the seal of her
eternal pardon and peace.
In the distance the great bells of Montsalvat are now
heard booming solemnly ; the air darkens, the light fades
out, the slow motion of all the scenery recommences. Again
I hear the wild cave music, strange and hollow sounding ;
the three move on as in a dream, and are soon lost in the
deep shadows ; and through all, louder and louder, boom
the heavy bells of Montsalvat, until the stage brightens,
and we find ourselves once more in the vast Alhambra-like
hall of the knights.
For the last time Amfortis is borne in, and the brother-
hood of the Grail form the procession bearing the sacred
relics, which are deposited before him.
The king, in great agony and despair, bewails the death
of his father and his own backsliding. With failing, but
desperate, energy he harangues the assembled knights, and,
tottering forward, beseeches them to free him from his
misery and sin-stained life, and thrust their swords deep
into his wounded side. At this moment Gurnemanz, ac-
companied by Parsifal and Kundry, enter. Parsifal steps
forward with the sacred spear, now at length to be restored
to the knights. He touches the side of Amfortis, the wound
is healed, and as he raises the spear on high the point is
seen, glowing with the crimson glory of the Grail. Then,
stepping up to the shrine, Parsifal takes the crystal cup, the
dark blood glows bright crimson as he holds it on high,
and at that moment, whilst all fall on their knees, and
celestial music ("Drink ye all of this") floats in the upper
air, Kundry falls back dying, her eyes fixed on the blessed
Grail. A white dove descends and hovers for a moment,
poised in mid-air above the glowing cup. A soft chorus of
angels seems to die away in the clouds beyond the golden
dome : —
"Marvellous mercy!
Victorious Saviour ! "
Words can add nothing to the completeness of the drama,
and no words can give any idea of the splendor and com-
MEMORIES OE A MUSICAL LIFE.
*5i
plexity of that sound ocean upon which the drama floats
from beginning to end.
The enemies of the Grail are destroyed or subdued, the
wound they have inflicted is healed, the prey they claimed
is rescued ; the pure and blameless Parsifal becomes the
consecrated head of the holy brotherhood, and the beatific
vision of God's eternal love and Real Presence is restored to
the Knights of the Sangrail.
When I came out of the theatre, at the end of the third
and last act, it was ten o'clock.
The wind was stirring in the fir trees, the stars gleamed
out fitfully through a sky across which the clouds were
hurrying wildly, but the moon rose low and large beyond
the shadowy hills, and bathed the misty valleys with a mild
and golden radiance as of some celestial dawn.
When the curtain fell on the last performance of" Par-
sifal," at Bayreuth, which, on the 30th of July, 1SS2, brought
the celebration month to a close, the enthusiasm of the
audience found full vent in applause. The curtain was
once lifted ; but no calls would induce the performers to
appear a second time or receive any individual homage.
This is entirely in accordance with the tone of these excep-
tional representations. On each occasion the only applause
permitted was at the end of the drama, and throughout not
a single actor answered to a call or received any personal
tribute.
Behind the scenes there occurred a touching incident.
The banker Gross led Wagner's children up to the assembled
actors, and, in the name of their dead father, thanked the
assembly for the care and labor of love expended by each
and all in producing the last work of the great dead master.
Siegfried, Wagner's son, thirteen years old, then, in a few
simple words, stifled with sobs, thanked the actors person-
ally, and all the children shook hands with them. The
King of Bavaria charged himself, upon Wagner's death,
with the education of his son.
l 5 2
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
CHAPTER IX.
THE RING OF THE NIBELUNG.
/. — Rheingold.
THE heat at Bayreuth (August, 1876) was intense.
The Emperor of Germany, who attended some of the
performances, expressed his astonishment at the endur-
ance of the orchestra, who had to work by a great power
of gas, sunk in a pit beneath the stage.
" I should just like," said his Imperial Majesty, " to go
down below and see where my Kapellmeister Richter
sweats," — and he went.
Notwithstanding the excessively sultry weather, a vast
company of Art Pilgrims ascended the hill outside the city,
and took their seats nearly every day in Wagner's theatre
for a month.
As I contemplate Bayreuth, in that same month of August,
1876, I perceive the whole city to be given over to a kind
of idolatry of Wagner. The town is hung with wreaths
and flags ; in the shops nothing but Wagner portraits,
busts, medals of all sorts and sizes, Wagner's works, " Wag-
ner's Life and Genius," and an immense German and French
literature on the Nibelungen Saga.
The performance of the "Rheingold" will live long in
my memory as the extreme realization of weird beauty
steeped in atmosphere such as may be, in some other planet,
flushed with sunset or moonrise. This music is like a land
of dreams, into which the spirit breaks at times, and, hurry-
ing back a million of years, discovers, on the surface of far-
off' seas, or dim caverns, the light that has long since gone
out forever. The elemental prelude of deep and slumberous
sound wafts us away from all account of time and space of
the present. The vast hall, full of silent human beings, has
been touched by the magician's wand. All grows dark, and
the dim gray-green depths of the Rhine alone become
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
r 53
visible. We strain our eyes into the dimness, and are aware
of the deep moving of the Rhine water. The three Rhine
daughters grow visible, swimming midwater, swimming
and singing, guardians of the Rheingold. What unearthly,
unhuman, magical snatches of sweetest song ! There is at
last realized the creature of legend, the Undine at once more
and less than human.
The hideous King of the Undergrounds, or Nibelungen,
sits watching these lovely water-maidens ; he courts them
in vain. The orchestra weaves on its divine Rhine music,
without which we almost feel the scene must vanish. The
soft cries and unearthly but musical laughter of the Undines,
swimming ceaselessly, begin to give us a strange feeling of
limited, monotonous life, pointing subtilely to the difference
between such natures and our own. But they, too, are
waiting for something. This dim green water is growing
oppressive. We feel ourselves immersed in its depths. At
first it was a dream scene of exquisite beauty ; now it is
almost a prison ; in another moment we should struggle to
be free ; but suddenly the Rheingold begins to brighten.
A shaft of radiance strikes through the water. The Un-
dines scream with joy. The Underground King, Alberich,
blinks with astonishment. Then through the whole depth
of the Rhine streams an electric light, glowing upon a
distant rock, dimmed to softest yellow only by the water.
" Rheingold ! Rheingold ! " a wild shout arises — joy of the
Rhine daughters ! Haydn has produced the effect of light
in the "•Creation" by a great burst of sound : " And there was
Light ! ! " But, sublime as is that one chord on Light, the
effect here is far more subtle. We have been kept in dark
water for half an hour. The whole system is made to pine
and cry out for light. It comes at last — the light of the
Rheingold ! Every fibre in the body quivers with it. It is
as oxygen to the lungs. The eye and whole nervous system
drink it in. We could shout like children with the Rhine
girls over the joy of the Rheingold !
The whole of this water-scene is of indescribable beauty and
without a trace of vulgar pantomimic effect. A lesser man
would have made the Rhine water lighter at first. As it is,
for some seconds after the curtain rises we can hardly see any-
thing. Slowly the eye discerns the floating women ; but
we still follow them chiefly by their voices. Alberich is
i54
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
hardly visible ; the music itself seems to keep down the
light ; but then the dawn of splendor of the Rheingold !
That explains all ; the effect is consummate. Wagner, it is
evident, has superintended every detail.
I will here briefly allude to the plot of the " Rheingold."
How Alberich, the King of the Undergrounds, renounces
the love of the Rhine girls to clutch the gold. How he
leaves the Rhine dark, and flies with his treasure to his
own underground caverns, there to maltreat his wretched
hordes of slaves, and compel them to turn the Rheingold
into sumptuous vessels, amongst them a magic helmet and
a ring whose wearer can change himself at will into any-
thing. How the gods meanwhile have been bribing the
giants with the promise of the beautiful Freia, their sister, to
build them their Walhalla palace. How the giants on the
completion of the palace claim Freia, and only give her
up upon the gods extorting the Rheingold from Alberich
and his undergrounds and paying it over to the monstrous
architects. How at last the gods, with Freia, go over to the
Rainbow bridge into the Walhalla to the sound of heavenly
music, whilst upon the ambrosial air comes from afar the
fitful wail of the Rhine daughters : —
" Rheingold !
Clear and pure,
Show thy glory in the depths,
There alone is Truth and Trust,
False and faithless all above,
Who rejoice ! "
All this the reader may possibly be familiar with. To
dwell upon each scene is here impossible.
The " Rheingold" lasts for two hours and a half at a
stretch, during which time there is no pause in the music,
but there is also no sign of fatigue in the audience, who sit
in rapt attention to the close.
II. — Walkure.
With the "Walkure," or Warrior Daughters of god
Wotan (Wodin), begin the famous three da} T s to which the
" Rheingold," described in my last, was the introduction.
The god Wotan in his earthly wanderings became the
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
*55
father by a mortal woman of Siegmund and Sieglinde.
Upon the interest of one of the Walkiire, Briinnhilde, in
this couple, and her final sacrifice of Virgin deity in their
cause, this next drama, in three acts, turns.
The curtain rises. A wild cabin, into which out of the
storm enters Siegmund, throws himself, dead with fatigue,
before a rude fire, and sleeps. In steals Sieglinde, his
sister, the forced wife of Hunding, a savage hunter. Thus
brother and sister, separated from the cradle, meet unknown
to each other. We are at once completely outside all con-
ventional moralities, — in an age and faerie sphere in which
human passion has to be contemplated apart from all civil-
ized conditions. We thus follow breathlessly, without
shock, the inexorable development of the various phases of
recognition, self-abandonment, confession, and ecstasy which
follow. The wild music flowing to the wild life of the
wandering Siegmund, as he pours it all out to his new friend
and protectress, who revives him with a cooling draught,
consoles him, and already claims him as her deliverer ; the
entrance of Hunding ; the fight between him and Siegmund,
which is to take place on the morrow ; the sleeping potion
administered to him by Sieglinde, and the long scene at
night, where she steals out, all in white, to Siegmund, —
these are graphic and awe-inspiring situations ; the moon
spreads through the room, and the fire dies, and through the
open door are seen the fair, moon-lit woods, and all is
peace, — this the reader must imagine for himself. Nothing
more searching in delineation of passion was ever con-
ceived than this scene between lovers about to risk all,
with fate overhanging them, and hearts filled alternately
with the pain of dread forebodings and an inextinguishable
love.
As the last spark on the hearth dies the music becomes
flowing and deep, like a broadening river. A strange red
light — the light of Wotan — falls on the giant oak-tree,
showing the hilt of a sword plunged in there by a mysteri-
ous stranger. He who could draw it should alone free
Sieglinde from her brutal husband. Siegmund rises and
draws it, amidst a great burst of triumphant sound. This,
on the morrow, should give him victory over the coarse
Hunding, for the sword is Woton's own, hidden there for
his son Siegmund. The deep wealth of sound upon which
156 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
the lovers are now buoyed up as they fall into each other's
arms is like the mingling of oceans and rivers and clouds ;
and the strong, terrible chords, to which the curtain again
falls, are as the might of resistless love, hurrying to its fate-
ful close.
The second act reveals to us the wild Briinnhilde — War
Walkiire. With spear in hand she scales the rocks ; the
clouds are about her ; she shouts to her companions, and
her voice mingles with the winds. As she mounts each
crag her notes rise higher and higher, — a melody of be-
witching, boisterous wildness. How Wotan bids the War
Walkiire defend his favorite Siegmund in the coming duel
with Hunding ; how Fricka, his jealous wife, burns for the
death of Siegmund, the mortal bastard ; how the god gives
in weakly, and bids Briinnhilde to destroy him ; how Briinn-
hilde, a dear, good creature, protests, and goes at last to her
mission, clad in mail and scarlet, with a heavy heart, —
must be told in few words. From this moment to the end
of the act the excitement, without pause, goes on, changing
in form, but ever increasing. Now the flying lovers rush
on to the rocky stage ; the sound of Hunding's horn, the
cry of his dogs, is in their ears ; then all is again ecstasy,
until Sieglinde breaks out in a strange scene of passionate
remorse at having been the wife of an unloved man. Her
intense love for Siegmund makes her past life seem too vile.
But hark ! — and the sound of dogs and horns, the rushing
of wind and crashing of branches, swells in the orchestra,
and Sieglinde faints, and is laid resting on a rock. Then a
passage of unspeakable solemnitv occurs with the reentrance
of Briinnhilde. She stands before Siegmund. — come on
her fatal errand. — and the music grows sweet and solemn,
with the majestic Wotan " motif; " she tells the hero that
whoever looks on her must shortly die ; that she takes the
w r arrior to Walhalla, but that he must fall in fight. Meas-
ured and slow as fate, yet strangely full of tenderness, is
her terrible message. With knightly calm he listens, and
at last, with a burst of love which shakes Bviinnhilde's own
heart, he declares that he will kill himself and his beloved,
but they shall not be divided. The Walkiire, at last over-
come, and faithless to Wotan's command, promises protec-
tion.
But the orchestra resumes the stormy music ; the battle-
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
157
hour approaches ; clouds hurry restlessly through the sky ;
Hunding is close at hand amongst the high crags yonder.
With a burning kiss the hero leaves Sieglinde, and hurries
to meet the foe. She rises, all is wild, and the air grows
stormy and dark around her; she calls Siegmund wildly,
and rushes forward ; but too late, she never sees him alive
again. On the topmost rocks we hear, behind the clouds,
the warriors shouting and the arms clashing. It is a fearful
moment, and the orchestra is taxed to the uttermost. The
clouds part for a moment only ; the bright Briinnhilde is
seen floating above her hero, clad in shining steel and crim-
son. In vain ! Wotan himself appears, and shatters Sieg-
mund's magic sword with his spear. The hero is slain.
The clouds now roll aside ; in terrible red smoke and
blinding light the angry god stands out. At a word Hund-
ing, the coarse hunter, falls dead before him ; but the god
turns upon poor Briinnhilde, and, as the curtain falls, curses
her for her disobedience.
The storm music and the thunder roll away ; and, after a
tension probably unexampled in dramatic art, we issue
forth into the now cool and darkened air ; eighteen hundred
people disperse upon the hill and roadside, and discuss for
an hour in the temporary cafes their experiences. Liszt I
found with his daughter, Madame Wagner, and other
ladies, chatting to a group. The prince and poet of the
Romantic School has a long cigar in his mouth and a large
bock of beer in his hand. People hurry up and are intro-
duced at times ; he receives all cordially with " Schon !
Schon ! " I remember that Wagner was loudly called for
at the end of the second act, but did not appear. But,
oddly enough, before the last act, when the theatre was
half empty, he came on the stage and bowed, and was
cheered wildly.
The last act opens with a scenic effect which it was
anticipated would tax any theatre to render adequately.
The chorus of the Walkiire on the rocks, half hidden with
clouds, as they wait for Briinnhilde, their Amazon sister,
unconscious of her catastrophe, is quite unparalleled in its
wild and spontaneous splendor. The cries and shouts are
hurled from rock to rock with waving of arms and clashing
of spears and shields. The troubled sky is in ceaseless
motion, the air is filled with boisterous elemental mirth, and
158 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
the bursting cries of unbridled animal spirits are, somehow,
all woven into a kind of chorus, resting upon such an ocean
of orchestral sound as has certainly never before been heard
or conceived by mortals. Amid thunder and flashes Briinn-
hilde, dragging poor, rescued Sieglinde, now suddenly
appears on the stage, and what follows must be merely
summarized. The despair of Sieglinde ; the devotion of
the tender, reckless Briinnhilde, inconceivably touching
symbol of the devotion which good women are capable of
for each other ; the wild recrudescence of joy which seizes
Sieglinde when Briinnhilde hands to her, with fervid song,
the fragments of Siegmund's magic sword, — all that is left
of him now, yet enough for vengeance, enough to win the
Rheingold from the Giant Fafner, enough for the hero
Sieglinde is about to bear. She is then hurried away to
safety, and, with the appropriate recurring strains in the
orchestra, the god Wotan at last approaches.
The favorite Walkiire, deprived of her arms, comes forth
to learn the doom of her disobedience. Some divine
necessity compels her banishment from Walhalla, and infi-
nitely subtle and complex are the music and sentiment which
follow. Briinnhilde has been drawn earthwards by human
sympathy, — she will become whole woman by-and-by,
who has thus stooped to human affection, — but earthly love
shall destroy her divinity ; and, meanwhile, parted forever
from her sisters and her father, who still love her fondly,
she shall sleep amid wild and lonely rocks encircled
with fire, waiting for the lover who, dauntless, shall find
her and wake her there, and make her his earthly bride.
The flight of the sister Walkiire in the storm, with a wild
chorus full of despairing screams, is followed by a pro-
tracted and inconceivably touching parting between the
resigned Briinnhilde and the father, Wotan, whose anger
has died away as the sunset sky has slowly faded into
deeper and deeper gray. Then, to long-drawn-out and en-
chanting melody, Bninnhilde's head sinks on her father's
breast, and his mind wanders back to the happy time when
she, the War Maiden, his pride, brought new warriors, the
boldest and best, to fill the Walhalla courts. The poor
Walkiire can but sob that she has loved her father, Wotan,
and Walhalla, and implore him, if she is to become a
mortal's bride, to surround her rock with fire, to bar her
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
*59
from all but the bravest. It is now almost dark ; a faint
red light lingers on the supple, yet lordly, form of Briinn-
hilde. A strange swoon seems to have already seized her ;
the god lays her gently prostrate on the rock, then waves
her into her long sleep. Then, retiring suddenly to the
back of the stage, he calls for the Fire god, Loge ; a burst
of fire breaks out and runs round the stage ; in another
moment the whole background is an immense wall of rose-
colored flame, which gradually creeps round the rock. To
the most enchanting and dream-like music of silver bells,
harps, and flutes, with an under-current of bass strings, the
sleep of the Walkiire begins ; the god scales the rocks,
stands for a moment in the midst of the fire, then passes
through it out of sight, as the curtain falls to the silver,
peaceful, unearthly cadences, repeated again ai.a again,
swelling and falling, and ceasing at last, leaving the heart,
after so much fierce storm, at rest.
III. — Siegfried.
The grotesque music given to both Mime and Alberich,
like so much of Wagner's misunderstood recitative, aims,
no doubt, at following the inflections of the human voice as
it is affected often by very commonplace moods, as well as
by the meaner impulses of arrogance, vexation, anger, and
spite. What we lose in musical charm we gain in a certain
ingenious sense of reality. I think the power of Wagner,
the solidity of his work, largely turns upon this. He is
never afraid of length, of silence, even of dulness, caused by
protracted or delayed action. Like De Balzac, he knew
well how to work up slowly and surely to a consummate
effect, and his effect never hangs fire, nor is it ever liable to
an anticlimax, that bane of second-rate artists.
A cavern rocky — somewhere deep in a forest — lies
before us ; and Mime, the misshapen thing, — fit brother of
Alberich, the lord of Niebelheim, or fog-land, — works away
at a forge to make a sword fit for — who? In he comes,
the wild, robust child of the forest, reminding me of the
first appearance of that other wild, robust creation, Parsifal.
In he comes, driving a fierce brown bear, bridled in sport.
Mime, the dwarf, shrinks back ; Mime, who has been
foster-father to this Siegfried, son of Sieglinde and Sieg-
160 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
mund. He has brought him up in ignorance of his paren-
tage, knowing well the dash of Deity in his blood, and
knowing also that could the fragments of the magic sword,
given up by Sieglinde as her most precious legacy, be
somehow welded together again, Siegfried, her son,
would be able to wield it with resistless might and slay the
dragon Father who keeps the gold.
This accursed gold-heap — eternal symbol of ill-gotten
wealth and the curse of it — forms the magic centre around
which all the actors in this cycle of dramas, consciously
or unconsciously, move.
The character-contrast between Mime, the mean, double-
dealing, cringing, cowardly creature who hopes to use the
young hero for its purposes, and Siegfried, the free, noble,
daring youth, with a presentiment of great destinies before
him, — both are drawn in large outline. Great distinction of
type, great simplicity of conception and straightforwardness
of execution ; the master is sure of his touches and lays them
on with a free, bold hand. Siegfried throughout revolts
against Mime ; yet Mime holds secrets which he burns to
know. Who were his father and mother? What means his
wild, secluded, lonely life? He cannot taste broth at Mime's
hands without disgust ; he cannot talk with him without
quarrelling ; he can hardly bear the sight of him ; will not
believe that Mime is his father at all ; wants a sword that he
cannot break ; will have the fragments of the magic sword
Nothung welded ; shatters Mime's welding of them, pro-
ceeds to weld them himself.
The welding of Nothung, hammer on anvil in the gloomy
cavern, with the regular puffing and blowing of the rude
bellows ; the protracted song, most tuneful, almost con-
ventional in form, broken off and resumed, and itself, as
it were, welded with every blow into the sword Nothung, —
produces a very singular and " seizing " elfect. The actors
appear to be entirely lost in their business ; the audience
have come upon a forge in a very rocky forest cave ; diffi-
cult work is going on, to very long-winded accompaniment,
full of varied realistic detail. If we want to see the work
put through we must stop ; if not, we may go. But the
work cannot be hastened, — the welding of that sword is the
turning-point of the drama ; the wielding of it secures the
gold, the ring, and the helmet ; and the spell of these secures
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 161
Briinnhilde for Siegfried ; the transfer of these treasures
wrecks Briinnhilde and brings on the final catastrophe.
The action is delayed ; but the welding is thorough, and
when, with a mighty stroke, the anvil is cloven in twain we
know that the young hero is at last fitted with an irresistible
weapon, and that the drama has moved through one of its
most critical and decisive stages.
The dragon's cave, the summer woods, the coming
together of the various people interested in the gold, — these
are the elements of the next act. There is the Wanderer,
the god VVotan in disguise, who originally stole the gold
from Alberich, who in his turn had filched it from the
Rhine girls, and who now thinks he may get it back some-
how from Fafner the giant. Fafner, in the form of a great
dragon, lies on it day and night. There is Alberich, the
first robber, hovering about the Neid-hole, or cavern, in the
hope of getting back the treasure ; there is Mime, who
about this time makes sure of the prize in his own mind, as
he fancies Siegfried is in his power, and proposes to employ
him to kill Fafner. Then he will poison him with a
draught, and clutch both magic sword and treasure.
The grimness and hideousness of the cavern and the
worm-dragon seem to resume the spirit of all the unlovely
wickedness and avarice of Siegfried's rivals.
The dragon is, no doubt, the weak point. I believe Mr.
Dannreuther gave three hundred pounds for him in London,
and brought him over with the utmost care. His tail, I am
told, was worked by one man inside him, and his jaws by
another ; but somehow he could not be got to show fight at
the right time. He was a poor beast ; the steam came out
of his mouth too late ; his tail stuck half-way on the wag,
and he had evidently some difficulty in opening his jaws.
He was easily slain, and rolled over conveniently enough,,
leaving the treasure in the hands of Siegfried.
Otherwise the weirdness of the whole scene was inde-
scribable. That enchanting summer land ; that delicious
burst of woodland melody ; that strong contrast between
the blazing sheen of emerald and amber-lighted trees and
the gloomy cavern hard by ; that sudden poetic, trance-
like pause, full of wild birds and love-dreams, just before
the sharp attack on the dragon, followed by the repulsive
murder of Mime, and the resumption of the same bright
162 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
love-dream immediately afterwards, — this can never fail to
impress the dullest sensibility with its extreme beauty.
Vogel"s Siegfried, as an impersonation, was on a level
with Materna's Briinnhilde. The music to which the
curtain falls on the second act, as Siegfried, wild with
anticipation, follows the bird that flies before him singing,
and showing him the way to Brunnhilde, who lies on her
fire-girt rock waiting for him; that ocean of summer
woodland music upon which a hero's spirit passes into
the consciousness of first love, — is beyond these halting
words.
I suppose it will be generally allowed that Wagner is
the greatest master of love duets that ever wedded words to
music. The absorbing picture of love and jealousy in
" Lohengrin ; " of pure and impure love subtly contrasted in
" Tannhauser" — passion of love and death in " Tristan and
Isolde ; " the unique passages between Parsifal and Kundry,
— passion essentially primeval touched with a certain divine
intensity, as is fit in demi-gods. like Siegfried and Brunn-
hilde. — these are essential manifestations of dramatic force
and profound intention, beside which even the love passages
in Gounod's "Faust and Marguerite" seem like mere child's
play.
The moment has arrived. The majestic Brunnhilde wakes
with all her divine war-maiden instincts still upon her;
confronts the hero who is to win her, at first with terror ;
realizes slowly, painfully, then irresistibly and ecstaticallv,
the might of human passion, and surrenders the old heroism
of a crumbling Walhalla, and the dreams of godlike power
and independence, at the burning touch of human love.
Better that touch of real life than all the flimsy visions of
a decaying mvthologv ; nobler the sincerity of human feel-
ing, that seizes its object and concentrates its sympathies,
than the vague, restless wanderings of old reprobates like
Wotan, or the war-lust of fiery, death-hungry Walkiire, such
as Brunnhilde was, — such as the bride Walkiire will never
be again. Hear her : —
" O Siegfried !
Lightener — world's delight —
Life on earth —
And laughing lord.
Leave, ah ! leave me! "
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 163
And Siegfried but replies : —
"Awaken, Briinnhilde!
Waken, thou maid !
Live to me, laugh to me,
Sweetest delight :
Be mine ! be mine ! "
No translation seems to give an adequate vigor or do
justice to the strength and passion of the dialogue, which
ends in a long paean of triumph as the curtain falls and
Siegfried takes his prize : —
" Hail, thou Sun,
That shinest around me !
Hail, thou morn,
From out the dark!
Hail, thou world,
That wakes Briinnhilde !
She wakes ! she lives !
She laugheth back,
My splendid star,
My Briinnhilde's glow.
Mine, ever mine,
All of her mine,
And only mine!
{Briinnhilde throws herself into SitgfriecTs arms.)
Come, life of me !
Thou light of love !
Thou laughing Death ! "
IV. — The Gotterdammerung.
The "Nibelung's Ring" closes with the " Dusk of the
Gods." The truly prodigious way in which all the leading
subjects are repeated, inverted, and worked up in the music
of this last colossal drama, cannot be described. The Wotan
Melody, — perhaps the finest, — blown on trumpets outside
the theatre, rang out far over hill and dale, and floated like
an ominous blast to the town below. At the familiar sound
the people flock to their seats in the theatre. The first
melodies of the " Rheingold " break from the orchestra, and
the Norns or Fates are seen weaving the last of their ropes ;
they see, as they weave, the story of Siegfried and Briinnhilde ;
164 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
they see the gods growing old ; they trace the history of
Wotan's earth love ; they start with horror as they at last
see the flames rising in a vision round Walhalla. The rope
breaks ; the Norns vanish.
The day dawns to a clear subject worked in skilful coun-
terpoint, and the farewell scene between Biuinnhilde and
her new mate, Siegfried, as he parts from her to seek knightly
adventures, now absorbs us. Her sorrow at parting is almost
drowned by her feeling of pride in him and the thought of
glorious war ; and here the Walkiire nature breaks out in
her. She would fain follow him, but this may not be ; and
as she is about to be left again on her fire-girt rock, she
scales one height after another, shouting a wild and ecstatic
adieu to the hero, who is heard galloping away to a strange
mixture of Rhine music and a peculiar, joyous, scampering
subject, which, together with his horn-blast, always herald
his coming and going.
But the curse of the gold is upon him, and death, and
worse than death, is brewing for him in the house of Hagen,
hateful bastard son of Dwarf Alberich, by a mortal woman.
Hagen lives with his brother on Rhine banks, when Sieg-
fried, as a wandering knight, appears at his halls. Hagen,
Ghunter, the brother, and the fair sister, Gutrune, are sit-
ting together. Hagen, the instrument of Alberich, is
wholly bent on getting back the Rheingold. He tells
Ghunter of the sleeping Briinnhilde, who can alone be ap-
proached by Siegfried, and inflames his desire to seize her.
At this moment Siegfried's horn is heard ; he enters, and
the plot thickens. He is soon given a drink, which makes
him forget every woman he has known before, even poor
Briinnhilde. Siegfried, thus bewitched, then proceeds to
fall in love with Gutrune, and listens to the tale of Briinn-
hilde on the flame-girt rock with astonishment, swears
friendship to Ghunter, and undertakes to assume his friend's
shape by magic, cross the flames, seize his own Briinnhilde,
and hand her over to Ghunter.
From this moment the horrible plot is harrowing in the
extreme. No art, no music, no magic, can reconcile us to
what follows ; the horror is piled up. The scene changes.
Briinnhilde waits on her rock ; hears a horse and Siegfried's
horn, but with something jarring and false about it ; but she
heeds not that, — he returns ! The fire is crossed, a warrior
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 165
appears on the height. She flies to throw herself into his
arms, — the form of Ghunter is before her ! How he coolly
hands her over to the real Ghunter, who is waiting ; her
horror and bewildering despair ; his callous indifference and
complete absence of all memory of her, which she cannot
revive in him ; the meeting of the two couples, Briinnhilde
and Ghunter with Siegfried and his new bride, Gutrune ;
the terrible scene between Briinnhilde and Siegfried before
the household and retainers of Hagen, in which she declares
Gutrune's husband to be hers ; the jealous frenzy of Ghunter
and the death of Siegfried, which is now plotted and pres-
ently carried out by stabbing in the back, — all this it is
impossible here to do more than summarize.
A brief and exquisite episode between the Rhine daughters
and Siegfried, chiefly a treble trio by the floating nymphs
of sustained and enchanting beauty, relieves the pressure of
horror we have just been going through from the despair
and fury of Briinnhilde, whose wild cries and heart-rending
gestures can never be forgotten.
Then comes, at last, the beginning of the end. Siegfried,
seated with Hagen, Ghunter, and warriors, drinks of a cup
which restores his memory, and begins to relate his past
life ; as he advances in his narrative, full of wondrous dec-
lamation and music, he at length nears the Briinnhilde
episode ; snatches of the Walkiire and the fire-sleep music
break out ; a strange fervor seizes him ; he tells of the em-
brace on the rock, and his mind begins to reel with sudden
perplexity. But it is enough. At this point Hagen stabs
him in the back. As he dies his thoughts grow clear.
Briinnhilde's first love returns ; he sees but her, dreams
of her in his dying swoon ; although she is not present,
she, his first, last love, fills his latest consciousness.
The struggle for the Ring which follows, the suicide of
Ghunter, the sudden apparition of Briinnhilde, introduce
the last episode of striking beauty. The scenery from this
point becomes indescribable. The moon is full upon the
ruffled Rhine waters, ; the tall funeral tapers flash on the
steel helms of the retainers ; the body of Siegfried, clad in
mail, lies in the middle of the stage, and the stately form
of the Walkiire is isolated by his side, as the crowd falls t«
right and left.
1 66 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL UEE.
While an immense funeral pyre is being built up in the
background beside the Rhine waters, Briinnhilde makes
her last reconciliation with Seigfried. As she gazes on his
pallid face she reads that dying recognition. She under-
stands, at last, the magic spell that was on him. Her love tow-
ers above everything else ; she stands there the embodiment of
the sublime trust in love beyond sight, that believes and lasts
out against all adverse shocks, and is faithful even unto
death. She has known divine might in the halls of Wal-
halla ; she has had the power of the Ring and the power of
Gold, and enjoyed all fame of war and victory, and now,
with her latest breath, comes solemnly forth, what is the
conclusion of the whole drama, "Blessedness, through joy
and sorrow, comes to us from Love unquenchable alone ! "
With this she moves in the moonlight towards the Rhine.
She draws the Ring of the Rheingold — the cause of such
grief and manifold pain — from the hero's finger, and
flings it back into the Rhine, fiom whence at the com-
mencement it was snatched by Alberich.
Walkiire's black war-horse has been brought to her ; she
waves high a flaming torch, and hurls it upon the bier; the
fire rises in lurid columns. She mounts her steed and leaps
into the flames.
At that moment, in the awful glow of the flaming pyre,
the waters, still flashing with moonlight in the background,
begin to swell and advance, and the Rhine daughters, sing-
ing the wildest Rhine music, are seen floating to and fro.
Beyond a ruddier light broadens, until the distant sky
discloses the courts of the Walhalla in flames. With a
crash in the foreground the house of Hagen falls ; and,
whilst the mighty conflagration flares up in the distance, the
Rhine waters, to rushing music, advance and submerge the
whole of the stage.
Thus, with a scene of unequalled dramatic splendor, ends
the fourth and last immense drama of the '-Xibelung's Ring."
At the close of it the pent-up enthusiasm of the public rose
to a pitch of frenzy. They stood up, and, turning to the
royal box, which Wagner had left, shouted to the king,
who remained seated and bowed graciously. The plaudits
continuing his majesty motioned to the stage. The
people turned, and in a moment Wagner, dressed in plain
black, with his hat in one hand, stepped out from the mid-
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 167
die of the curtain, and spoke very quietly, saying that he had
taken many years in preparing this work ; that he had
presented a saga of the Nibelung in the belief that it dealt
with subjects peculiarly congenial to the Germanic races ;
that a new and national development of the drama was now
within their reach ; he believed that they had been satisfied
with what they had listened to, so that it had been to the
many assembled there a real Festpiel. He then thanked
the king for his support and encouragement ; and, the curtain
being suddenly lifted, all the crowd of musicians and actors
who had taken part in the festival stood ranged, and Wag-
ner, turning round, thanked them in the warmest terms for
their devotion and assistance.
So ended the first great Wagner Festival, held at Bay-
reuth in 1876.
!6S MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
CHAPTER X.
LISZT.
WHO has not heard of Liszt? Who has heard Liszt?
I suppose to most of us in England he is person-
ally a great tradition and nothing more ; his com-
positions, indeed, form the chief pieces de resistance of our
annual crop of piano-forte recitals, but the man and his play-
ing are alike unknown. He has already become historical
during his lifetime. Only by a happy chance can I reckon
myself amongst the few who have lately heard Liszt play.
I happened to be staying in Rome, and Liszt kindly
invited me over to the Villa d'Este twice.
There, at Tivoli, alone with him, he conversed with me
of the time — long gone by — of Mendelssohn, of Paganini,
of Chopin.
There, in the warm light of an Italian autumn, subdued
by the dark red curtains that hung in his study, with an old-
world silence around us, he sat at his piano once more ; and
as he played to me the clock of time went back, and Chopin
entered with his pale, refined face, his slight, aristocratic fig-
ure ; Heine sat restlessly in a dark corner ; Madame Sand
reclined in the deep window niche overlooking the desolate
Campagna, with Rome in the distance ; De Lammenais stood
at the foot of the piano, — a delicate, yet sinewy and mobile
frame, — with his noble, eager face all aglow, his eloquent
tongue silent, listening to the inspirations of another believer
in another evangelium — the evangelium of the emotions,
the gospel of art.
One thousand eight hundred and eleven was the year of
the great comet, — a year which we are told reechoed
with the sounds of the lyre and the sword, and announced
so many pioneering spirits of the future.
In 1811 was Franz Liszt born. He had the hot Hunga-
rian blood of his father, the fervid German spirit of his
mother, and he inherited the lofty independence, with none
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 169
of the class prejudices of the old Hungarian nobility, from
which he sprang.
Liszt's father, Adam, earned a modest livelihood as agent
and accountant in the house of Count Esterhazy. In that
great musical family, inseparably associated with the names
of Haydn and Schuber, 1 Adam Liszt had frequent oppor-
tunities of meeting distinguished musicians. The prince's
private band had risen to public fame under the instruction
of the venerable Haydn himself. The Liszts, father and
son, often went to Eisenstadt, where the count lived ; there
they rubbed elbows with Cherubim" and Hummel, a pupil
of Mozart.
Franz took to music from his earliest childhood. When
about five years old he was asked what he would like to
do. " Learn the piano," said the little fellow. Soon after-
wards his father asked him what he would like to be ; the
child pointed to a print of Beethoven on the wall and said,
" Like him." But there was a certain intensity in all he
did which seemed to wear him out. He was attacked with
fever, but could hardly be persuaded to lie down until com-
pletely exhausted ; then he lay and prayed aloud to God to
make him well, and vowed that on his recovery he would
only make hymns and play music which pleased God and
his parents.
The boy's decided bent soon banished all thought of any-
thing but a musical vocation, but the res angustce domi
stood in the way. How was he to be taught? How was
he to be heard ? How to earn money ? That personal fas-
cination, from which no one who has ever come in contact
with Liszt has quite escaped, helped him thus early.
When eight years old he played before Count Esterhazy
in the presence of six noblemen, amongst them Counts
Amadee, Apponyi, and Szapary. Eternal honor to their
names ! They at once subscribed for him an annuity of six
hundred gulden for six years. This was to help the little
prodigy to a musical education.
His parents felt the whole importance of the crisis. If
the boy was to prosper, the father's present retired life, with
a fixed income, must be changed for an unsettled, wandering,
and precarious existence. " When the six years are over,
1 See my " Music and Morals," sections 96, 106, 1st edition.
170
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
and your hopes prove vain, what will become of us?" said
his mother, who heard, with tears in her eyes, that father
was going to give up the agency and settle down wherever
the boy might need instruction, protection, and a home.
11 Mother," said the impetuous child, " what God wills! "
and he added, prophetically enough, " God will help me to
repay you for all your anxieties and for what you do for
me." And with what results he labored in this faith, years
afterwards in Paris, we shall see.
The agency was thrown up ; the humble family —
mother, father, son — went out alone from the little
Hungarian village into an unknown and untried world,
simply trusting to the genius, the will, the word of an
obscure child of eight : ; ' I will be a musician, and nothing
else ! "
As the child knelt at his farewell mass in the little village
church of Raiding many wept, others shook their heads J
but some even then seemed to have a presentiment of his
future greatness, and said, " That boy will one day come
back in a glass coach." This modest symbol represented to
them the idea of boundless wealth.
Hummel would only teach for a golden louis a lesson, and
then picked his pupils ; but at Vienna the father and son fell
in with Czerny, Beethoven's pupil, and the famous Salieri,
now seventy years old. Czerny at once took to Liszt, but
refused to take anything for his instruction. Salieri was
also fascinated, and instructed him in harmony ; and fortu-
nate it was that Liszt began his course under two such strict
mentors.
He soon began to resent Czerny's method, thought he
knew better, and needed not those dry studies of Clementi
and that irksome fingering by rule. He could finger every-
thing in half-a-dozen different ways. There was a moment
when it seemed that master and pupil would have to part ;
but timely concessions to genius paved the way to dutiful
submission, and years afterwards the great master dedicated
to the rigid^disciplinarian of his boyhood his Vingt-quatre
Grandes Etudes in affectionate remembrance.
Young talent often splits upon the rock of self-sufficiency.
Many a clever artist has failed, because, in the pride of
youthful facility, he has declined the method and drudgery
of a correct technique.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
171
Such a light as Liszt's could not he long hid ; all Vienna',
in 1822, was talking of the wonderful boy.
It is a remarkable tribute to the generous nature as well
as to the consummate ability of Liszt, that, whilst opposing
partisans have fought bitterly over him, — Thalbergites,
Herzites, Mendelssohnites versus Lisztites, — yet few of the
great artists who have, one after another, had to yield to
him in popularity, have denied to him their admiration,
while most of them have given him their friendship.
Liszt early wooed and early won Vienna. He spoke
ever of his dear Viennese and their "resounding city."
A concert tour on his way to Paris brought him before
the critical public of Stuttgardt and Munich. Hummel, an
old man, and Moscheles, then in his prime, heard him, and
declared that his playing was equal to theirs. But Liszt
was bent upon completing his studies in the celebrated
school of the French capital, and at the feet of the old
musical dictator, Cherubini.
The Erards, who were destined to owe so much to Liszt,
and to whom Liszt throughout his career has owed so much,
at once provided him with a magnificent piano ; but Cheru-
bini put in force a certain by-law of the Conservatoire ex-
cluding foreigners, and excluded Franz Liszt.
This was a bitter pill to the eager student. He hardly
knew how little he required such patronage. In a very
short time " le petit Liszt" was the great Paris sensation.
The old noblesse tried to spoil him with flattery, the
Duchess de Berri drugged him with bonbons, the Duke of
Orleans called him the " little Mozart." He gave private
concerts at which Herz, Moscheles, Lafont, and De Beriot
assisted. Rossini would sit by his side at the piano and
applaud.
He was only twelve when he played for the first time at
the Italian Opera, and one of those singular incidents which
remind one of Paganini's triumphs occurred.
At the close of a bravura cadenza the band forgot to come
in, so absorbed were the musicians in watching the young
prodigy. Their failure was worth a dozen successes to Liszt.
The ball of the marvellous was fairly set rolling.
In 1824 Liszt, then thirteen years old, came with his
father to England ; his mother returned to Austria.
He went down to Windsor to see George IV., who was
172 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
delighted with him, and Liszt, speaking of him to me, said,
" I was very young at the time, hut I remember the king
very well, — a fine, pompous-looking gentleman."
In London he met Clementi, whose exercises he had so
objected to ; Cipriani Potter ; Cramer, also of exercise celeb-
rity ; Kalkbrenner ; Neate, then a fashionable pianist, once
a great favorite of George III., and whom I remember about
thirty years ago in extreme old age at Brighton. He de-
scribed to me the poor old king's delight at hearing him play
some simple English melodies. " I assure you, Mr. Neate,"
said George III., " I have had more pleasure in hearing you
play those simple airs than in all the variations and tricks
your fine players afl'ect."
George IV. went to Drury Lane on purpose to hear the
boy, and commanded an encore. Liszt was also heard in the
theatre at Manchester, and in several private houses.
On his return to France people noticed a change in him.
He was now fourteen, grave, serious, often preoccupied,
already a little tired of praise, and excessively tired of being
called " le petit Liszt." His vision began to take a wider
sweep. The relation between art and religion exercised
him. His mind was naturally devout. Thomas a Kempis
was his constant companion. " Rejoice in nothing but a
good deed ; " " Through labor to rest, through combat to
victory;" "The glory which men give and take is transi-
tory," — these and like phrases were already deeply engraven
on the fleshly tablets of his heart. Amidst all his glowing
triumphs he was developing a curious disinclination to
appear in public ; he seemed to yearn for solitude and medi-
tation.
In 1827 he now again hurried to England for a short time,
but his father's sudden illness drove them to Boulogne,
where, in his forty-seventh year, died Adam Liszt, leaving
the young Franz for the first time in his life, at the early age
of sixteen, unprotected and alone.
Rousing himself from the bodily prostration and torpor
of grief into which he had been thrown by the death of his
father, Franz, with admirable energy and that high sense
of honor which has always distinguished him, began to set
his house in order. He called in all his debts, sold his
magnificent grand Erard, and left Boulogne for Paris with a
heavy heart and a light pocket, but not owing a sou.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
*73
He sent for his mother, and for the next twelve years,
182S-1840, the two lived together, chiefly in Paris. There,
as a child, he had been a nine-days' wonder ; but the solidity
of his reputation was now destined to go hand in hand with
his stormy and interrupted mental and moral development.
Such a plant could not come to maturity all at once.
No drawing-room or concert-room success satisfied a heart
for which the world of human emotion seemed too small,
and an intellect piercing with intuitive intelligence into the
" clear-obscure " depths of religion and philosophy.
But Franz was young, and Franz was poor, and his
mother had to be supported. She was his first care. Sys-
tematically he labored to put by a sum which would assure
her of a competency, and often with his tender, genial smile
he would remind her of his own childish words, " God will
help me to repay you for all that you have done for me."
Still he labored often wofully against the grain.
Of course the gifted young pianist's connection grew
rapidly. He got his twenty francs a lesson at the best
houses ; he was naturally a welcome guest, and from the
first seemed to have the run of high Parisian society. His
life was feverish, his activity irregular, his health far from
strong ; but the vulgar temptations of the gay capital seemed
to have little attraction for his noble nature. His heart
remained unspoiled. He was most generous to those who
could not afford to pay for his lessons, most pitiful to the
poor, most dutiful and affectionate to his mother. Coming
home late from some grand entertainment he would sit
outside on the staircase till morning sooner than awaken, or
perhaps alarm, her by letting himself in. But in losing his
father he seemed to have lost a certain method and order.
His meals were irregular ; so were his lessons ; more so
were the hours devoted to sleep.
At this time he was hardly twenty ; we are not surprised
anon to hear in his own words of "a female form chaste
and pure as the alabaster of holy vessel ; " but he adds,
" Such was the sacrifice which I offered with tears to
the God of Christians ! "
I will explain.
Mile. Caroline St. Cricq was just seventeen, lithe,
slender, and of ' l angelic " beauty, and a complexion like a
lily flushed with roses, " impressionable to beauty, to the
'74
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
world, to religion, to God." The countess,' her mother,
appears to have been a charming woman, very partial to
Liszt, whom she engaged to instruct mademoiselle in music.
The lessons were not by time, but by inclination. The
young man's eloquence, varied knowledge, ardent love of
literature, and flashing genius won both the mother and
daughter. Not one of them seemed to suspect the whirl-
pool of grief and death to which they were hurrying. The
countess fell ill and died, but not before she had recom-
mended Liszt to the Count St. Cricq as a possible suitor
for the hand of mademoiselle.
The haughty diplomat St. Cricq at once put his foot
down. The funeral over, Liszt's movements were watched.
They were innocent enough. He was already an enfant de
la ma/son, but one night he lingered reading aloud some
favorite author to mademoiselle a little too late. He was
reported by the servants, and received his polite dismissal
as music-master.
In an interview with the count his own pride was deeply
wounded. " Difference of rank ! " said the count. That
was quite enough for Liszt. He rose, pale as death, with
quivering lip, but uttered not a word.
As a man of honor he had but one course. He and
Caroline parted forever. She contracted later an uncon-
genial marriage ; he seems to have turned with intense
ardor to religion. His good mother used to complain to
those who came to inquire for him that he was all day long
in church, and had ceased to occupy himself, as he should,
with music.
Love, grief, religion, all struggling together for victory
in that young and fervid spirit, at last seemed to fairly
exhaust him. His old haunts knew him not ; his pupils
were neglected ; he saw no friends, shut himself up in his
room, and at last would only see his mother at meals. He
never appeared in the streets, and not unnaturally ended by
falling dangerously ill.
It was at this time that Paris was one morning startled
with the following newspaper announcement : —
" DEATH OF YOUNG LISZT.
"Young Liszt died at Paris — the event is painful — at
an age when most children are at school. He had con-
quered the public, etc."
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
175
So wrote the JStoile. In fact, he was seriously ill. M.
von Lenz, Beethoven's biographer, went to visit him. He
was lying pale, haggard, and apathetic ; could hardly be
roused to converse except occasionally when music cropped
up. Then his eye brightened for a moment like the
" flashing of a dagger in the sun."
In 1830 the Revolution burst on Paris. This, it seems,
was needed to arouse Liszt. The inner life was suddenly
to be exchanged for the outer. Self was to be merged in
the larger interests, some of them delusions, which now
began to pose again under the cunning watchwords of
" Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite." Generous souls saw in the
quarrel of Charles X. with his people the hope of a new
national life. They proposed to exchange the old and effete
"Divine right" for the legitimate "sovereignty of the
people." " C'est le canon qui l'a gueri ! " his mother used
to say. Liszt was hardly restrained by her tears and
entreaties from rushing to the barricades. The cure
threatened to be worse than the disease. The heroic deeds
of the "great week" inflamed him, and he shouted with
the rest for the silver-haired General Lafayette, " genius of
the liberties of two worlds."
The republican enthusiasm, so happily restrained from
action out of affection for his dependent mother, found a
more wholesome vent in a vigorous return to his neglected
art. Just as he was busy revolving great battle symphonies,
his whole artistic nature received a decisive and startling
impulse from the sudden apparition of Paganini in Paris.
Preceded by revolution and cholera, this weird man had
come upon the bright city that had sinned and suffered so
much, and found her shaken and demoralized, but still
seething with a strange ferment of new life in which Saint-
Simonianism, communism, and scepticism, side by side
with fanaticism, piety, and romance, struggled to make
confusion worse confounded. Into the depths of what has
been called the Romantic movement of 1830-40 it is not my
purpose here to enter. There was war alike with the arti-
ficial humdrum of the old French world and the still more
artificial revival of the classical world of Greece and
Rome.
The human spirit was at length to be liberated ; no one,
it was held, need believe anything that did not happen to
176 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
commend itself to his fancy or passion. As Heine put it :
" The great God, it appeared, was not at all the being in
whom our grandmothers had trusted ; he was, in fact, none
other than you yourself." No one need be bound by the
morals of an effete civilization. In Love the world of sen-
timent alone must decide our actions. Every one must be
true to nature. All men were brothers, and women should
have equal and independent rights. The social contract,
most free and variable, must be substituted for marriage,
community of goods for hereditary possessions, philosophy
for law, and romance for religion. The beautiful and
pregnant seeds of truth that lay imbedded in the teeming
soil of this great movement have since fully germinated ;
its extravagances have already, to a great extent, been out-
grown.
In spite of theories disastrous to political and social
order, the genius of Madame Sand, Victor Hugo, and
A. de Musset, — sceptic and sensualist as he was, — have
rescued the movement from the despair of raw materialism,
and produced works of immortal beauty and spiritual sig-
nificance.
They helped the European spirit to recover its indepen-
dence ; they reacted against the levelling tyranny of the first
Napoleon, and were largely instrumental in undermining
the third Napoleon's throne of gilded lead. Stained with
license and full of waywardness, it was, nevertheless, an age
of great and strong feelings, — an age volcanic, vivid, elec-
tric. Such an age eagerly welcomed the magicians who set
the language of emotion free, and gave to music its myriad
wings and million voices.
Paganini appeared. The violin was no more the violin.
A new transcendent technique made it the absolute minister
of an emancipated and fantastic will. The extraordinary
power exercised by the Italian violinist throughout Europe
was quickened by the electric air which he breathed. The
times were ripe. He stood before kings and people as the
very emotional embodiment of the Zeitgeist. He was the
emancipated demon of the epoch, with power to wield the
sceptre of sound, and marshal in strange and frenzied legions
the troubled spirits of the time.
When Liszt heard Paganini it seemed to him to be the
message for which he had been waiting. From him he
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
177
doubtless received that passion for "transcendent execu-
tion," that absolute perfection of technique, which enabled
him to create the modern piano-forte school, and win for
Erard and Broadwood what Paganini won for Stradivarius
and Joseph Guarnerius. His transcriptions of Paganini's
studies, the arpeggio, thejioriture, the prodigious attaque
and elan that took audiences by storm, the meetings of
extremes which abolished the spaces on the piano-forte key-
board by making the hands ubiquitous, — these and other
" developments " were doubtless inspired by the prodigious
feats of Paganini.
Liszt now suddenly retired from the concert-room. He
was no longer heard in public ; he seemed disinclined, ex-
cept in the presence of his intimates, to exhibit his won-
drous talent ; but he retired to perfect himself, to work up
and work out the new impulses which he had received from
Paganini.
He thus early laid deep the foundations of his unique
virtuosity ; and when he reappeared in public he seemed to
mount at once to that solitary pinnacle of fame and sur-
passing excellence to which the greatest pianists then and
ever since have looked up in admiring and despairing
wonder. Tausig said, "We are all blockheads by the
side of Liszt." Rubinstein has often declared Liszt's per-
fection of art and wealth of resource to be simply un-
rivalled.
For a short time, in his absence at Paris, it was thought
that Thalberg would prove a formidable opponent. But
Liszt had only to reappear, and Thalberg himself was
forced to join in the general applause. When between the
various schools there was war it was carried on by the
partisans of the great men. Although they freely criticised
one another nothing is more remarkable than the kindly
personal feeling which obtained between Liszt and his
natural enemies, the great pianists of the age, — Mos-
cheles, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Thalberg.
There were no doubt cabals, and at one time in Paris he
met with much detraction ; but he seemed to move in a
region of lofty courtesy, in which squabbling for precedence
was out of place ; and his generosity of heart and genial
recognition of others' talent disarmed criticism and silenced
malice.
178
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
With the outburst of the Revolution, with the appearance
of Paganini, came also to Liszt a violent reaction against
the current religious ideas and the whole of the Catholic
teaching. Reading had opened his eyes ; the Catholic
system seemed to him not only inadequate, but false. He
required a freer atmosphere, one rather more interpretative
of human facts and human nature ; he thought he found it
in the doctrines of the Saint-Simonians. The " Nouveau
Christianisme," by far the best of St. Simon's lucubrations,
seemed to show that the Church had misrepresented and
outraged the religion of Christ. It failed to take due
account of art and science, had no sympathy with progress,
refused altogether to assimilate the Zeitgeist, and had evi-
dently ceased to lead the thinkers or purify the masses.
About this time Liszt came across the eloquent and gifted
Abbe de Lamennais. This man it was who, more than
any other, saved Liszt from drifting into the prevailing
whirlpool of atheism. The heterodox Abbe, who himself
had broken with the retrograde religion of Rome, reformu-
lated his system, and discovered for him what at that time
he most craved for, — a link between his religion and his
art.
It was towards the close of 1S31 that Liszt met Chopin
in Paris. From the first these two men, so different,
became fast friends. Chopin's delicate, retiring soul found
a singular delight in Liszt's strong and imposing personality.
Liszt's exquisite perception enabled him perfectly to live in
the strange dream-land of Chopin's fancies, whilst his own
vigor inspired Chopin with nerve to conceive those mighty
Polonaises that he could never properly play himself, and
which he so gladly committed to the keeping of his pro-
digious friend. Liszt undertook the task of interpreting
Chopin to the mixed crowds which he revelled in subduing,
but from which his fastidious and delicately strung friend
shrank with something like aversion.
From Chopin, Liszt and all the world after him got that
tcmfo rubato, that playing with the duration of notes with-
out breaking the time, and those arabesque ornaments which
are woven like fine embroidery all about the pages of
Chopin's nocturnes, and which lift what in others are mere
casual flourishes into the dignity of interpretative phrases
and poetic commentaries on the text.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
179
People were fond of comparing the two young men who
so often appeared in the same salons together, — Liszt, with
his finely shaped, long, oval head and profile d'ivoire, set
proudly on his shoulders, his stiff hair of dark blonde thrown
back from the forehead without a parting, and cut in a
straight line, his aplomb, his magnificent and courtly bear-
ing, his ready tongue, his flashing wit and fine irony, his
genial bonhomie and irresistibly winning smile ; and Chopin,
also with dark blonde hair, but soft as silk, parted on one
side ; to use Liszt's own words, " an angel of fair counte-
nance, with brown eyes, from which intellect beamed rather
than burned, a gentle, refined smile, slightly aquiline nose,
a delicious, clear, almost diaphanous complexion, all bear-
ing witness to the harmony of a soul which required no
commentary beyond itself."
Nothing can be more generous or more true than Liszt's
recognition of Chopin's independent support. " To our
endeavors," he says, " to our struggles, just then so much
needing certainty, he lent us the support of a calm, unshak-
able conviction, equally armed against apathy and cajolery."
There was only one picture on the walls of Chopin's room ;
it hung just above his piano. It was a head of Liszt.
The over-intensity of Liszt's powerful nature may have
occasionally led him into extravagances of virtuosity, which
laid him open to some just criticism. Robert Schumann
observed acutely: 4 ' It appears as if the sight of Chopin
brought him again to his senses."
The darling of the aristocracy, accustomed from his
earliest youth to mix freely with the haute noblesse of
Germany and France, Liszt was a republican at heart.
He felt acutely for the miseries of the people, and he was
always a great player for the masses. " When I play," he
once said, " I always play for the people in the top gallery,
so that those who can pay but five groschen for their seats
may also get something for their money." He was ever fore-
most in alleviating the sufferings of the poor, the sick, and
the helpless. He seems, indeed, to have been unable to
pass a beggar, and the beggars soon find that out ; they
will even intrude upon his privacy and waylay him in his
garden.
Once, when at the height of his popularity in Paris, a
friend found him holding a crossing-sweeper's broom at
i8o MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
the corner of the street. k ' The fact is, " said Liszt, simply,
" I had no small change for the boy, so I told him to change
me five francs, and he asked me to hold his broom for him
till he returned." I forgot to ask Liszt whether the lad
ever came back.
I was walking with him one day in the private gardens
of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli when some little ruffians, who
had clambered over the wall, rushed up to him with a few
trumpery weeds, which they termed " bouquets." The
benevolent maestro took the gift good-humoredly, and,
fumbling in his pocket, produced several small coins,
which he gave to the urchins, turning to me apologetically :
" They expect it, you know. In fact," he added, with a
little shrug, " whenever I appear they do expect it." His
gifts were not always small. He could command large
sums of money at a moment's notice. The proceeds of
many a splendid concert went to manufacturing committees,
widows, orphans, sick and blind. He founded pensions and
provided funds for poor musicians ; he set up monuments
to great artists. A pecuniary difficulty arising about Bee-
thoven's statue at Bonn, Liszt immediately guaranteed the
whole sum. In the great commercial crisis of 1S34 at
Lyons Liszt gave concerts for the artisans out of work ;
and in Hungary, not long after, when the overflow of the
Danube rendered hundreds homeless, Liszt was again to
the fore with his brilliant performances for charity.
All through his life he was an ardent pamphleteer, and
he fought not only for the poor, but in the highest interests
of his art, and, above all, for the dignity of his own class.
In this he was supported by such musical royalties as
Mendelssohn, Rossini, Paganini, and Lablache. We have
heard how in past days the musicians were not expected
to mix with the company, a rope being laid down on the
carpet, showing the boundary line between the sacred and
profane in social rank.
On one occasion Lablache, entering the music saloon at
a certain great house, observed the usual rope laid down
in front of him when he came on to sing in a duet. He
quietly stooped down and tossed it aside. It was never
replaced, and the offensive practice dropped out of London
society from that day.
Liszt refused to play at the court of Queen Isabella in
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE. 181
Spain because the court etiquette forbade the introduction
of musicians to royalty. In his opinion even crowned heads
owed a certain deference and homage to the sovereignties
of art, and he determined it should be paid.
He met Czar Nicholas I., who had very little notion of
the respect due to any one but himself, with an angry look
and a defiant word ; he tossed Frederick William IV. 's
diamonds into the side scenes, and broke a lance with
Louis Philippe, which cost him a decoration.
He never forgave that thrifty king for abolishing certain
musical pensions, and otherwise snubbing art. He refused
on every occasion to play at the Tuileries. One day the
king and his suite paid a " private view " visit to a piano-
forte exhibition of Erard's. Liszt happened to be in the
room, and was trying a piano just as his majesty entered.
The king advanced genially towards him and began a
conversation ; but Liszt merely bowed with a polished, but
icy, reserve.
"Do you still remember," said the king, "that you
played at my house when you were but a boy, and I Duke
of Orleans? Much has changed since then."
"Yes, sire," replied Liszt, dryly; "but not for the
better."
The king showed his royal appreciation of the repartee
by striking the great musician's name oft* the list of those
who were about to receive the cross of the Legion of Honor.
The idol of Parisian drawing-rooms at a most susceptible
age, with his convictions profoundly shaken in Catholicism
and Church discipline, surrounded by wits and philosophers
who were equally sceptical about marriage and the very
foundations of society as then constituted, Liszt's views of
life not unnaturally underwent a considerable change.
He had no doubt frankly and sincerely imbibed Mme.
Sand's early philosophy, and his witty saying, which re-
minds me of something of the kind in Rasselas, that
" whether a man marries, or not, he will sooner or later be
sure to repent it," belongs to this period. His relations
with Mme. Sand have been much misrepresented. He was
far more attracted by her genius than by her person, and
although for long years he entertained for her feelings of
admiration and esteem, she never exercised over him the
despotic influence which drove poor Chopin to despair.
1 82 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
Of the misguided countess who threw herself upon his
protection, and whom he treated with the utmost considera-
tion and forbearance for several years, I shall not have much
to say ; but it must be remembered that he was considerably
her junior ; that he did his best to prevent her from taking
the rash course which separated her from her family and
made her his travelling-companion, and that years afterwards
her own husband, as well as her brother, when affairs came
to be arranged and the whole facts of the case were
canvassed in aconseif de JamilleaX Paris, confessed, of their
own accord, that throughout Liszt had acted " like a man of
honor."
Liszt's attempt to preserve his incognito in Italy conspic-
uously failed. He entered Ricordi's music-shop at Milan,
and, sitting down at a grand piano, began to improvise.
" 'Tis Liszt or the devil ! " he heard Ricordi whisper to a
clerk, and in another moment the great Italian entreprenetir
had welcomed the Hungarian virtuoso and placed his villa,
his box at the opera, his carriage and horses, at his disposal.
Towards the year 1840 the relations between Liszt and
the Countess d'Agoult had become rather strained. The
inevitable dissolution which awaits such alliances was
evidently at hand. For a brief period on the shores of the
Lake of Como the cup of his happiness had indeed seemed
full ; but es war ein Traum. " When the ideal form of a
woman," so he wrote to a friend, " floats before your
entranced soul, — a woman whose heaven-born charms bear
no allurements for the senses, but only wing the soul to
devotion, — if you see at her side a youth sincere and faithful
in heart, weave these forms into a moving story of love, and
give it the title ' On the Shores of the Lake of Como.' "
He wrote, we may be sure, as he then felt. He was
sometimes mistaken, but he was always perfectly open,
upright, and sincere.
A little daughter was born to him at Bellagio, on the
shores of that enchanted lake. He called her Cosima in
memory of Como. She became afterwards the wife of Von
Biilow, then the wife and widow of Richard Wagner.
But in 1840 the change came. The countess and her
children went off to Paris, and the roving spirit of the great
musician, after being absorbed for some time in composi-
tion, found its restless rest in a new series of triumphs.
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
«S 3
After passing through Florence, Bologna, and Rome, he
went to Bonn, then to Vienna, and entered upon the last
great phase of his career as a virtuoso, which lasted from
1840 to between 1850-60.
In 1842 Liszt visited Weimar, Berlin, and then went to
Paris. He was meditating a tour in Russia. Pressing
invitations reached him from St. Petersburg and Moscow.
The most fabulous accounts of his virtuosity had raised
expectation to its highest pitch. He was as legendary even
amongst the common people as Paganini.
His first concert at St. Petersburg realized the then
unheai-d-of sum of £2,000. The roads were crowded to see
him pass, and the corridors and approaches to the Grand
Opera blocked to catch a glimpse of him.
The same scenes were repeated at Moscow, where he gave
six concerts without exhausting the popular excitement.
On his return to Weimar he accepted the post of Kapell-
meister to the Grand Duke. It provided him with that
settled abode, and, above all, with an orchestra, which he
now felt so indispensable to meet his growing passion for
orchestral composition. But the time of rest had not yet
come.
In 1844 and 1845 he was received in Spain and Portugal
with incredible enthusiasm, after which he returned to Bonn
to assist at the inauguration of Beethoven's statue. With
boundless liberality he had subscribed more money than
all the princes and people of Germany put together to
make the statue worthy of the occasion and the occasion
worthy of the statue.
The golden river which poured in to him from all the
capitals of Europe now freely found a new vent in bound-
less generosity. Hospitals, poor and needy, patriotic cele-
brations, the dignity and interests of art, were all subsidized
from his private purse.
His transcendent virtuosity was only equalled by his
splendid munificence ; but he found what others have so
often experienced, — that great personal gifts and prodigious
eclat cannot possibly escape the poison of envy and detrac-
tion. He was attacked by calumny ; his very gifts denied
and ridiculed ; his munificence ascribed to vain-glory, and
his charity to pride and ostentation ; yet none will ever
know the extent of his private charities, and no one who
1S4 MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
knows anything of Liszt can be ignorant of the simple,
unaffected goodness of heart which prompts them. Still
he was wounded by ingratitude and abuse. It seemed to
check and paralyze for the moment his generous nature.
Fetis saw him at Coblenz soon after the Bonn festival,
at which he had expended such vast sums. He was sit-
ting alone, dejected and out of health. He said he was
sick of everything, tired of life, and nearly ruined. But
that mood never lasted long with Liszt ; he soon arose and
shook himself like a lion. His detractors slunk away into
their holes, and he walked forth victorious to refill his
empty purse and reap new laurels. His career was inter-
rupted by the stormy events of 1848. He settled down for
a time at Weimar, and it was then that he began to take
that warm interest in Richard Wagner which ended in the
closest and most enduring of friendships.
He labored incessantly to get a hearing for the " Lohen-
grin " and " Tannhauser." He forced Wagner's composi-
tions on the band on the Grand Duke ; he breasted public
opposition and fought nobly for the eccentric and obscure
person who was chiefly known as a political outlaw and
an inventor of extravagant compositions which it was im-
possible to play or sing, and odiously unpleasant to listen
to.
But years of faithful service, mainly the service and im-
mense prestige and authority of Liszt, procured Wagner
a hearing, and paved the way for his glorious triumphs at
Bayreuth in 1S76, 1882, and 1883.
At the age of seventy-two Liszt retained the wit and
vivacity of forty. He passed from Weimar to Rome, to
Pesth, to Berlin, to Vienna; but objected to cross the sea,
and told me that he would never again visit England. Lat-
terly he seldom touched the piano, but loved to be sur-
rounded by young aspirants to fame. To them he was
prodigal of hints, and ever ready to lavish all sorts of kind-
ness upon people who were sy?npathiqiie to him.
At unexpected moments, in the presence of some timid
young girl overpowered with the honor of an introduction,
or alone with a friend when old days were spoken of,
would Liszt sit down for a few minutes and recall a phrase
of Chopin, or a quaint passage from Scarlatti, and then,
forgetting himself, wander on until a flash of the old fire
MEMORIES OF A MUSICAL LIFE.
I8 5
came back to his eyes as he struck a few grand octaves ; and
then, just as you were lost in contemplation of that noble
head, with its grand profile and its cascade of white hair, and
those hands that still seemed to be the absolutely uncon-
scious and effortless ministers of his fitful and despotic will,
the master would turn away, break off, like one suddenly
blast, in the middle of a bar, with " Come, let us take a
little walk ; it will be cool under the trees ; " and lie would
have been a bold man who ventured in that moment to
allude to the piano or music.
I saw Liszt but six times, and then only between the
years 1876 and 1SS1. I have heard him play upon two
occasions only ; then he played certain pieces of Chopin,
at my request, and a new composition by himself. I have
heard Mme. Schumann, Biilow, Rubinstein, Menter, and
Essipoff ; but I can understand that saying of Tausig, him-
self one of the greatest masters of technique whom Ger-
many has ever produced : " No mortal can measure him-
self with Liszt. He dwells alone upon a solitary height."
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