Is XIV. Is any Merry ? Psalm lxxxi. I; James v. 13. S any merry? let him sing psalms,—the prescription is apostolical. Sing we merrily unto God our strength," is the Psalmist's appeal; make a cheerful noise unto the God of Jacob. Take the psalm, bring hither the tabret: the merry harp with the lute.” 66 "I am never merry, when I hear sweet music," quoth Shakspeare's Jessica. His Jaques confesses to a like constitutional bias. When that moody man of the woods prays for "more, more, I pr'ythee, more," of such songs as Amiens* can * The particular song in question, or rather in request, is Under the greenwood tree. Could Shakspeare have known how sweetly and spiritedly Dr. Arne would one day set to music that lyric of his,—and with what depth of sympathy the Come away, death,-not to cite other instances, he might well have pleaded, like his own Jaques, for "more, more, I 254 MUSIC AND MELANCHOLY. warble, under the shade of melancholy boughs (for now are we in Arden), the singer demurs, with the plea, or argumentum ad hominem, "It will make you melancholy, Monsieur Jaques," who at once disposes of the demur, with an "I thank it. More, I pr'ythee, more. I can suck melancholy out of a song, as a weasel sucks eggs. More, I pr'ythee, more." Even that common tavern-music which made the commonalty merry, made Sir Thomas Browne devout and "deep-contemplative." All music, asserts Madame de Staël,* even if its occa pr'ythee, more." And these songs are nowadays practically shelved-clean forgotten, like a dead man out of mind; all alive though they be, every word of them, every note of them -while flabby stuff, "composed" for this or that vocalist, in the pay of this or that publisher, is presumably (judging by expenditure in advertisements) all the rage. But oh, the pity of it, ye Musical Worldlings,—but oh, the pity of it! * See Corinne, l. vi. ch. i. In a later book, of the same work, occurs this passage: "Oswald, since his misfortunes, had never regained sufficient courage voluntarily to hear music. He dreaded those ravishing sounds, so agreeable to melancholy, but which prove so truly injurious while we are weighed down by real calamities. Music revives the recollections it would appease.”—Again : Music is so volatile a pleasure, we are so sensible that it escapes from us even as we enjoy it,—that it always leaves a tender impression on the mind; yet when expressive of grief, it sheds gentleness even over despair." (1. ix., ch. ii.) 66 Oswald's shrinking from what would too deeply move him, has its parallel in Mr. Coventry Patmore's Frederick, lamenting a loss: OVER-WROUGHT SENSIBILITY. 255 sion be a gay one, renders us pensive. Olimpia, in the Legend of Florence, has noted oft,— "That eyes, that have kept dry their cups of tears, The moment they were touch'd by music's fingers, And her companion expounds to her the philosophy of the problem, much as Shakspeare's Lorenzo does with Jessica's: "It is the meeting, love, of beauty so divine with earth so weak." Archdeacon Hare has even declared that, after listening to very fine music, it appears one of the hardest of problems, how the delights of heaven can be so attempered to our perceptions, as to become endurable for their pain.* "And thus I dread the impatient spur Thou art the voice of her I loved, And I would not be vainly moved." * Here again Madame de Staël's words may be cited,—that the exquisite union of two voices perfectly in tune produces an ecstasy that cannot be prolonged without pain: she calls it a blessing too great for humanity, which vibrates like an instrument broken beneath too perfect a harmony. The German transcendentalist in Galt's Omen, asserts that such persons as particularly delight in the delicacies of chromatic melodies, modulated in a flat key, whether they 256 WHY SWEET MUSIC SADDENS. But the author of the Legend of Florence had, long before, written a prose essay on the inquiry Why sweet music produces sadness; and he takes exception to that "young and most elegant logician," Lorenzo's, explanation of it, as not sufficient; for how does it account for our being moved, even to tears, by music which is not otherwise melancholy? All attention, the essayist grants, may be said to imply a certain degree of earnestness, and all earnestness has a mixture of seriousness; yet seriousness is not the prevailing character of attention in all instances, for we are attentive to fine music, whatever its character; and sometimes it makes us cheerful, and even mirthful. "The giddier portions of Rossini's music do not make us sad; Figaro does not make us sad; nor is sadness the general consequence of hearing dances, or even marches." And yet, again, on the other hand, in the midst of any of this music, even of the most light and joyous, our eyes shall sometimes fill with tears. How is this? The reason surely is, as Leontius, not Lorenzo, takes it, that we have an instinctive sense of the be composers, performers, or listeners, are seldom long-lived. For the most part, he maintains, they die before their fortysecond year; though a few, by reason of more strength, do sometimes reach to forty-nine. And here he professes to speak as an inductive philosopher. IN THE MINOR KEY. 257 fugitive and perishing nature of all sweet things,— of beauty, of youth, of life,-of all those fair shows. of the world, of which music seems to be the voice, and of whose transitory nature it reminds us most when it is most beautiful, because it is then that we most regret our mortality.*. Behind every scale in music, as one of New England's foremost writers pens it,-be that music the gayest and cheeriest, or the grandest, the most triumphant,— lies its dark relative minor; the notes are the same, but the change of a semitone changes all to gloom; "all our gayest hours are tunes that have a modulation into these dreary keys ever possible; at any moment the key-note may be struck." All sweet moods, to apply a line of Mr. Swinburne's,— "Throw out such little shadows of themselves," leave such regrets behind. It was with the music of the Miserere resounding in her ears, during the Holy Week in Rome, that Mrs. Shelley called it strange that grief, and laments, and the humble petition of repentance should fill us with delight-a delight that awakens We are "We do not, it is true, say this to ourselves. not conscious of the reason; that is to say, we do not feel it with knowingness; but we do feel it, for the tears are moved." -See the forty-sixth essay in the second series of The Seer. (A sibilant reference.) |