WHY ARE NOT THE ENGLISH A MUSICAL PEOPLE?
We cannot help it.—Massinger's Roman Actor.
Astronomy, music, and architecture, are the floating topics of the day; on the second of these heads we have thrown together a few hints, which may, probably prove entertaining to our readers.
The English are not—you know, reflective public—a musical people; this has been said over and over again in the musical and dramatic critiques of the newspapers. True it is that we have no national music, like our neighbours the Welsh, the Irish, or the Scotch; for our music, like out language, is a mere riccifamento, stolen from every nation in Europe. But our king (God bless him) is an excellent musician, and plays the violoncello most delightfully; and we have an Academy of Music. Then we have an Italian Theatre that burns the feet and fingers of all who meddle with its management—witness, Mr. Ebers, who, by being "married" to sweet sounds, lost the enormous sum of 47,000l.—it must be owned, an unfortunate match, or as Dr. Franklin would have said, "paying rather too dear for his whistle." We have too an English Opera House, where scarcely any but foreign music is heard, and which, to the ever-lasting credit of its management, has transplanted from the warm climes of the south to our ungenial atmosphere, some of the finest compositions in the continental schools of modern music. Success has, however, attended most of their enterprises; for the taste of the English for foreign music is by no means a modern mania. From Pepys's Diary we learn that the first company of Italian singers came here in the reign of Charles II.: they were brought by Killigrew from Venice, about 1688; but they did not perform whole operas, only detached scenes in recitative, and not in any public theatre, but in the houses of the nobility. Thus, Italian music was loved and cultivated very early in England, and London was the next capital, after Vienna, which established and supported an Italian Opera. But, as we never do things by halves, we had soon afterwards, two opposition houses. This proves that the English have a taste for music; indeed they have much more judgment than some of their neighbours, which makes it still more to be regretted that nothing is done in England towards the advancement of music as a science. Is the world of sound and the soul of song exhausted? Why should we, who are marching in every other direction, stand still in this? But no; what Orpheus did with music, we are striving to accomplish by steam; what he effected by quietly touching his lyre, we study with the atmospheres and condensers of high and low pressure engines.
The writer of a delightful paper in the Foreign Review, No. 3, in tracing the rise and progress of music, inquires what has become of "its loftier pretensions, its celestial attributes, its moral and political influence." He then facetiously observes, "How should we marvel to see the Duke of Wellington, like another Epaminondas, take his flute out of his pocket to still the clamour of the opposition, or Mr. Peel reply to the arguments of Mr. Huskisson with an allegro on the fiddle."
The Greeks were not such grave people as some may be inclined to think them. Among them, poetry and music were so intimately connected, that they were in fact one and the same. It is not so with us; we have Byron and Moore, in poetry; but where are their parallels in English music!
"Music," says Plutarch, "was the universal language of Greece, the sacred vehicle of history, philosophy, laws, and morals;" but in England it is little more than a mere amusement to while away the evening, or at best, but a branch of female education. Pianos are become articles of furniture to be met with in almost every other genteel house; Miss and her sisters sit down by turns, and screw themselves up to Ah vous dirai, or "I'd be a butterfly"—till some handsome young fellow who has stood behind her chair for six months, turned over her music, or accompanied her through a few liquorish airs, vows his tender passion, brings her the last new song, and at length swears to be her accompaniment throughout life. The piano is then locked up, the music sent to Bath or Canterbury, and the lady is married and cannot sing.
But the Greek poets sang their own verses: "Homer literally sang the wrath of Achilles, and the woes of Greece;" would it were so in England. Then, my poetical public, we should have Anacreon Moore singing his "Rich and rare were the gems she wore," in some such place as the Quadrant, or Opera Colonnade; and Sir Walter Scott celebrating the Field of Waterloo, not in the broad-margined octavos of Paternoster-row, but about the purlieus of the Horse Guards. Wordsworth would be his own Skylark. The laureate, Southey, would perch himself on the dome of the New Palace. Campbell would step out of New Burlingtonstreet into the Park; Miss Mitford would keep a Covent-Garden audience awake with her own tragedies, and Planché would no longer entrust his rhymes to Paton or Vestris. On the other hand, Braham would no longer be indebted to Moore for his songs, Bishop would write, compose, and sing his own operas, and all our vocalists enter, like Dryden's king and two fiddlers, solus!
Could we but once become a musical people, we should no longer marvel at the effect of music in ancient times; for who knows but that if an Englishman were to play like Orpheus, the River Thames might cease to flow; the disposal of Mr. Cross's menagerie be no longer a question, since the animals might be allowed to ramble about the Strand; and Snowdon or Cader Idris journey to the King's Theatre to listen to his inspirations.
It is, however, impossible to calculate the benefits which this acquisition of musical skill might prove to the English people. What bloodshed and tribulation it would prevent. Weare, or Maria Marten, like Stradella, might have disarmed their assassins; the Insolvent Act would be obsolete, and duns defeated; since hundreds of improvident wights, like Palma, might, by their strains, soften the hearts of their creditors, and draw tears from sheriff's officers. Chancery-lane would be depopulated, and Cursitor-street be left to the fowls of the air; locks would fall 50 per cent, and Mr. Bramah might betake himself to Van Dieman's Land. What a pleasant thing would a public dinner be; for, instead of a gentleman in a dress coat singing as from the orchestra of an oratorio, he would throw a more impassioned energy into his own compositions than he could possibly impart to those of another, and proportionally enhance the delight of his company. All the mechanism of professional singing would then give way to "the feast of reason and the flow of soul."
We know not how to have done with these pleasures of "linked sweetness"—this "mosaic of the air," as Marvell quaintly calls it. We have a decided aversion to the system of borrowing, which, in the absence of our own musical resources, seems to be universally adopted. Thus, as Charles Mathews says, "every footman whistles Frieschutz;" and the barrel organ which does not play two or three of its airs may be consigned to the brokers. A few months since every bachelor hummed or whistled "C'est l'amour," and the French, to return the compliment, have made our "Robin Adair," one of the claptraps of the music of their La Dame Blanche. Next, when will Mr. Bishop's Home, sweet home, be forgotten, although the original is a Sicilian air of considerable antiquity. All the baker's and butcher's boys in London can go through "Di tanti pal"—where they leave off, answer a question, and take up the "piti," with the skill of a musician; and as readily fall into the sympathetic melodies of "Oh no we never mention her," or the "Light Guitar." But to atone for these vulgarisms, who that has heard the syren strains of Stephens or Paton, or the Anglo-Italian style of Braham, but has envied them the pleasurable monopoly of delighting thousands, and sending them home with the favourite air still echoing in their ears, and lulling them to soft slumbers! Who is there that has enjoyed his circle of friends without regretting a thousand times that he had not a fiftieth part of such talent to enliven the festive hour, and lend a charm, however, fleeting, to what may be termed the poetry of life.
As we have noticed the taste of the Greeks for music, it is but fair that we should allude to that of their successors. In ancient Rome, music was never popular. Combats of gladiators and wild beasts filled their theatres with streams of blood, instead of their resounding with music; and after the death of Nero,1 that beautiful art was declared infamous, and by a public decree, banished from the city. In our theatres, however, heroes fight to music, from the Richard III. and Richmond of Shakspeare to the "terrific combats" of modern melodrame.
Anything is, however, better than despair, and let us hope that something may be done towards the amendment of our musical reputation. We have too much of what Cobbett would call