CHICAGO

HISTORICAL

SOCIETY

WHOLE NO. 313.

Breath of Spring.

[Song from the German of Eichendorf O'er the garden, hear the voices! Birds of passage on their flight! Spring is coming, earth rejoices,

Grass is springing all the night. Shouting now, and now nigh weepir Feel I that it cannot be ! Wonders of the Past come creeping With the moonlight in to me. And the moon, the stars, they tell it, Dreamy forests lisp the sign, Nightingales in sweet notes swell it : "She is thine, is only thine!" J,

The Poet's Work. To set this age to Music- the great work Before the Poet now-I do believe When it is fully sung, its great complaint, Its hope, its yearning, told to earth and he Our troubled age shall pass, as doth a day That leaves the west all crimson with the pe Of the diviner morrow, which even then Is hurrying up the world's great side with I Father! if I should live to see that morn, Let me go upward, like a lark, to sing One song in the dawning!

Alexander S

man.

"Good evening, Herr Bok," says the little

man.

"Good evening, Herr Rechnungsrath," returns the other. "So you have come down

from Melheim to hear the oratorio."

"Always, when they sing Handel-my idol, you know."

"Ah, a heavenly performance!" says Herr Bok.

66

For Dwight's Journal of ). The Philister's Reminiscence. (FROM ONE OF BROWN'S PRIVATE NOTE BO.) A right pleasant week of this deus September weather have I spent here old Frankfort on the Main. I have renewmy acquaintance with all the interesting ces mentioned in "Hyperion," and have jed, stared, approved and disapproved, in adue regard to red-covered Murray-equal any London cockney of the first water. lave heard Roger in La Dame Blanche-heng- Very good, very good, but the contralto ing in French and the others in Germ-singer wanted feeling. I shall never hear a pleasing and effective arrangement but true feeling in that part again!" and the little what a singer and actor he! And yes'day man drank off his glass, sighed, nodded his afternoon the "Caecilia Verein" gavelan- head like a porcelain mandarin, and pursed del's “Messiah.” A fine chorus that, as the up his lips as who should say "there is nothsolos good; but Handel's music neve pro- ing more to be said about it". then suddenly duces its full effect upon me, as perform in turned to me; "Englander, mein Herr?" Germany, either owing to its translated ext, "No, Sir," said I. "French perhaps?" or to the fact that they have not the tradions, "No, Sir." "Not a Russian?" No, Sir, or, what seems more probable, that the;reat an American.” "So-0-0-0-0! Long here?" composer had caught a certain English pirit, "In Germany, some time.” "You find our which his continental performers canno feel, language rather difficult not so?" "Yes, and consequently cannot express. rather," then again to Herr Bok, as if no such person as I were in existence "No, I shall never hear true feeling in that part again! never! never! never!"

After the concert I rambled for an hour in the beautiful public grounds, which now occupy the site of the ancient fortificatims of the old imperial city, and then returned to "mine inn," to take "mine ease." In the public room, sitting at a table by the window, I sipped my "schoppen" of Mosel, as lazy and comfortable and careless and easy as the

His cutlet came, and the little man devoted himself for the next half hour to his supper, chatting in the mean time upon all sorts of topics, changing them in the most abrupt manner, and keeping me in a constant query,

VOL. XIII. No. 1.

whether the little man was all right in the attic.

The waiter cleared the table, brought another Schoppen, the little man lighted his pipe, smoked in silence a few minutes, and then addressed me again :

"No, I shall never hear that part with real feeling again! Shall I tell you the story, Herr Amerikaner?"

"It will give me great pleasure, Mein Herr," said I.

"You have heard of Thibaut?" "Thibaut, the great civil law professor, over here at Heidelberg? Yes."

"Perhaps you may have heard of his work on 'the Purity of the Tone-Art ?'" "Yes, I have it, and Nägeli's replies to it, also." "Nägeli me no Nägeli's," said he, "Thibaut's book, that is a book! It set us all to singing the Messiah.' Ach, du lieber Gott! I was a young man then, and had studied with him and sung in the chorus in his house. When the book came out I was already in Melheim, and it made such a sensation that we formed a singing union for the study of Handel's music, and took up the 'Messiah.' There was the choir of the Cathedral, and the 'Men's Vocal Union,' and the best boy altos of the Gymnasium and all the best hundred voices, good. In time it was thoramateur singers of the town. We had a oughly rehearsed and we prepared to sing it in public. We had a good soprano, a good

tenor, and as to the bass solos, I took them myself-in those days I could sing a little myself. Nicht wahr, Herr Bok?"

Herr Bok nodded a very strong affirma

tive.

The little man hummed a few bars of "Why do the nations" and then, shaking his head with such a comical expression of sorrow that I could hardly keep my countenance, continued:

"But where to find a contralto for those soul-touching solos? Where to find a voice full, deep, and overflowing with pathos and sympathy, that could discourse adequately of the sorrows of the Son of Man! I went to Heidelberg. I wrote to Frankfort, but in vain. I was in despair. I saw no way but to give those numbers to one of our boys, which would have secured a technically correct performance, but one as cold and unsympathetic as correct. The directors of the Society were very well satisfied with this arrangement, but it grated harshly upon my feelings. But there was no help for it.

in a word, pitiable appointments and disgustingly dirty!

When, Havanese, you shall have established by a private subscription-which is the easiest thing in the world with your pecuniary resources-a conservatory of Music, where you can train vocal and instrumental performers; a Philharmonic Society, such as are found now-a-days in the small cities of Italy, France, England, and Germany; a Society which will promote a taste for music in all classes; when you shall bring out at your monthly concerts and in a grand annual festival, the productions of the great masters; when, in a word, you shall know, otherwise than by name, the works of Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, Handel, Cherubini, Spohr, Mendelssohn, &c., &c., then you will have a right to be hard to please, and to demand of foreign managers, to whom you furnish resources found in your own country, a perfect performance; then, but then only, you will have the right to call your country a musical country. Why, you have not even a quartet soirée in Havana! You have not a single house where people meet for music, or where artists are received! You know, my dear V., how much the art of music at home owes to the salons of your country woman, the Countess Merlin, to the Rochefoucaults, the Cazés, the Orfilas, the Cremieux, the Girardins, and others, among whom the greatest artists of all kinds were the peers of the greatest names of France.

To return to the theatre. You have a queer word in your island, which shocked me a good deal at first. It is the word trabajar (to work), applied to the profession of a singer. "When do you work?" people would ask me. "Do you work in La Sonnambula?" "How well Mad. Gazzaniga worked last evening in La Traviata!" This word, I soon learned, was perfectly appropriate to those who sang at the Tacon Theatre.

You are right. The art of singing, here, is not the most ideal, the most perfect expression of the feelings of the soul. It is work, work for the throat, the lungs, the arms, the legs, the whole muscular system. There is only one way to sing at the Tacon Theatre, it is to scream. Cantar es gridur! And this will explain the success of every singer who, consenting to sacrifice his artistic convictions, seeks to produce effects, for example, by that eternal holding of the dominant, on which he seems to hang with his whole strength, to fall afterwards, with all his weight, on the tonic. Every where else this is a mark of bad taste; but in Havana it excites frenzies of applause, especially if the thing is accompanied by a blow of the fist in the air, or by several rapid slaps with the open hand on the chest; (probably a sign of mea culpa!) This is sublime, according to Havana taste.

recently adopted method of Italian singing is not the most natural and healthy. The proof thereof is, that we see only a few singers in our days that know how to preserve their voice, having once been in Italy and there acquired the habit of forcing more sound out of their lungs than nature intended they should.

His music

"I never went to Italy myself for that very reason. After having heard all the modern Italian singers, I was well convinced that my voice never would have been able to preserve its natural elasticity and its character of high soprano, had I undertaken to adopt the same forced style of singing as is now-a-days almost unavoidable in Italy by the frequent performances of Signor Verdi's operas. is the most dangerous for all singing artists, and will ter understand their own interests, as well as that of the beauty of the art of singing, and refuse to sacrifice themselves to a composer, who by no means understands the exquisite beauty of the real Italian singing, that cannot be surpassed by any other

continue so to be until the artists themselves will bet

nation."

"Miss

will find both in London and in Paris masters fully qualified to instruct her in all that is deemed requisite; and in the former city now lives the most distinguished singing master, Mr. Emanuel Garcia, who is in my opinion eminently qualified to understand and to develope her voice and talent.

"A year's residence in London or Paris will enable her to judge of the progress which she has made, and also the propriety of afterwards spending six months or one year in Germany, the land of real music, in which the true artist only can acquire the genuine stamp of Art. Germany offers perhaps less excellence for the singer, as a singer; for the German language is very hard to pronounce and often changes the character of the sound; for instance: the quality of tone in singing out the Italian word, Dolore, and the identic German word, Schmerz, will be found quite different in its result, and infinitely in favor of the former. But-to wish to become a good artist, with a good artistical conscience, and not know Germany and its musical masters, would indeed be as great a loss for the artist, as it would to the public, before whom he ought to wish to give a right impres

sion.

"I know what Germany is to an artist, and, with all my veneration for the true Italian singing school, I really believe that, unless I had taken the German music as the ground-work, my whole knowledge of Italian singing would never have satisfied me, and my musical faculties would have been undeveloped and unfruitful.

What I therefore wish most earnestly to impress upon Miss's mind is, that she would try to combine Italian song and German music, the one being as false pathos, as the same law exists, to its fullest exnecessary as the other;-that she would try to avoid tent, in Art as in life;-that she be true to herself, try to find out the beauty of truth, as well in the simplest song as in the most difficult aria-and the great secret will be her's,-the most powerful protector against envy and malice will be on her side."

ANALYSIS

OF

Mendelssohn's Symphony-Cantata:

"A HYMN OF PRAISE."

Written for the London Sacred Harmonic Society,

BY G. A. MACFARREN.

[The four-hundredth anniversary of the invention of Printing was celebrated throughout Germany; but in Leipzig especially, the great book market, it was regarded as an occasion of

inauguration of a statue of Guttemberg, to whom this most

and a Cantata, and the purpose of this combination of the grand forms of instrumental and vocal composition is shown in the manner in which the two divisions of the work reflect and so enforce the sentiment of each other].

I. THE SYMPHONY.-The most important form of musical construction is embodied in the first movement of a grand instrumental composition,―grand, from the character of the ideas and the extent of their development,-whether this be for an orchestra, or for one or more solo instruments. *

The movement, a distinctly self-complete portion of a work,-is divided into a first part and a second part. This division is sometimes defined by a perfect cadence, and even by a momentary silence; sometimes it is only marked by the course of the modulations and the conduct of the ideas. The first part simply announces the ideas; the second part comprises their development through such varieties of artistic elaborations as the imagination and skill of the writer may yield, and character of the composition exact, the recapitulation of their original simple announcement,-and a Coda, which is a summing up of the whole, to enforce the chief ideas upon our recollection. The first part comprises two principal subjects, each of which, however, is frequently composed of several complete melodic phrases; the seeond subject is distinguished from the first by the train of ideas of which it consists, being first introduced in a different key from the first subject. In movements in a major key, this is generally the key most nearly related to that in which the movement begins and ends, namely, the fifth of the original key; in movements in a minor key, the second subject is introduced in some closely relative key, the selection of which is more various than in movements in a major key. Save this one important modulation which distinguishes the second from the first subject, there is little change of key in the first part. In the second part, on the contrary, where the working of these subjects takes place, the modulations are more frequent, much more extraneous, and much more sudden; and the several phrases, instead of being presented in their original completeness and simplicity, are broken into fragments and complicated with every available variety of contrapuntal and harmonic treatment. In the recapitulation of the first part which succeeds to this course of development, the composer, for the first time, returns to the original key of the movement with the resumption of the first subject. The matter of the first part is, generally, here much condensed, and the second subject presented in the original key of the movement, in which the whole concludes. Thus, to illustrate the whole by a familiar analogy, this form is like that of a discourse, which first demonstrates the simple qualities of the subjects of which it treats, then shows us the different effects that may be produced by their various combination and separation, and finally, having proved the extent of their resources, lays them again before us in their elemental simplicity.

(1.) Maestoso con Moto. Allegro.-The brief introductory Maestoso is preludial to the principal design which is embodied in the Allegro, and, although the important idea herein presented forms a prominent feature in the chief movement, the plan I have described is complete in this, independently of what precedes it.

The noble theme with which the work opens must always be regarded in connection with the words to which it is subsequently set, and, thus considered, we feel that in being employed as the initial phrase, it forms, as it were, a motto that proclaims at once the artistic and the poetical purpose of the composition:

peculiarly local interest, and solemnized, accordingly, by the: 2 important invention to the world is due, and by a grand Musical Festival. Mendelssohn was at this time in the full zenith

of his great popularity in Leipzig, fulfilling his office of director of the Gewandhaus concerts, and exercising & more extensive and beneficial influence upon his art than, perhaps, any one man, by his personal exertions, has done in the whole progress of its history. Upon him devolved the conduct and the entire arrangement of the Festival; and further, what was of still greater value, since it has given a perpetual interest to this occasion, to write some original compositions appropriate to the celebration. These consisted of some choral pieces, which were performed in the open air at the ceremony of uncovering the statue,-and of the Hymn of Praise (Lobgesang), one of the noblest of his works, which was produced at St. Thomas' Church on the 25th of June, 1840,-a day in which the universal interest is even enhanced by its association with this immortal masterpiece.

The design of this work is quite individual; one is apt, indeed, to associate it with the Choral Symphony of Beethoven, but, from a most important distinction between the two, erroneously, the distinction that Beethoven adds voices to the instrumental resources of the orchestra in the final movement of a work constructed otherwise upon the usual model of his grand instrumental compositions; while in the Hymn of Praise the vocal movements are the larger proportion of the composition, and, however connected in unity of purpose and closeness of succession, each, as regards its ideas and their development, complete in itself, and independent of the rest. It entirely fulfils its definition, being equally a Symphony

All that hath life and breath, praise ye the Lord! The very grand, imposing, and quite individual effect of this dignified opening, announces the earnestness and joyous enthusiasm that characterizes the composition. The responses between the brass instruments in unison and the rest of the orchestra in harmony, upon the successive phrases of this introductory theme, and the combination of their power in majestic force at its conclusion, maintain the grandeur of the commencement throughout the short opening movement.

The Allegro breaks out of its imposing prelude with this passionately joyous subject:

&c.