Sketch of Handel and Beethoven. Ball Thomas Hanly
of their neighbours the Cynethians to their neglect of it.
Quintilian, the great rhetorician, is very copious in the praise of music; and extols it as an incentive to valour, as an instrument of moral and intellectual discipline, as an auxiliary to science, as an object of attention to the wisest men, and a source of comfort and an assistant in labour even to the very meanest.
The heroes of ancient Greece were ambitious to excel in music. In armies music has always been cultivated as a source of pleasure, a principle of regular motion, and an incentive to valour and enthusiasm.
And there is this in music, that it is suited to please all the varieties of the human mind. The illiterate and the learned, the thoughtless and the giddy, the phlegmatic and the sanguine, all confess themselves to be its votaries. It is a source of the purest mental enjoyment, and may be obtained by all. It is suited to all classes, and never ceases to please all.
Many of you, I am sure, are familiar with what Shakespeare says: —
"Nought is so stockish, hard, and full of rage,
But music for the time doth change his nature.
The man that hath no music in himself,
Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,
Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils;
The motions of his spirit are dull as night,
And his affections dark as Erebus:
Let no such man be trusted."
You recollect, too, what Lord Byron has so pathetically sung: —
"My soul is dark – oh! quickly string
The harp I yet can brook to hear,
And let thy gentle fingers fling
Its melting murmurs o'er mine ear.
"If in this heart a hope be dear,
That sound shall charm it forth again;
If in these eyes there lurk a tear,
'T will flow, and cease to burn my brain.
"But bid the strain be wild and deep,
Nor let thy notes of joy be first,
I tell thee, minstrel, I must weep,
Or else this heavy heart will burst.
"For it hath been by sorrow nursed,
And ached in sleepless sorrow long;
And now 't is doomed to know the worst,
And break at once, or yield to song."
All, however, do not agree with Byron and Shakespeare. Charles Lamb says: —
"Some cry up Haydn, some Mozart,
Just as the whim bites. – For my part,
I do not care a farthing candle
For either of them, or for Handel.
Cannot a man live free and easy
Without admiring Pergolesi?
Or through the earth with comfort go,
That never heard of Doctor Blow?
I hardly have;
And yet I eat, and drink, and shave,
Like other people, if you watch it,
And know no more of stave or crotchet
Than did the primitive Peruvians,
Or those old ante queer diluvians,
That lived in the unwash'd earth with Jubal,
Before that dirty blacksmith, Tubal,
By stroke on anvil, or by summ'at,
Found out, to his great surprise, the gamut."
Witty essayist, your "Free Thoughts," like many other of your clever writings, are erroneous. In all ages, and even by the least enlightened of mankind, the efficacy of music has been acknowledged, and considered as a genuine and natural source of delight. Now it awakens the latent courage in the breast of the soldier, and now administers to the pensive sorrow of the weeping mother. At one moment it inspires the soul with sublime and hallowed awe, and at the next gives life to unbounded mirth. It is suited to stimulate the feeling of devotion, and to increase the boisterous pleasures of a village harvest-home. Wearied with the oppression of the noon-day sun, and exhausted with labour, the husbandman sits beneath the shade of his native oak, and sings the songs he heard in infancy. The man of business, the man of letters, and the statesman, wearied with the exertion of mind and burden of care, seek relief round the family hearth, and forget awhile ambition and fears under the influence of music. And the dejected emigrant sings the songs of fatherland, whilst recollections, sad but sweet, arise and disappear.
"In far-distant climes, when the tear gushes o'er
For home, love, and friendship, that charm us no more,
Oh! what on the exiles' dark sorrows can shine
Like the rapture that flows at the songs of Lang-syne!
"The music of Britain is sweet 'midst the scene;
But, ah! could you hear it, when seas roll between!
'Tis then, and then only, the soul can divine
The music that dwells in the songs of Lang-syne.
"The spirit, when torn from earth's objects of love,
Loses all its regrets in the chorus above:
So in exile we cannot but cease to repine,
When it hallows with ecstacy songs of Lang-syne."
But I must allow music herself to prove her influence and assert her sway.
"Cease gentle sounds, nor kill me quite
With such excess of sweet delight.
Each trembling note invades my heart,
And thrills through every vital part:
A soft – a pleasing pain
Pursues my heated blood through every vein.
What – what does the enchantment mean?
Now, wild with fierce desire,
My breast is all on fire!
In softened raptures now I die!
Can empty sound such joys impart?
Can music thus transport the heart
With melting ecstacy!
Oh! art divine! exalted blessing,
Each celestial charm expressing —
Kindest gift the heavens bestow,
Sweetest food that mortals know!
But give the charming magic o'er —
My beating heart can bear no more!"
George Frederick Handel was born at Halle, in Lower Saxony, on the 24th February, 1684. His father (who was a surgeon, and was sixty-three years old when this child first saw the light) determined to make a lawyer of him: but nature had resolved to make him a composer; and the struggle between nature and the father commenced at the very cradle of the future author of the "Messiah."
Scarcely had he begun to speak when he articulated musical sounds. The doctor was terribly alarmed, when he discovered instincts which in his eyes were of so low an order. He understood nothing of art, nor of the noble part which artists sustain in the world. He saw in them nothing but a sort of mountebank, who amuse the world in its idle moments. Uneasy, and almost ashamed at the inclinations of his son, the father of Handel opposed them by all possible means. He would not send him to any of the public schools, because there not only grammar but the gamut would be taught him – he would not permit him to be taken to any place, of whatever description,