SIR,

TO THE EDITOR.

THE observations of VETUS, in your last Number, concerning the intercourse between professional musicians and amateurs, are borne out by my own experience, which, for the last thirty years, has been unceasing. I think I may add to his remarks, that there is a reign. ing jealousy between them, which is too commonly fatal alike to their good understanding and to the cause of music, wheresoever the talents of amateurs and professors are conjointly employed. And let me acknowledge, that while this feeling is in some degree mutual, I am afraid it must also be admitted that there is mutual cause, though the profession suffer the most severely, because their interests and their feelings are all concentered in music. Amateurs, on the contrary, are very rarely susceptible of any stronger excitement, or exposed to any greater injury than the disappointment they sometimes experience in the disallowance of the pretensions they advance as occasional performers. Hence the profession are most commonly more irritable and more irritated, and are liable to carry their provocation, their complaints, and their vengeance, to greater lengths than amateurs, who, however, are seldom slow to use the power which influence gives them over the fortunes of the offending professor. Perhaps both may be benefited by an exposition of the grounds of their disagreement, and by an attempt to define the line of duty that divides them. It is in this hope that I enter upon the discussion.

Amateurs universally believe, (and perhaps with truth) that what. soever encourages and propagates a love of music is beneficial to the professor, and under this view of the subject, they consider them. selves fully entitled to the best services the professor can render to their plans for the performance of private concerts. Wherever such meetings are established by amateurs, and they are now very general, the professor is nominally a king, while the amateur really is "viceroy over him." The professor's notions of place, precedency, taste, and science, are all made to stoop to a subserviency to the display which the amateur is anxious to make of his own powers. If the latter be even conscious of inferiority, there is in his mind an

* Page 284, Vol. 1.

universal salvo to his reputation against all failures in a single sentence-" music is not the sole business, but the casual amusement of my life;" and armed in this panoply, he takes his station in the very front rank of the battle. He moreover neither suspects nor intends any infringement upon the rights or the feelings of the professor; he considers that music must be ever delightful; and not having very nicely examined, or thought it at all necessary to lay down very exactly the reason and the rule of his conduct, he proceeds upon the principle without discovering it, that the concert is established for his own gratification, and the professor bound to administer to it with all the energy he is master of. The amateur never reflects for a moment that the playing or the singing which enchants him, and to which he comes fresh in the hopes of praise and enjoyment, have been the toilsome occupation of the musician during all the long hours and days of the week; that the ears and the judgment of the professor are both polished and indurated by the same process; and that generally speaking, he is wearied and disgusted at the want of change or at the deficiencies of bis amateur companions But n'importe, it is all vastly charming. These may appear to some, Sir, very extravagant pretensions or very thoughtless negligences, if fairly described, as indeed I think they are; bút in justice to the amateurs, to whose class I myself belong, I must urge, in our defence, that our errors proceed, not from a want of respect to the feelings or to the judgment of the profession, but from not seeing the fact or even understanding the necessity of such distinotions. We are content, because we know we are the friends of the professor; we have a consciousness of intending to advance his interests; we believe that we do so; and we believe also (taking it upon his general assurance) that he is as much amused with the performance of music, in which he has his part, as we are; at least we entertain not the most remote notion that music can be tiresome or painful. Moreover we are too apt to regard our state as a republic, which, according to the constitution of nature herself, degenerates into a monarchy or an oligarchy, as the influence of mind and fortune predominates, from which the professor is generally excluded. We err it must be confessed; but our error has this extenuation-it is not of intention.

Such are the sins of omission and of commission by amateurs against the professor, who is not, however, without his share of mis

demeanour. He enters into the musical co-partnership with a profound contempt for the acquirements of his coadjutors, (unless they happen to be his own scholars), and with a determination to employ them to his own purposes. If he administers to vanity, he expects to mould the amateur into a staunch adherent to all his interests, and into a powerful agent in all his cabals: he previously determines to use the acquaintance or the friendship to which he atlains, to press purse and person into the service of his concerts, and in recommendation to pupils; in short, completely to turn the amateur to account, and bitterly indeed does he feel and resent the slightest supposed deviation from any particular in which his interest or his personal importance is involved. It is with these views that he submits to the drudgery of assisting in concerts which he most commonly despises, which, in his heart, he regards as so many deductions from the profit he might make by public performances, and as drawbacks upon his own reputation as an artist or a conductor. In few words, he loathes the amateur as far as music is concerned, and he loathes him the more, because of the necessity he labours under to contribute to an importance of which he generally imagines himself to be the true and only support, These, Sir, are no very agreeable portraits; but the general likeness will be recognized, and if they are not relished, it will be because they do not flatter. Perhaps the originals will not be found so often in the metropolis as in the provinces. In the latter, they are to be seen in every concertroom; and if in London, the features are softened by that grand polisher, the world, they nevertheless are visible even there, where the envy of professors is however more turned against each other, and where connection is considered by them as the barrier against competition, and indeed as the very pabulum vitæ.

I have made these deep incisions because I have thought it important to lay bare to the naked eye the morbid parts and the ulcerous places. Our next and more grateful task will be to endeavour to pluck out the cancerous and spreading fibres, to search for a method of healing the wounds, and of preventing the danger of future disFirst then-it is obvious that the amateur looks to the professor for his science and his amusement, while the latter has a more momentous obligation to the amateur in the means of maintenance, which can be only afforded through the diffusion of a love of his art. The amateur might get on without the professor; he might, as some

ease.

do even in this musical age, contrive to be happy without "the concord of sweet sounds," but the professor is absolutely and entirely dependant on the amateur for the bread he eats. I put the question in this shape, because any generous mind will thus perceive that a delicacy, far more than is required between those who meet upon equal terms, is due to the acutely sensitive feelings of the professor, and that every little aggression is liable to a misinterpretation the most foreign from the sentiments which belong to those who cultivate the fine arts and partake that liberal spirit they are supposed to engender and to nourish. The deduction is easily made. Whenever amateurs invite a junction with the professor, a real ascendancy ought to be accorded to the maturer judgment of the latter, and the precedency due to technical superiority granted him, provided he be satisfied with using the privilege fairly and judgematically.The difficulty imposed by this rule, however, will be much augmented by the intellectual difference which VETUS has so ably marked. Amateurs are frequently deep reasoners, not only upon the science but upon its effects, while professors are almost necessarily confined to practical exercise and practical attainments. The amateur is convinced of the justice of his opinions by a wider range of general arguments then the professor can entertain, or perhaps understand; and these very arguments appear to him wire-drawn and useless, because they are unsupported by the excellencies which he properly enough values. The amateur goes on imagining and refining without being able probably to express or embody his ideal perfection; and it may happen that his attempt to convey what may be not injudiciously fancied, may yet be so poor and faint as to be positively ridiculous when compared with the finished execution of those highest examples to which the professor never fails immediately to refer as the standard of excellence. Both are obstinate, for neither are or can be convinced, and hence arises a mutual distrust, not to call it contempt, of each other's judgments. The distinction I take is exactly that which must arise between the views of persons, who on the one side are enlarged by a general, excursive and analogical mode of reasoning upon the art, and those who on the other, come into the controversy with minds bent and contracted to mere technicalities. But the truth is, that cach is eminently calculated to aid the other, and if both would carry this recollection into their discussions it would obviate all fear of disagreement. The

professor should learn to generalize of the amateur; he should be preprepared and happy to profit by the more extended and grander objects of his friend's ampler vision, and the amateur should yield to the technical knowledge and perfection of the professor; for it is as unlikely that he, confined as he is to the practice of his instrument or the theory of the science from hour to hour, and laboriously employed in carning the means of life-it is as unlikely, I say, that he should have the power to cultivate these faculties which are conversant with the intellectual developement of the resources of art, as it is for the amateur, whose mind is constantly on the stretch after various knowledge, to reach the perfection of hand attendant upon the daily exercise of the professor. They will find in these particulars that mutual concession is not less just than necessary, not less graceful than grateful, and the remembrance of these essentials of their separate condition will smooth their intercourse and advance the science they both love.

This generous consideration is almost all that an amateur has to yield. I have already said that to offend or to wound or to degrade the profession cannot be in the contemplation of a liberal mind. The surrender of imaginary interests and of those bad passions which goad the professor to a continual desire to derogate from the acquirements of amateurs, "to damn with faint praise," to involve them in cabals against his rivals, and to claim their unlimited support in all his undertakings, is a victory, which as it costs more, offers a nobler reward for so much self-government. One half, and as it appears to me the greater, may be at once attained by a just estimate of what is required in the struggle. The basis upon which all moral control is or ought to be founded, is an understanding of the maxim experience warrants, that our happiness is injured by our own evil passions, not by those of others, which are hurtless the moment they cease to act upon the weak or morbid affections of our own nature. This though a principle purely selfish, is yet one of the true, and most sure in its operation upon the general conduct of human life. If the professor examines into the grounds of his intercourse with amateurs, he will find that the little he has to bestow is seldom unrewarded in the personal kindnesses and pecuniary recompense he receives. If he weighs their general accomplishments against his own, he will not so seldom perceive that he is lower in the scale of attainment, and therefore (putting wealth and condition out of the balance) learn a