or theological, Papistical, High Church, or ultra-Protestant? character, the effect would be simply ludicrous. The emotions expressed must be more In arguing, then, in defence of the inhe- or less identical with those attributed to the rent and true expressiveness of musical despairing Jephtha, although, no doubt, the sound, it is, in the first place, necessary to circumstances which are supposed to arouse say what is thus meant, and how far it can them may be varied. Or try the experiment be adequately described as an actual lan- of adaptation upon the Ave verum of Mozart, guage, corresponding to, and expressive of, or the concluding phrases of the Recordare the intelligent and emotional nature of man. in the same composer's Requiem, or on the That it possesses, apart from some accompa- last song in Beethoven's Lieder Kreis, or on nying words, the definiteness which attaches his An dir allein, that sacred song in which to articulate speech, is not to be maintained. he expresses the emotions of religious penThose who contend for its wonderful and itence and exultation with the same extraunapproachable powers of expressing and ordinary intensity with which Mozart expresinfluencing the feelings, are often misled into ses those of adoration, love, and hope in the confounding force and depth with exact Ave verum and the Recordare. In all these, distinctness of intellectual conception. See any attempt at the adaptation of different ing and delighting in its capacity for produ- words will only serve to show the perfect fitcing effects unattainable by other means, ness of their melodious cadences and the prothey claim for it an attribute to which it gresssive harmonies for embodying the ideas cannot pretend. It must be fully admitted which the composers had actually present in that the ideas and emotions that are called their minds. And it is the same with such into vivid action by the music of the greatest almost purely instrumental movements as masters are less distinct in their outline, so to the "Amen" chorus with which Handel say, than those which are expressed by spo- closes his Messiah. Here we have a fugue ken words, and in their own peculiar range, of by no means brief duration, worked up by painting and sculpture. If we take the with all the resources of counterpoint, and most powerfully expressive pieces of dra- the only syllables the singers utter through matic music, and sever them from the words its entire length, are those of the word which they were written to express, it can- "Amen," which is repeated again and again not be denied that they would, to a certain with interminable variations of spinning out, extent, suffer as exponents of human feel- as it appears to the non-musical ear, entireing, human thought, and human character. ly without any sense at all. Yet, in reality, Yet, on the other hand, they have a real the artistic propriety and the fulness of meaning of their own, which it would be as meaning of this fugue are as perfect as its absurd to deny, as to assert that laughter, contrapuntal skill. It is long, and it reas such, is not the expression of enjoyment. peats the one word "Amen again an Take, for example, the following, which are again, because it is the concluding moveamong the greatest masterpieces of writers ment of a long work, in which each idea in of different periods. The" Che faro," from the whole narrative of the life and death of Glück's Orfeo, is a song scarcely to be sur- Christ is developed at considerable length. passed in the intensity of its tragic pathos, To say "Amen" once, or to prolong its rewhich is felt even by those who scarcely un- petition only through a few bars, would be derstand a word of Italian. To those who do out of proportion to the previous treatment understand it, the appropriateness of every of the detailed portions of the whole work. phrase is manifest, and its effect is propor- The "Amen" chorus is thus simply an extionately increased. But to adapt any other pression of the gratitude and joy with which words which should convey ideas not prac- the devout mind contemplates the conclutically corresponding with the original, and sion of the sufferings of Christ and the comshould yet be felt to be a natural vehicle for mencement of his glories in heaven. The the music, would be an impossibility. If they word " Amen" is a mere conventional vedid not express emotions substantially the hicle for expressing the thoughts that absorb same with which the half-maddened husband the Christian intelligence; and, as the comis supposed to watch the lifeless body of the poser exerts his utmost powers in working striken Eurydice, the musical sounds would up his melodious theme till he attains the strike one as inappropriate and unmeaning. unrivalled climax (at the sixth bar from the Take next another masterpiece of tragic pas- end), it seems as if the mind could bear no sion and pathos, Handel's "Deeper and deep- more, and exhausted with exultation, suber still," with the song " Waft her, angels," to sides at once into repose and silent thought. which the recitative leads up; if these won- Here and there, indeed, it must be confessderful notes were sung to words dissimilar ined that even the greatest writers may set CXI. The feeling of intensity, exultation, power, and almost rapturous enjoyment is as striking in both of them, as is the difference between their modes of treatment and the instrumentality by which the same result is attained. It is impossible to hear and understand either of them, and yet uphold the theory that all the meaning of music lies in the words. In their very identity of expression, too, the personal characters of the two men are revealed in the clearest light. In the utmost height of the excitement of his climax, Mozart's tendency to serenity, sweetness, and enjoyment is vividly felt; while from the simple announcement of his slowly moving theme, up to the agitated trills in which Beethoven's excitement culminates, we are ever conscious that with him repose was the result of the forcible control of passionate emotion. music to words for which it is so ill-adapted | with the final movement in Beethoven's lastthat it gains considerably by the substitution written pianoforte sonata, the wonderful Op. of others quite different in character; a fact which, however, confirms my argument, though at the expense of the composer himself. For example, there is a song of Handel's in his opera Elius, which in the Italian original is simply narrative, and of a pastoral and trivial kind. When Dr. Arnold hashed up a species of oratorio out of the great master's operatic works in general, he took this same "Nasce al bosco" and set it to the noble words of the Psalmist, "He layeth the beams of his chambers in the waters," &c., and the result is a splendid song, in which the music is perfectly expressive of ideas which none but a very great writer could worthily embody. The recitative usually sung with the adapted song is said to be Arnold's own, and is so excellent, that for its sake, and in acknowledgment of his skill in the conversion of the air from a pastoral ditty to a magnificent religious hymn, some portion of his barbarous proceedings may be, perhaps, condoned. Those critics who insist that the meaning of music entirely depends upon the words which it accompanies, should be further referred to one or two examples of purely instrumental works, in which a distinct intelligent sentiment is so irresistibly felt that there can be no two opinions as to what the music means. And I will take first the two men who both stand in the highest rank as composers, but whose modes, as artists, of expressing themselves were singularly unlike. It would be difficult to name two masters of the art in whom the systems upon which musical sounds are employed as a vehicle for thought and feeling were more dissimilar than Mozart and Beethoven. Mozart was one of the greatest contrapuntists that have ever lived; while in Beethoven the contrapuntal faculty was but feebly developed, though as an original and imaginative harmonist it is scarcely an exaggeration to say that he is without a rival.* Listen, then, to the finale in Mozart's "Jupiter" symphony, in which an orchestral movement of the utmost brilliancy is planned in the form of a fugue, and carried out on a scale and with a success simply marvellous; and then compare it For the sake of the general reader it may be as well to add, that by counterpoint is meant the development of a melody by the (apparently) independent movement of the various voices or instruments, each repeating and modifying the melody in its own way, all in combination producing a harmonious whole; while by harmony, as such, is meant simply the progression of combinations of sounds in agreeable and expressive sequences. A fugue exhibits the most elaborately planned form of contrapuntal treat ment; an ordinary psalm or hymn tune is a specimen of mere harmony. As for the popular notion that there exists an essential difference between secular and sacred music as such, it is as superficial as it is untenable. It is as unreal as the corresponding theory that religious emotions and ideas are the product of one set of faculties, and secular feelings and knowledge the product of another set. Love is love, and joy is joy, and hope is hope, whether the objects which arouse them are Divine or human; and they therefore express themselves in similar language, whether spoken or sung. The idea that religious music is in its nature unlike all other music, is of a piece with the preposterous but equally prevalent belief, that when we speak on religious subjects, especially when men are preaching from a pulpit, it is proper to adopt a conventionally solemn tone of voice, and to use a conventional cast of phraseology. Of course, as there are certain ideas and emotions which never enter into acts of religious worship or meditation, so there are certain varieties of musical expression which would be out of all character in sacred composition. Everything of the nature of frivolity, for example, is utterly out of character and senseless in religious music. But after excluding all such ridiculous incongruities, the fact remains that there is absolutely no difference in style between the sacred and the secular works of the great masters. The madrigals of Palestrina are like his masses and motets; Bach's fugues for the clavecin are just like many of the choruses in his "Passion Musik" and his masses; were it not for the words, nobody conld say whether any one of Handel's songs belongs to an oratorio or an opera; the Agnus Dei in Mozart's First Mass is to a great extent like the Dove sono in his Figaro; and so. with all the rest of his works, and those of still later writers. And for the reason just stated, that human emotions are identical in their nature, though of course varying in their intensity and combinations, whether the outward objects which excite them are Divine or human. self in the works of a great composer as distinctly as those of a writer in ordinary prose language. The peculiarities of the man Mozart are as clearly revealed in his music as in his letters and in the records of his life. It is the same with Beethoven; the same with Mendelssohn; the same with Handel and Haydn. In Handel's writings there is to be found the expression of every human It should not be forgotten, too, that the passion; but it would be ridiculous to pretend various stages by which the present condi- that the tenderness, the sweetness, the mintion of the musical art has been developed, gled joyousness and sadness, which are alpractically correspond to the varieties of ar- most always present in combination in Moticulate languge, whether past or present. zart, are to be found prominent in the univerAll languages are not equally perfect as sally gifted Handel, who even in his lightest instruments for the embodiment of idea and moods impresses us with a sense of force and feeling. Greek and Latin, English and power. It may seem, perhaps, a whimsical French, Italian and German, all have their notion; but yet it is hardly extravagant to characteristics, their merits and their de- add that in Handel, as in Shakspeare, we fects. So it is with the forms which have seem to be in company with a a prosperous man. prevailed in the musical art during the last That the two men were prosperous in the three centuries. The musical forms of to- trade of money-getting, and, wonderful to day, as wrought out by Beethoven and add, as theatrical managers, is a fact which Mendelssohn, are as unlike those of Pales- everybody knows, and which ought ever to trina and Di Lasso, as Greek is unlike Lat- be enforced on the attention of those prosaic in, or German unlike French. The inter-people who imagine that there is a sort of invening forms, again, which may be taken compatibility between the gifts of genius as attaining their highest perfection in and a capacity for business. However, this Handel, have a character solely their own; much, I think, cannot be denied, that as noand, like the several varieties of articulate body would ever imagine, from their works, languages, each stage in musical develop- that either Shakspeare or Handel were unment is especially adapted for the perfect fortunate, melancholy men, so nobody would expression of some one class of thoughts or ever imagine that Beethoven was the reemotions. The English tongue has a won- verse; or, again, that Weber was a thriving, derful power for poetic and oratorical ex- jovial man of the world, or that Rossini pression, but who would think of ranking it waged a fruitless struggle for bread and for with Greek or with French as a vehicle of health. In the great Sebastian Bach's writscientific expression, or with German as a ings, too, I see the revelation of the peculanguage of sentiment? And thus in mus- liarities of his history, as distinguished from ic. It was not alone the genius of Pales- that of his great contemporary. Fiery pastrina, but the musical forms of the time, sions, with their conflicts, find no expression which make his works and those of the oth- in any of the works of the quiet, contented, er great masters of the sixteenth century domestic musical director of Leipsic. Even the most purely spiritual music in existence. in the most jubilant and triumphant bursts At the same time, not only those forms, but and climaxes in his Mass in B minor, the forms of the seventeenth and eighteenth noblest mass ever written, and by a Protescenturies, were inadequate to the produc- tant, too, the clear, bright, genial, and tion of the gorgeous splendour of the orches- self-possessed nature of the man is still mantra as developed in the nineteenth century. ifest; and he goes on pouring forth his The highly cultivated and sympathetic mu- streams of brilliant, interlacing harmonies sical intelligence enjoys every school, and with a fertility and a sense of enjoyment finds in its works a true and natural expres- that bespeaks at once a mind at ease and sion of its thoughts and sensibilities; just as an imagination as exuberant as it was powHomer, and Sophocles, and Horace, and erful and well-instructed. Altogether it Dante, and Goethe, and Molière, are the seems to me as impossible to deny that mucherished companions of the highly culti-sical sound is a voice speaking from the vated Englishman. In every musical school, too, there is that other capacity to be recognised which is to be noted in every spoken language. The personal character of the writer displays it-I the mind, as that the written styles of Addison From Good Words. A PERSONAL EXPERIENCE OF FIRE-DAMP. B SOME years since I paid a visit in Staffordshire, and one of the entertainments by which my host sought to make my time pass pleasantly was a descent into a coal mine. I rather liked the idea, as I had never been down one, and at once agreed to go. The mine that was to be honoured with our inspection was that of West It was an old mine, of considerable size and depth the depth of the shaft being, if I recollect rightly, about 960 feet. There were some six or eight in our company, among whom were two young men, the sons of the owner, and a superior workman - I do not know his proper technical designation - perhaps underground bailiff; at any rate, something equivalent to what we above ground should call the foreman. I expected that we would go down in a bucket, or box, but there was nothing of that sort; we stood upon something like a small platform and clung to the chain by which we were lowered. I rather repented of my readiness to join the party when I saw the means by which we were to descend, but I had not courage or time to dissent from what seemed the recognised mode of procedure. No one else seemed to mind it, and two or three of those who were familiar with the ways of the place stuck out one of their legs at right angles to stave us off from the sides of the shaft as we descended. "All right," said some one, and away we went. My first sensation was that sort of deliquium or swimming in the head that the reader may have experienced when he dreams that he is falling down a precipice. Fortunately it did not relax the muscles, for as it passed away I found myself clinging to the chain like grim death; probably it was only momentary, as I had time to observe the rapidity with which we passed into total darkness. The story about seeing stars at noonday from the bottom of a coal pit cannot be true, at any rate if the pit is what is called an up-cast shaft. We went down the upcast shaft that is, the shaft by which the air which has entered the pit by the downcast shaft returns to the upper regions, after having circulated through the mine; and looking upwards through this air, we could see nothing of the opening of the pit almost immediately after beginning to descend. I suppose the air was so loaded with impurities, coal dust, vitiated vapours, &c., that, seen in quantity, it was as muddy and impenetrable to light as the river Thames at London Bridge, although on the small scale both appear transparent. Down, down, we went, and presently we became aware of a little drizzling rain. It was the water, which, pouring or trickling from the sides of the shaft, sparked off from every projection. As we went deeper this got worse, and by the time we reached the bottom we were in a heavy shower. Suddenly we stopped; we had reached the foot of the shaft. We found ourselves in the midst of a group of horses, one of which, a blind old beast, I remember, came knocking up against me and nearly upset me. men Some of us were then furnished with lights. I was one of those that were not. When I say that the lights were all naked and without protection, the reader will see that my visit must have been made a good many years ago. Under the guidance of the foreman we then set off on our tour. The main passage, along which we went at first, was what I imagine would be considered a lofty and spacious gallery, laid with rails. It was comparatively broad, and seemed to my eye about nine or ten feet high. We proceeded along this for, I daresay, a quarter of a mile. By-and-by our leaders turned into an apparently unused side gallery, narrower than the main passage, in which the foreman had something about the ventilation to point out to the owners. Hitherto we had seen no mining; we had met men with horses drawing trucks, and others going about their occupations, but no men working. We proceeded along this smaller gallery for about 150 yards or so. The place was dirty, sloppy, and wet, and, of course, dark; and feeling no particular interest in what the foreman was desirous of pointing out to the owners, I lagged behind a little. I might have been twenty paces behind the rest of the party, when a sudden light started up among them-I can compare it to nothing but the flash with which lightning is imitated in the theatre. The reader knows (or if he does not know, I shall tell him) that this is done by placing a lighted taper-end between the middle and ring finger of the hand, held out with the palm upwards. Into the palm a quantity of powdered resin is poured, not spread out but piled up around the taper. The resin is then chucked into the air, and is ignited in passing through the flame, which then spreads out like a large mushroom. The whole is over almost instantaneously, and the resemblance to sheet lightning, to those who " do not see the operator or the mushroom, but merely the flash of light, is very perfect. Well, this was exactly what I saw with a difference. The difference was, that when the light flashed up to the roof and assumed the mushroom shape, it did not disappear like the other. Instead of being extin-"headers" into a stream. Without reasongnished as instantaneously as it arose, it continued extending and spreading out along the roof on every side. My first idea when I saw the light was, that this was some civility on the part of the owners to show off the mysteries of the place to their visitors, as I had seen the Blue-John Mine in Derbyshire, and other stalactitic caves, illuminated by Roman candles and other lights. That idea only lasted for a second. As the light extended, every one rushed panic-stricken from it as fast as they could run. I guessed the truth in a moment, and turned to fly. There was no difficulty in finding my way, the whole place being illuminated. After flying along for some time I looked back; the whole of the gallery where we had been was one body of fire-not a bright lambent blaze, but lurid, reddish volumes of flame rolling on like billows of fiery mist. Their form was liker that of the volumes of black smoke which we may see at times issuing out of large factory chimneys, than anything else I can compare it to. My notions of explosions of fire-damp were, that they took place with the rapidity of an explosion of gunpowder. But it was not so in this case, at any rate. I do not mean that it was slow, but that its speed was no greater than that of a man. All those who were at the end of the gallery where it took place did, in point of fact, outrun it. Neither was there any noise or sound of explosion; at least, I noticed none, and if there had been I think I must have observed it, for, all things considered, I was tolerably collected. The report must have taken place at the pit-mouth, as from the mouth of a gun. The fire rolled silently along in great billows of reddish flame, one wave tumbling over another, in quick succession. And a curious and a very beautiful thing was the edges of these billows; they were fringed with sparks of blue flame, dashed off like sparks from a grindstone. Even at that dreadful moment I could not avoid being struck by their beauty. behind me cry out, "Down on your face! and by-and-by one figure after another sprang past me and dashed themselves headlong on the ground. I can liken the reckless, frantic way in which it was done, to nothing but boys, when bathing, taking ing about it I followed suit, and flung myself into a puddle, and then peering backwards under my arm, waited the approach of the sea of flame, the wall of fire, which was approaching. It had not yet come out of the side gallery, but the glare of its light preceded it. Presently it rolled into sight, filling the whole mouth of the side gallery, from top to bottom. Had it overtaken us in it, not a soul would have escaped alive; but when it entered the larger gallery it lifted, just as one sees a mist lifting on the mountains, and then rolled along the roof, passing over our heads. How much space there was between us and it, I cannot say; I imagine it filled the upper two-thirds, leaving a space of perhaps two or three feet free from flame. Nor can I well say how long we lay below this fiery furnace; it might have been five minutes or a quarter of an hour. Judging from our sensations it must have been hours, but we did not experience so great heat as I should have expected. We felt it more afterwards; probably the anxiety of the moment made us insensible to its intensity. All this I must have gathered at a glance -in an instant of time. In front of the billowy mass of fire rolling on towards me I saw the dark figures of my companions tearing along at headlong speed. Then turning, I again dashed on. When I came to the loftier main passage I heard a voice After the lapse of some time the volume of fire above began to diminish, the stratum got thinner and thinner; it eddied, and curled, and streamed about, leaving the more prominent parts of the roof exposed like islands; then it wandered about like fiery serpents and tongues of flame, licking a corner here, or flickering about a stone there, but ever moving towards the shaft. As it thus abated, presently one head was raised from the ground, then another, until we all began to get up. We then gathered together, but there were no mutual congratulations, nor external acknowledgment of thanks to God, however much some may have felt. But I doubt if there was much feeling of that kind, the sense of peril was yet too strong; we had escaped one great danger, but we knew that we were still exposed to the risk of many others which often followed such explosions. The first danger was want of air; the fire had used what was in the mine almost wholly up, and we might perish from want of it. "Follow me," said the foreman, and he started off, not for the mouth of the mine, but for some part of it which, from its connections or position, he knew to be better, or more likely to be sup T E · 25 T |