MODERN LITERATURE.-What is our literature? It would be difficult to name any one department, save history, which is not excessively morbid, and does not demand the surgery of severe criticism. Take poetry-all landscape painting peopled with allegories. Formerly poets described men; now they describe trees. Look at the current philosophy-it is the chimera buzzing in a vacuum of which Rabelais speaks; under the name of positivism declaring itself a delusion; under the name of eclecticism becoming still more absurd, because stultifying itself pompously. Pass on to theology-the best of its literature is heterodox; the best of its orthodoxy is vain puzzle about the scarlet lady, the ten-horned beast, the three frogs, and the battle of Armageddon. Turn then to biography. "The times have been that when the brains were out the man would die, and there an end; but now "every pig of genius throughout the country comes to life again in two vols. 8vo. Or look at travel. If it has produced some of the best books of our time, this department has the honour of having also produced the very worst. Albert Smith is quite right in insisting on the ubiquity of Brown. Brown takes his account-book, enlivens it with extracts from the guide-books and the remarks of his courier, and sends it to Paternoster-row for publication. Oh! for Mandeville and Purchas once again, with all their child-like stare and prattle, and adventure and credulity; no more of these Browns riding on donkeys over the world. Try fiction as a relief. The circulating libraries groan with novels,-" of extraordinary power,"-which unfortunately are destined to gather more dust in the next generation than ever covered the romances of Madame de Scudéry, or Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle. They make no pretence of story, and the characters dangled like puppits before our eyes are chaff within and tinsel without. The drama, then: as Smith becomes Smythe, the drama has become diorama. Tragedy has passed into melodrame; comedy into burlesque and pantomime; and the stage has become the platform for snivelling sentiment, the creed of teetotallers, and the decalogue of old maids. There is our whole comic literature-a very wilderness of monkeys, grinning and punning, and punning and grinning, and threatening us with a comic Bible and a Prayer-book Travestie. There is that low, penny literature which represents life as a hideous cancer, adultery the object of life, murder the means, and blasphemy the language. And criticism-what says criticism? Eheu! Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Criticism is very brilliant, puts rings on every finger, and shakes hands with every author. Half the authors of the day have been told that they equal either Scott or Defoe in description; we have given over counting the works that are to live as long as the language; we could name a dozen Platos; there is quite a glut of Miltons; and somehow Shaksperean imagery has become a vulgar accomplishment.-Times Article: "Professor Wilson." TRUMPETERS.-There are three sorts: 1st, the Impudent Man, who blows his own trumpet: 2nd, the Clever Man, who gets a trumpet generally blown for him: and 3rd, the Really Clever Man, who will see all the trumpets blown first before he will stoop to any such trumpery expedients. It is for the latter that Fame takes up the instrument, and, with a trumpet note, sounds

One hates calumny, because it is ugly and odious in its own insignificant and impotent stinking self. But it is almost always extremely harmless. I believe, at this moment, that Byron is thought of, as a man, with an almost universal feeling of pity, forgiveness, admiration, and love. I do not think it would be safe in the most popular preacher to abuse Byron-and that not merely because he is now dead, but because England knows the loss she has sustained in the extinction of her most glorious luminary." To which of the opinions of "Old Ebony" are we to give credit? Did his judgment change with his years; or did he love a lord better at one period of his life than another? Nemo mortalium omnibus, &c., &c,

A SENSATION MARRIAGE." A 'sensation' marriage," says the Boston Bee, "has taken place at Trinity Church. The parties were Mr. George Vandenhoff, comedian, of England, and Miss Mary E. Makeah, actress. The ceremonies were performed by the Rev. John Cotton Smith, assistant rector. The affair had been kept rather private, and there were few spectators.”

a very small one, we cannot quarrel with the modesty of certain men, who, feeling there is but little chance of Fame ever blowing the trumpet for them, become subscribers of that highly popular musical society of "Every Man His Own Trumpeter," and blow away lustily for themselves. Some of our greatest politicians, patriots, doctors, tragedians, and tight-rope dancers are already members of the above society, and the numbers are daily increasing.-Punch.

CONTRADICTIONS OF PROFESSOR WILSON.-Every body knows how unsparingly Professor Wilson abused Lord Byron in his papers in Blackwood's Magazine, entitled "Christopher among the Mountains." In the "Noctes Ambrosianæ," published some years previously in the same serial, the reader will be surprised to find, written by the same pen, the following uncompromising eulogy:-"The character of one of the greatest poets the world ever saw, in a very few years will be discerned in the clear light of truth. How quickly all misrepresentations die away.

LOW PRICES (selected from Boosey and Sons' new catalogue) Beethoven's Pianoforte Works, complete, six vols, boards, with one vol of violm accompaniment, £5. Mozart's Pianoforte Works, complete, seventeen books, £5. Weber's Pianoforte Works, complete, three vols., 210s. Forkel's Generi History of Music, two vols., 4to., plates, boards, 1 108. Haydn's violin Quartets -Complete collection of Quartets, beautifully printed, four thick vols., boards, Nos 4, 5,

5. Haydn's Symphonies in Full Score.-Nos. 1, 2, 3, price 3s. each. 6-48. each. New edition. Les Huguenots, in Full Score-Splendid edition, Fidelis, in Full Score, price £3, Don Juan, in Full Score, price £3. St. Paul, in strongly bound. Price £8. Les Huguenots, Orchestral Parts (printed) £9.

Full Score, price 4 4s. Orders from the country must be accompanied by remittance. 28, Holles-street.

Published by JOHN BOOSEY, of 27, Notting Hill-square, in the parish of Kensington, at the office of BOOSEY & SONS, 28, Holles-street. Sold also by REED, 15, Johnstreet, Great Portland-street; ALLEN, Warwick-lane; VICKERS, Holywell-street; KEITH, PROWSE, & Co. 48. Cheapside; G. SCHEURMANN, 86, Newgate-street; HARRY MAY, 11, Holborn-bars. Agents for Scotland, PATERSON & Sosa, Edinburgh; for Ireland, H. BUSSELL, Dublin; and all Music-sellers.

Printed by WILLIAM SPENCER JOHNSON, "Nassau Steam Press," 60, St. Martin'slane, in the Parish of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, in the County of Middlesex.Saturday, October 13, 1855.

REVIEW OF THE HISTORY OF MUSIC BEFORE MOZART.

(Continued from page 658).

Instrumental music then commences with the organ, as vocal, music with the choral song. The church is their common cradle. Our art, which sprang so wholly out of Christianity, unceasingly reminds him, who might forget it, of its origin. Whether the question be of composition or of execution, of instruments or of voices, music will always reach the highest degree of its effects, where it goes back to its source. Moreover the organ, which leaves all other instruments behind itself through its antiquity, through the wonderful art of its structure, through its colossal dimensions and the beauties of its outward forms, is equally superior in the grandeur, the pomp and the variety of its acoustic results. But this orchestra in little, which is much more powerful than the orchestra itself, belongs only to the church; the serious style alone is suited to the organ; the solemn chant and themes, whose depth requires analysis; for so powerful a voice ought only to be heard when it has great things to say to us.

Before the virtuosos of the organ the other virtuosos in a manner shrink to the mean dimensions of their instruments, compared with that. The organist is the complete musician, we might almost say, the ideal, unattainable musician, if some men had not lived. With the science of the fuguist he must unite the unction and lofty expression of the choir leader, who conducts the hymns of the Christian congregation; he must be not only a composer, but also an improvisator; numerous registers and a double-key board occupy his fingers constantly, while the thundering basses of the pedals claim his feet. Five or six real parts, combined according to the strictest laws, must be executed in the very instant that they occur in the musician's brain. All this was what was demanded of a master organist, a long time ago; and for this he received, after the strictest examination, before inexorable judges, whose sharp ears not the slightest error could escape, a place worth about thirty pounds a-year.

This old art of the organists, of which we hardly find a trace to-day, had during the seventeenth century spread itself throughout Germany, and so to say, centralized itself there. It seems, however, that it had already fallen into decline at the beginning of the eighteenth century, since Rheinek, a renowned organist, but then almost a hundred years old, could exclaim, when he heard the young Sebastian Bach: "This art, then, is not lost, as I have so long believed." No indeed, it was not lost, but on the contrary had just reached its culminating point. Händel and Bach were the masters of the organ, because they were the masters of counterpoint and fugue, and because here the genius of the composer is the first condition of the performer. After them came a manifest decline in all wherein they had distinguished themselves. With the arrival of philosophical ideas, Christian art retired, to make room for a Voltaire. There were no more painters, no more architects, no more poets, no more musicians after God's own heart. The flame of genius seemed extinguished. But it glimmered underneath the ashes, and a few years later it shone forth anew in Germany in all its clearest radiance.

The true friends of music could find no compensation for the great loss they had suffered, in the questionable gifts brought to them by the apostles of the Era of Light; and they could not but deeply feel the loss of grand music in that wonderful art of the organist, which seemed to have sunk into the grave with Bach. They thought they had buried the old Sebastian for ever, until some thirty years after his death his successor, Doles, beheld his resurrection again in Leipsic, in the person of Mozart; just as the old Rheinek, when he heard the young Bach, thought he saw a resurrection of himself. But for the resurrection of our hero we have yet to look, without indulging any great hope that it ever will occur.

Two other instruments, also very old ones, shared with the organ, from the fourteenth century, the honour of being cultivated by the learned musicians: the Clavichord, whose invention has been ascribed to Guido, although it is demonstrably more

recent than he, and the Lute, which was known to Boccaccio, since he speaks of it in his "Decameron." Of these there is the same lack of monuments, as of the organ. Kiesewetter tells us, that at the beginning of the sixteenth century the clavichord was only a domestic instrument, that it was used for studies (of composers, I presume); but he does not inform us, whether there was any written clavichord music at that time, and whether any specimens of such have come down to us. The oldest examples of compositions of the Spinet or quill Clavichord, which are found in Burney, are taken from the musicbook of Queen Elizabeth of England. Few of our present pianists could or would play the pieces of Doctor John Bull, called fantasies; and every dilettante, who is not an antiquarian, would run away, were they performed before him. No one can imagine how difficult and tasteless they are. Burney himself, in spite of his patriotism, confesses that one would rather hear the clatter of a mill or the rumble of a post-chaise. But these noises might justly protest against the comparison, for both are often very pleasant to hear. The heroic princess, to whom these fantasies were dedicated, received them like the worthy daughter of Henry VIII.; her nerves, as history tells us, were proof against every thing. In her dining hall every day were stationed twelve trumpeters and twelve kettle-drum beaters, with a proportional number of drummers and fifers, who played for half an hour, as if commissioned to carry to the uttermost ends of the British isles the joyful intelligence that her Majesty was dining. This more than masculine strength of constitution seems to explain many acts of Elizabeth's government.

There were players on the clavichord (pianists) before Bach, and among them even famous ones, as the above named John Bull in England, Couperie in France, Frohberger and some others in Germany. But since the biographical dictionaries merely mention them, and no one any longer knows their works, or finds it worth the while to learn them, we are constrained,→ we, posterity, to pronounce Bach the founder of the true method of playing the pianoforte (or clavichord), as we have already recognized him as a contrapuntist and an organist without an equal. How many crowns upon one head!

While the madrigal style was in vogue, there was a sort of instrumental chamber music, which did not deserve the name, since it was intended merely as a substitute for vocal music. If there chanced to be a lack of singers to the recitation of the madrigal, they played it upon viols, with six strings of different thickness, tuned in fourths, which corresponded to the compass of the voices, and henced were called violas above the tenor and bass. From these sprang our present violas (Bratschen), violoncellos and contrabassos, but not the violin, which is much older.

We see orchestral music emerge with the lyric drama. Opera and orchestra grew strong together, each through the other; and now the composers, who took the place of the players, reduced what had heretofore been left to the blind routine of the trade to artistic rules. At first the orchestra music was not united with the dramatic song. Weak as it was, it attempted its first steps alone. A simple bass accompanied the single voicepart or recitative, and the orchestra, placed behind the scenes, was only heard in the overture (toccata), in the ritornellos, (bits of symphony,) and later in the ballets. Peri and Menteverde excluded the violin from their orchestra and only admitted the violas; which is the more remarkable, as at that time there were already some virtuosos on the violin; indeed there had been some before them; the one best known is the famous Baltazarini, called Monsieur de Beau Joyeulx, whose bow and fertile invention led the pleasures at the court of Henry III., as a century later, another Italian, Lulli, led the festivals of Louis XIV. Moreover violins, in form and quality, had already been brought to the highest possible degree of perfection in Italy by the brothers Amati; a proof that the once so despised fiddle" stood even then in honour among musical artists.

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I have placed before the eyes of my readers an example of the first songs, which were recited on the lyric stage; I have shown them the starting point of the opera, and the route that was to lead it in less than two centuries to Don Juan. Orchestral

music, which, so to say, follows the lead of the opera forwards, completed its career in the same period. It would not be uninteresting, at least for minds that like to try the beginning and the end of things, to compare the overture to Euridice by Peri, and a Ritornello in Orfeo by Monteverde, with the overture to the Zauberflöte. The work for grand orchestra by Peri is composed of three flutes, and its entire length consists of fifteen bars:

suppose

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Is there not something pastoral in that, and would you not the piece was composed for a bagpipe? Some writers have called Monteverde the Mozart of his age; but he was a Mozart born too early; he came into the world two centuries before the right time. Yet he was one of the most note-worthy furtherers in the second revolution of music; that, namely, which, after the seventeenth century changed the general system of scales, or completed the change. Several of Monteverde's compositions, among others his madrigal for five voices, cited by Burney: "Stracciami pur il core," come already very near to the modern music, both in respect to melody and to the choice of the chords. Monteverde also enriched melody with some new and valuable combinations; but he also deserved blame as a rash and in many respects too precocious innovator, in that he introduced dissonances into his works, which always will offend the ear. The madrigal aforesaid proves this, and we find another even stronger proof in the ritornello in Orfeo, which Burney adduces as a master-piece of canonical art, and which would deserve this name if the harmony were less atrocious. It is strange to look at and would be still more strange to hear. The key wavers between C and G major; the modulation between the sixteenth and seventeenth century; many of the chords in fact belong to no epoch and no key. Contrary entirely to the principles, which Monteverde himself followed in other places, he here heaps up without preparation the most intolerable, most insipid discords on the weak parts of the measure, and brings them, God knows how, into the strong parts in safety. Have we here not precisely two symphonies for the orchestra, one in the melodic and the other in the contrapuntal style? |

Thus the dilettanti of that time must have been divided between Perists and Monteverdists, as we were not long since into Mozartists and Rossinists.

From the achievements of Baltazarini it may be inferred, that the virtuosity of the instruments, which bore off the palm from that of the singers, only waited until Melody had reached the stand-point of art. What could a violin solo be at that time? For lack of examples, history is silent on the question; but since it is impossible for concert music to dispense with melody and passages, we must take one of two things for granted either the soloists made the melodies they used, themselves: or, what is much more probable, they took them from the arias, the dances, and the people's songs, and varied them.

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The dazzling virtuosity began with the violin, which to this day is the instrument on which the greatest miracles are wrought. A hundred years after M. Beau Joyeulx we find Master Thomas Baltzar of Lübuck, the oldest type of those violinists, who were desperate subjects, riotous fellows, drunken swaggerers and wizards; a race now nearly extinct, but which counts more than one famous name, and to whom the jugglers of the middle ages with their bows seem to have left some traces of their family character. This Baltzar went to England, where he was entrusted with the direction of the royal chapel of Charles II. In Oxford Dr. Wilson, the first connoisseur in the kingdom, heard him; and after he had heard him, threw himself at his feet, as if to testify his reverence for a supernatural talent, but really to see whether the covering of the artist's nether extremities did not conceal a cloven foot. So Rode and Paganini were not the first, who have had the honour to pass for devils. What was the character of these deviltries in the year 1658 ? I will inform the reader, if he is not subject to vertigo. Master Baltzar, who in daring resembled the first navigators or even the first aeronauts, ventured to press the strings of his violin closer to the bridge than had been seen before. He reached, wonderful to tell, the fearful height of the upper D upon the fifth; he was the Saussure or the Pallas of the violin, if not the devil himself. The twice-marked D, what an Ararat! A molehill, which every scholar eight years old now surmounts without the slightest difficulty.

THE QUEEN AND THE PIANOFORTE-MAKER.-The history of the fortunes of the Erards is picturesquely connected with the beautiful Château de la Muette, at Passy, near Paris, a château which may be seen from the end of the lake recently made in the Bois de Boulogne. When Sébastien Erard was a young man, newly arrived in Paris, he waited one Sunday at the gate of the château to see the Queen Marie Antoinette, who resided in it, come out in her carriage. Sébastien, who was in the midst of the crowd when she passed, cried, "Vive la Reine!" with a powerful voice and an Alsacian accent. The queen remarked the fine young man, whom she mistook for one of her own countrymen. She spoke to him, and asked of what country he was? He replied, "I am French at heart by my birth, as your majesty is by your marriage." The queen ordered the Swiss guards at the gate to allow him to walk over the garden and see the grounds. Sébastien went in, and spent the day in admiring the magnificent alleys and fairy-like walks of the park. A few years later Sébastien Erard constructed a piano for Marie Antoinette, which combined several remarkable inventions to adapt the instrument to the limited resources of her voice. About half a century after the Sunday on which the Queen of France permitted the young clavichord-maker to walk over the gardens, the Château de la Muette was for sale, and in 1823, Sébastien Erard was the purchaser, and installed himself in it with his family. He took great pleasure in repeating the story of his first interview with Queen Marie Antoinette.-Dickens Household Words.

HERR ANDER, the German tenor, who sang for a short period two or three seasons ago at the Royal Italian Opera, Covent Garden, died a few days ago at Vienna, where he was buried with a degree of respect indicative of the estimation in which his character and talents were held.