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"Not merely as a pastime, but because you feel you cannot live without it?" "You must keep quiet, Fraulein. Music; yes, I think my life would be far poorer without it than it is." "Do you sing?" "Very seldom here; but when a girl in Delft we sung every day." "Of course you were the soprano?" "Yes, Fraulein." "Let the Fraulein drop, and call me Henrica."
"Wait!" he said. "Let her hear me sing." He turned to me. "I decline to be indebted to other people for my poetry and my music," he went on. "I compose my own poetry and my own music. I improvise. Give me a moment to think. I will improvise for You." He closed his eyes and rested his head on the frame of the harp. His fingers gently touched the strings while he was thinking.
It ceased and began again, as though the musicians were feeling their way, and then burst out once more into shrill defiance. It stirred Carlton with a strange turbulent unrest. From the banks the night wind brought soft odors of fresh earth and of heavy foliage. "The music of different countries," Carlton said at last, "means many different things.
Cartwright gave his friends the most agreeable opportunity of using the teeth which he, preserved for them, and heard in his house the best classical English vocal music, capitally executed by the first professors of that school, and brilliant amicable rivalry of first-rate piano-forte performances by Cramer, Neukomm, Hummel, and Moscheles, who were all personal friends of their host.
So it is with principles of taste, good breeding, or of conventional fashion; so it is in the fine arts, in painting, or in music. We cannot even understand the criticism passed on these subjects until we have set up for ourselves the ideal standard of what is admirable and what is absurd.
While the supporters of orchestral, choral, or chamber music consist wholly of persons, who, whatever their degree of musical culture, take a serious view of the art so far as they can appreciate it, and therefore are unhampered by the necessity of considering the wishes of those who care nothing whatever about the music they perform.
On the other hand, some gay young gentlemen of the Court, who were in Mazarin's interest, had a mind to make his name familiar to the Parisians, and for that end made a famous display in the public walks of the Tuileries, where they had grand suppers, with music, and drank the Cardinal's health publicly.
Speaking of this remarkable leap from instrumental to vocal music in a professedly symphonic composition, Wagner, in his "Essay on Beethoven," says: "We declare that the work of art, which was formed and quickened entirely by that deed, must present the most perfect artistic form, i.e., that form in which, as for the drama, so also and especially for music, every conventionality would be abolished."
Jackson got out of his bed-place, and I gave him his meal. We talked during the whole day about singing, and I hummed the air which had pleased me most. "You have got the air pretty correct," said he; "you must have an ear for music. Have you ever tried to sing?" "No, never; you know I have not." "You might have tried when I was not with you. Try now.
But what prince Houssain most of all admired, as a proof of the industry, address, and inventive genius of the Hindoos, was to see the largest of these elephants stand with his four feet on a post fixed into the earth, and standing out of it above two feet, playing and beating time with his trunk to the music.
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