[Resumed from page 284 of last Volume.]

December 1st.—NOTHING is talked about, or thought of, except the siege of Antwerp and the general election. Sounds are heard on the Kent and Essex coasts, which turn out to be only the thundering of artillery, and the hopes of a dilettante are cast down long before the walls of the citadel begin to tremble. Bands of music are collecting in all quarters, but they eschew symphonies, overtures, and even serenades; their sole purpose is to drown, not accompany, the voices of rival candidates for parliamentary seats, who, by the way, are commonly gainers thereby, in having speeches reported which they could not have made. The autumn has passed away without a concert in the provinces worth mentioning, and the foreign journals are as barren of musical matter as our own newspapers. The doer of small Monday’s articles in the Chronicle, who used at this season to tell his hebdomadal tales of what great things were to be expected at the opening of the Italian opera—of Signori and Signore, surpassing all that had before been heard—of musical dramas, of which ‘green-room report’ invariably spoke ‘in the highest terms,’—of some wonderful wonder of wonders, whose fiddle was to reduce that of Calliope’s son to a mere kit, or to whose voice Stentor’s was but a gentle whisper,—even this urbane propagator of pleasing exaggerations is mute! However, a Polish Paganini, it is said, is on his way hither; but let us hope that he will leave his name behind him, for, if we have it correctly spelt, every syllable would cost a tooth in pronouncing. Also the celebrated concerto-drummer, and the famous guimbardist, with the young lady renowned for her grindery on the Vielle, are expected shortly; and rumour states, though I do not believe it, that the King’s theatre is to be the scene of their astonishing exploits; the whole pit to be converted into stalls at a guinea each, and the boxes, at ten, to be reserved exclusively for the Almackites. Query, is this the grand secret which we have been told Christmas is to divulge?

The Sphinx has now no riddle; but a neighbouring statue has long puzzled the learned of all nations by its supposed hymn to the rising sun. A very intelligent traveller, however, who lately visited Egyptian Thebes, and has published an interesting account of its antiquities, therein communicates the grand secret of the vocal stone, which he had from a gentleman who has long lived in its immediate vicinity. It fairly belongs to musical history, for the instrument employed by the cunning priestly performers was, it would appear, decidedly a musical instrument. The following is the statement:—

‘The famous musical statue of MEMNON is still seated on its throne, dignified and serene as the plain of Thebes. It is a colossus, fifty feet in height, and the base of the figure is covered with inscriptions of the Greek and Roman travellers, vouching that they had listened to the wild sunrise melody. The learned and ingenious Mr. Wilkinson, who has resided at Thebes upwards of ten years, studying the monuments of Egypt, appears to me to have solved the mystery of this music. He informed me that having ascended the statue, he discovered that some metallic substance had been inserted in its breast, which, when struck, emitted a very melodious sound. From the attitude of the statue a priest might easily have ascended in the night, and remained completely concealed behind the mighty arms, while he struck the breast: or, which is not improbable, there was some secret way to ascend, now blocked up, for this statue, with its companion, although now isolated, were once part of an enormous temple, the plan of which may now be traced.

‘Thanks to the Phonetic system, we now know that this musical statue is one of AMUNOPH the SECOND, who lived many centuries before the Trojan war. The truth is, that the Greeks, who have exercised almost as fatal an influence over modern knowledge as they have a beneficial one over modern taste, had no conception of anything more ancient than the Trojan war, except chaos. Chaos is a poetic legend, and the Trojan war was the squabble of a few marauding clans.’

3rd. A Manchester paper of a few days ago, relates the following ‘SINGULAR EFFECT OF MUSIC.’ At the Cheetham-hill Glee-club, on Monday evening, during the performance of “Non nobis, Domine,” which was sung by about forty voices, a tumbler glass which stood upon a table in the room, broke into a thousand pieces, as if shattered by an explosion of gunpowder. When Dragonetti heard this paragraph read, he exclaimed, in his patois,—‘it vas no maraviglia du tout dat de canon made great noise, and cassÉe de glass[6].’

But a Lady’s Magazine for last November relates something much more marvellous than the foregoing: it tells us that one single man, by only breathing into a glass, shivered it to pieces! Even this is as nothing compared to the power ascribed to Lablache in the same article. The whole is a choice specimen of literary composition, of appropriate words, and of scientific knowledge.—

‘The voice of Lablache,’ says the writer, ‘has lost the usual extent of base voices—from sol to mi. With the exception of the two extreme notes, his voice sounds equally on all points. It rings like a bell by the force of its vibrations, and not by the action or contraction of the gullet. The sound escapes as freely from his breast as from the pipe of an organ of eight feet. Some of our readers may have heard of the fine voice of Cheron. After Cheron had been singing, he would, after refreshing himself with sugared water, breathe in the empty glass, and the fragile crystal flew in a thousand fragments; but if the Italian Hercules chose to send forth his re in a salon, with the strength of volume he can give, all the glass in the room would fly in shivers.’

Let us express a fervent wish that Signor Lablache may never exhibit his full powers in the Hanover Square Rooms, where there are valuable mirrors and chandeliers. But it is still more earnestly to be hoped that nothing may tempt him to utter his re in Hancock’s, or in Collins’s warehouse: his single note there would do more damage than one of the new French bombs:—the pranks of a mad bull in a china-shop would be harmlessness itself compared to the desolation which the Italian’s D would produce in the splendid show-rooms of either of those great manufacturers.

5th. I have often laughed at Paganini’s single-string feats, and regretted the waste of his talent on witches’ dances, the clucking of hens, &c., but I quite agree with him that there is a philosophy of the violin, though many people, judging too hastily, will smile at the expression. I am led to this remark by the Court Journal of the 1st of this month, where a writer, who has published Recollections of Paganini, states, under the date of July 2, 1831, that he had read to the violinist some remarks on his playing which appeared in the Harmonicon. ‘I explained to him,’ it is said, ‘how eloquently they (the we of the Harmonicon) had spoken of the truth of his intonation,’ &c. &c. ‘And’—interposed Paganini, with a triumphant smile, as if to anticipate what they ought to have been most eloquent upon—‘della filosofia del violino.’

Perhaps the authority of Paganini may lead some musicians, who are his admirers, to think that there actually is a philosophy in their art. As this philosophy is what many of them do not very well understand, the vainest and most obtuse among the number have pretended to ridicule it, and, like the fox in the fable, affected to despise what they could not attain. But the schoolmaster is abroad, and musical men, who do not advance with the rest of the world, will soon sink to their proper level. They must begin to reason as well as play, or contempt will be their lot. Much good would ensue from philosophising a little on music, for its principles—I mean the principles which practical men ought to understand—are founded on a purely philosophical basis. But how few, even of the best composers, to say nothing of mere performers, have devoted the least attention to this subject! Is the Royal Academy in Tenterden-Street beginning at last to think of it?—I fear not.

The writer of the article alluded to in the following, will, no doubt, be glad to see his error corrected. A few days after the above conversation, the author of the Recollections tells us, ‘When I called on the Signor, he requested me to translate him an article in the Harmonicon, relative to his talent. He paid great attention to it as I proceeded. To the assertion about his using his thumb, to make some of the stops on his instrument, he gave a direct contradiction, but said, “Let them believe it: as I have so many notes, they think I have plenty to do for ten fingers.” He was greatly diverted with the joke of his performing on strings supposed to have been extracted from the intestinal system of a certain illustrious prelate, and thus rendering his notes infallible.’

16th.—It has been said, that empire began in the east and will end in the west. Bishop Berkeley’s prophecy is—

I have great faith in this; and if for empire we read opera, the prediction will, probably, in the course of half a century, be also verified. The New-York American says, ‘It is settled that we are to have a permanent opera-house. The ground has been bought, the subscription opened, 60,000 dollars out of 100,000 were at once taken, ten trustees appointed, and an application will be made next Session of the legislature to incorporate the “Italian Opera Association,” with a capital stock of 100,000 dollars.’ The Italian Opera, therefore, is now naturalized in a country which was only discovered about the time that the lyric drama had its origin in Europe!

23rd.—In the history of the march of intellect, the swan, it seems, will make a figure. In spite of what has been said of her ‘silent throat,’ and of her singing ‘her first and last’ when at the point of death, it now appears that she is become accomplished, to a certain degree at least, in the vocal art. A Sunday paper (Bell’s) of this day, states, that a periodical work published at Stralsund contains a paper on the song of the swan, by an eminent naturalist in Pomerania, which he closes by observing that, ‘in a state of nature, the swan, as evening approaches, joins with its companions in a species of choral melody, which falls upon the ear, in the distance, with the sweetness almost of an Æolian harp. But when a person is near, it more resembles the quick sharp clang of a carriage traversing frozen snow on a sledge.’ According to the author’s account, the chorus is not unlike the Russian horn-band, ‘for each bird emits but a single note, and a response is given by each of his clan. The fishermen consider the swan’s song as prognosticating a storm.’