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His schooling was short and desultory, his education being attended to by private tutors and by his father, who left the boy largely to follow his own inclination. Like the young Milton, Browning was fond of music, and in many of his poems, especially in "Abt Vogler" and "A Toccata of Galuppi's," he interprets the musical temperament better, perhaps, than any other writer in our literature.
Open at random: here are two lines in 'A Toccata of Galuppi's, not deficient in melody by any means: "Dear dead women with such hair, too: what's become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly and grown old." This is not Villon's 'Ballad of Dead Ladies, nor even Tennyson's 'Dream of Fair Women'; but a master can still say a good deal in two lines.
A Venetian experiment, whose evidence in the special controversy is less weighty perhaps than Rousseau supposed, was among the facts which persuaded him that Italian is the language of music. An Armenian who had never heard any music was invited to listen first of all to a French monologue, and then to an air of Galuppi's.
In due time, one by one, Some with lives that came to nothing, some with deeds as well undone, Death stepped tacitly and took them where they never see the sun. "A Toccata of Galuppi's," R. Browning. In this chapter will be narrated any incidents connected with the lives of the abbesses and the nuns over whom they ruled that seem to the writer likely to be of interest to the general reader.
"La Cuochettina," as she was called from her father's profession, made her first appearance in Galuppi's "Sofonisba" in Lucca, after five years of severe training. She was beautiful, intelligent, witty, full of liveliness and grace, with an expression full of coquettish charm and espieglerie. Her acting was excellent, and her singing already that of a brilliant and finished vocalist.
They indicate simply the works to which one reader turns when he feels mentally vigorous enough to pick up Browning. Another list of soul studies, citing "A Toccata of Galuppi's," "A Grammarian's Funeral," "Fra Lippo Lippi," "Saul," "Cleon," "A Death in the Desert," and "Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister," might, in another's judgment, be more interesting and suggestive.
The poem of Italian music, A Toccata of Galuppi's, wholly subordinates the science to the sentiment of the piece. It is steeped in the melancholy of pleasure; Venice of the eighteenth century lives before us with its mundane joys, its transitory passions, its voluptuous hours; and in the midst of its warmth and colour a chill creeps upon our senses and we shiver.
'Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha, another special poem on music, is unparalleled for ingenuity of technical interpretation: 'A Toccata of Galuppi's' is as rare a rendering as can anywhere be found of the impressions and sensations caused by a musical piece; but 'Abt Vogler' is a very glimpse into the heaven where music is born."
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