  SACRED MUSIC.
WE have more than once taken the liberty to offer it as our opinion, that, as an amusement, and to fill up those leisure moments which every profession, if prudently pursued, must afford, music is the fittest for the clergy, not only because it is intellectual and innocent, but inasmuch as it enables a divine to superintend and regulate an influential, therefore an important, part of the church service. A knowledge of this art qualifies him to advise and direct his organist and his singers, who, in most cases, stand much in need of counsel, for want whereof they not unfrequently, though we are persuaded unintentionally, run many risks of making ridiculous that which should excite nothing but associations and feelings of the gravest and calmest kind. The author of the first of the above publications is, clearly, a good musician; the whole of his Service is evidence of this, though it does not enable us to add that it exhibits much invention. The plan long laid down has here been followed with a scrupulousness which, probably, Mr. Shuttleworth considers a duty: if he has erred, his error is on the right side, for any attempt to over-modernize, to radically change, the form of our church music, is to be deprecated and resisted. This is a Verse Service in F, not elaborately written, pleasing melody, harmony good but not deep, and a correct accentuation of the words, appearing to have been the great objects of the composer, in which he has succeeded. Those choirs, consequently, which are anxious to increase their library, may safely add the present work to their collection. Mr. Crivelli’s Hymns are creditable to his taste, and likewise show that he has made himself better acquainted with our language than is the case with most of his countrymen. Nevertheless he has wanted—and this is by no means surprising—some little assistance in adjusting his notes to English poetry, though the instances of error are few, and correction may easily be applied by the intelligent singer. The hymns are six in number, four for soprano, contr’alto, (or low soprano,) and base; and two for soprano, tenor, and base. The style is an intentional, but not heterogeneous mixture of Italian and English; the parts are vocal and easy, and the accompaniment is simple without being meagre. No. 3 is an elegant volume in quarto, with frontispiece, presentation plate, gilt leaves, and all the exterior decorations of the best musical annuals. Its interior, too, corresponds, in some degree, with its outside appearance; of the twenty compositions contained in the volume, nearly all are respectable, and some much to be commended. Two by NeÜkomm have much pleased us; also one each by Dr. Carnaby and Edwin Nielson. An adaptation of a quartet by Mozart, said to be his last composition, is a good piece of simple harmony: and the very air by Beethoven which is given in its true form in our present number, is here adapted to words; but much altered in many respects, and transposed from A flat to G—we need not say, very detrimentally. The words upon the whole suit the music very well; but an exception cannot but be made as regards the third in the set, ‘Oh! read to me,’ where we find more blunders than we supposed could have been gathered together in three pages;—e. g. promises; penitent;—‘of’ and ‘its,’ occupying half a bar each, and moreover the accented half, &c.: nevertheless, the volume contains enough to make it worth the price which all experienced people will buy it at. The marked price, indeed, is moderate. No. 4 is a nicely got up little work in octavo, published in numbers, each containing eight pages. In the present two numbers are five pieces,—an air by NeÜkomm, from his oratorio; one by Mr. Goss; the Vesper Hymn, by Attwood, originally published in the Harmonicon, which ought to have been acknowledged; an Elegy for three voices, by Eisenhofer; and a movement from Beethoven’s Septet, with words very well set to it. This is a publication entitled to much commendation; but what will the brethren of the music trade say to so cheap a work? Surely Messrs. Cramer and Co. will be anathematized by the fraternity! PIANO-FORTE.
WHETHER it is that the state of the country influences the publication of music of this class, or that the extravagancies and inanities with which we have so long been deluged have at length produced the effect which was to be expected, we will leave our readers to determine; certain it is that very few compositions for the piano-forte have appeared this spring—a season in which they usually are so abundant that we have found it difficult to keep pace with them, and indeed have generally been deeply in arrear with composers of all descriptions. Our belief is, that music requiring nothing but mechanical powers of execution, in which neither taste nor invention have any share, has had its day—a very long one; but people are growing more rational, common sense is returning, and The two rondos before us are from an opera very popular in Paris; indeed we are indebted to the theatre for all our most modern piano-forte music. The first air—if air it may be called, which, though it has rhythm, possesses little melody—is simple enough, being nearly all confined to the following notes:— Mr. Kalkbrenner has of course very much extended it, by passages, one or two of which bring back good old harmony to our recollection, by others not inappropriate, and none difficult; but altogether this has not many pleasing qualities to recommend it. No. 2 is an agreeable though not a very uncommon air. M. Adam has enlarged it in a familiar manner certainly, for while about his task, if a task it proved, he was not able to call up a single new thought. And let us caution him against such left-hand passages as they are intolerable, and send one back to the horn-book of music. They are, it is true, to be met with now and then in some few of the old and excellent masters; but in reviving the works of these—which will soon be set about—all such twaddle must be carefully expunged.
It will be supposed, from the wording of the title-page of No. 1, that the air is the composition of Mr. Rawlings, whereas it is the very melody that lately produced the controversy between the author and Mr. GÖdbe, and to which our pages gave publicity. The best part of the air, in fact, is Stephen Storace’s, though it is very possible that Mr. George Linley, who claims it, had it floating in his memory, without being aware that it had any rightful owner. Mr. Rawlings has increased its dimensions by some exceedingly commonplace descant, and the guilt of employing the very base which we have above reprobated he shares in common with M. Adolphe Adam. The whole is easy and inoffensive, with the exception we mention. To criticise No. 2 would be to break a butterfly on a wheel. A butterfly!—most of the papilio tribe are beautiful, a quality not at all perceptible in this one-part-milk-and-nine parts-water production, craving the reader’s pardon for so long a compound; which epithet, however, overrates the strength of the composition under notice.
IN the first of these, three of the less commonly known airs in Il Pirata are woven together with some skill. The first pages are the best, though Mr. Etherington ought to have been aware that such reiterated triplets of the same notes as are introduced at page 2 are ill adapted to keyed instruments. Is this, we beg leave to ask, one of the works which the publisher sells to the profession, and to country traders, at a quarter of the marked price? No. 2 is a mere bagatelle, but it is a pretty trifle, and a trait or two of originality may be traced amidst its unaffected simplicity. DUETS, PIANO-FORTE.
No. 1 is a spirited composition, in which are some good effects, but so little of novelty of any kind is to be discovered in it, that it really may be considered as—what most modern things are—a compilation. No. 2, the fifth of a set of six, from Haydn’s oratorio, is the chorus ‘Achieved is the glorious work,’ including the lovely trio, ‘On Thee each living soul awaits,’ arranged in Mr. Watts’s usual effective and sensible manner. No. 3, though confessedly made up of subjects by Auber, is modestly claimed by M. Czerny as his own composition. The assurance of some few musicians seems to have no bounds, but we really believe that it is attributable to want of understanding, to no worse cause, therefore make great allowances for it; though we deem it prudent to mention the matter, in order to warn others from being guilty of the like weakness. Here are certainly dove-tailed together some of the best airs in the opera, and a brilliant duet is fabricated out of them, but the present arranger can very seldom refrain from exhibiting his musical folly, and has now filled too many pages with passages quite irrelevant, exceedingly difficult to players in general, and producing no satisfactory result. Let the reader not overlook one remarkable fact recorded on the title-page of this publication,—it is M. Czerny’s two-hundred and forty-seventh work! And he is still quite a young man. What a treasure to the stationer! What a labourer for the cheesemonger! THE MUSICAL SCRAP BOOK, edited by FINLAY DUN. No. 1. 1 vol. 4to. (Edinburgh, Wood and Co.) THIS is a collection of VOCAL.
No. 1 is a very graceful trio for three soprano voices; and for the convenience of those who prefer English to Italian words, the music is also set to a translation, which is remarkably well adapted to the notes. No. 2 is a very pretty air, an imitation of Caledonian melody. The whole of No. 3 may be said to be comprised in four bars, for the ballad is nothing but a repetition of these, which have not either novelty or beauty to recommend them. No. 4 does not exhibit a single original feature. No. 5, a humorous, clever song, is a pleasant laugh at that employment by which idle people contrive to kill time, ycleped archery. It is a matron who sings, and complains that one of her daughters is too fat to wear the prize bracelets, even should she win them, and the other so giddy that she once shot her arrow into Lady Flint’s eye, instead of the target. Neither attract the desired notice of the male toxophilites, who therefore are by the disappointed mother called cross-beaux. No. 6 is far superior to the common run of modern ballads; the air is expressive, and the words are sensibly and pleasingly set. No. 7 is the composition of a good musician, who knows how to read the words he sets; but it is rather the fruit of labour than of inspiration. No. 8 is a gentle, appropriate melody, full of good taste, and ably accompanied. No. 9 is a very charming composition, rich both in air and harmony. Such music is worthy of such poetry. At the eighth bar of the second page is an error in accentuation, which may be corrected thus: The Words are difficult to set, certainly, but ‘kiss’ must be the emphatic word, not ‘thy.’ Much of the little we have said of No. 3 applies to No. 10; we have to add that it is a duet in F sharp. Nos. 11 and 12 do not, by many degrees, reach mediocrity. There are some good passages in No. 13, and the composer has well expressed the sentiment of the words, till he arrives at nearly the end, where he has fallen into the error of concluding with the boisterous vulgar close with which nine out of every ten Italian bravuras terminate. The motivo of No. 14 is a pleasing air, and the accompaniment is easy and unaffected; there are, however, certain rests improperly placed, which break the connexion of the words, and almost lead to the conclusion that the music was adapted, not written, to the poetry. No. 15 is not inelegant, though, like most of the songs which every month brings forth in such abundance, anything but new in phrase, in cadence, in melody, and in accompaniment. PIANO-FORTE AND HARP.GRAND DUET for Piano-forte and Harp, or two Piano-fortes, by F. KALKBRENNER and F. DIZI. Op. 82. (Chappell.) THIS, if we mistake not, was written for and performed at the Philharmonic Concerts some years ago. It is in four movements, the first an adagio in F minor, opening into HARP.
No. 1 is the animated, animating quartet, from Meyerbeer’s last work, arranged in an easy, but most effective manner. No. 2 is certainly a very popular air, and not undeservedly so. The adaptation is free enough from all difficulties, but we cannot say that in other respects it is entitled so much praise. VIOLIN.
Now and then, though very rarely, it may be desirable to have recourse to the harmonics of the violin. In certain passages they prevent the inconvenience of taking the finger from a particular string, and obviate the necessity of sudden and extreme shifts, but it is a question whether such passages should ever be written for the instrument; more especially, as is commonly the case, when they introduce notes so high as to be almost inappreciable, and so weak as to be scarcely audible. The compass of the violin, including nearly three octaves of distinct and easily produced sounds, is surely range sufficient for all rational purposes; and it is our decided opinion that, except in a few instances which just serve to prove the rule, an extension of the scale of this instrument beyond what may be called its natural boundary, is of no practical utility, and would scarcely ever be resorted to, but for the purpose of displaying the dexterity of the performer. The author of the first of these works was induced to inquire into the manner of producing harmonics in consequence of hearing so much of Paganini’s performances, and repeated trials led to the rules he has here laid down. But, resolved to test the accuracy of his practical results by philosophical investigation, he submitted them to a friend skilful in the theory of vibrations, who demonstrated their truth, and has furnished Part III. of the present publication,—‘An Account of the Theory of the Vibration of Musical Strings, explaining the production of the Harmonic Notes on any Stringed Instrument,’ which is executed in a scientific manner, though it will not be so clear to the mere violinist as probably the author expects Part I. of this work consists of ‘Practical Rules,’ &c., which are clearly delivered and satisfactorily illustrated. Part II. is a continuation of the first, therefore it was hardly necessary to separate it. This includes a few good examples, and a very useful table, calculated on divisions into tenths, eighths, sixths, &c. of the fourth open string, and showing in notes, the harmonics resulting from the string when touched at any of those points of division. No. 2 is chiefly made up of materials furnished by the author of No. 1. The latter, however, finding that what he supplied had been published in an incorrect, incomplete manner, determined on printing his own system, or that which we have above noticed. The titles of Nos. 3 and 4 fully describe the nature of the two publications, which, we will add, display great industry and no little ingenuity. |
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