The Note-Books of Samuel Butler

l and

and B

s Sykes began with any of his sonatas. After a long while I began to like some of the slow movements and then some entire sonatas, several of which I could play once fairly well without notes. I used also to play Bach and Mendelssohn's Songs without Words and thought them lovely, but I always liked Handel best. Little by little, however, I

nd met an old West End clergyman of the name of Smalley (Rector, I think, of

t that; I should have thou

id I, "is t

nde

now I feel towards him much as I did when I first heard his work, except, of course, that I see a gnosis in him of which as a young man I knew nothing. But I do not greatly care about gnosis, I want agape; and Beeth

d Domenic

me without crossing himself, but I have not heard that Handel crossed himself at the mention of Scarlatti's name. I know very little of Scarlatti's music and have not even that littl

i leads to Haydn, Haydn to Mozart and hence, through Beethoven, to modern music. That Handel foresaw this I do not doubt, nor yet that he felt, as I do myself, that modern musi

ever it may have been, to Handel the tide of music was rising, intermittently no doubt but still rising, and that since Handel's time it has been falling. Or, rather perhaps I should say

the appoggiatura, the abuse of the unlimited power of modulation which equal temperament placed at the musician's disposition and departure from well-marked rhythm, beat or measured tr

l and

ly suppose) sneering at Homer are generally the ones who never miss an opportunity of cheapening and belittling Handel, and, which is very

l and

all. Nevertheless the cultured vulgar have at all times preferred gymnastics and display to reticence and the healthy, graceful, normal movements of a man of birth and education, and Bach is esteemed a more profound musician than Handel in virtue of his frequent and more involved complexity of construction. In reality Handel was profound enough to esch

nterpoint than Bach does, and that when Handel takes a licence it is a good bold one

d the Bri

he had died then, we should have no Israel, nor Messiah, nor Samson, nor any of his greatest oratorios. The British public only relented when he had become old and presently blind. Handel, by the way, is a rare instance of a man doing his greatest work subsequently to an attack of para

and Mad

e sure, but I think he said a Birmingham Festival-at any rate he came in looking very white and feeble and sat down in front of

er of Handel's music-I cannot think that I shall ever again hear any one who seemed to have the spirit of Handel's music so thoroughly penetrating his or her whole being-but that she should have been struck with

and Sha

and how those two men can alike stir us more than any one else can. Neither were self-conscious in production, bu

ee Han

ar he did so in reality I do not know, but inter alia he said that Handel "s

a

fulness of his power; and fancy what we might have had from Shakespeare if he had gossipped to us about himself and his times and the people he met in London and at Stratford-on-Avon instead of writing some of what he did write. Nevertheless we have the

a Conse

ern than Handel. He was opposed to the musically radical tendencies of his age and, as a musician, was a decided conservative in

nd Ernes

endelssohn; I did it simply ad captandum. As a matter of fact he played only the musi

s Commo

ce as Handel often is, just as it takes-or rather would take-as great a composer as Handel to write another Hallelujah chorus. It is only the man who can do

and Dr.

del could have set Tennyson to music comfortably. What a mercy it is that he did not live in Handel's time! Even th

dsw

een as far a

he left or ot

l we ought to be that Wordsworth was only a poet and not a musician. Fancy a symphony by Word

ing B

thy broad wings displaying," both in The Triumph of Time and Truth, or at "Convey me to some peaceful shore," in Alexander Ba

Glory of

orus even in the Messiah, but I do not think th

uppose, furnished with a good second-hand one, the word "the" would not have been tacked on to the "glory" which precedes it and made to belong to it rather than to the "glory" which follows. It does not matter one straw, and if Handel had asked me whether I minded his forcing the words a little, I should have said, "Certainly not, nor more than a

d the Spe

ter examples of the way Handel sometimes derives his melody from the natural intonation of the speaking voice. The "pleasure" (in bar four of the chorus) suggests a man saying "w

ply re-states it; the third is the clincher, I cannot understand any man's holding out against bar three. The fourth b

nd the W

terhorn I caught myself

terhorn seemed to fall just

w no more s

the magnificent strain to which he has set the words "All fear of punishment, all fear is o'er" bursts upon us. Here he flings aside all considerations save that of the gospel of d

slaves and not from that of the tyrants. There is no pretence that these particular tyrants are not so bad as ordinary tyrants, nor these particular vanquished slaves not so good as ordinary vanquished slaves, and, unless this has been made clear i

much stronger than the words that we lose sight of them almost entirely. Handel probably wrote as he did from a profound, though perhaps unconscious, perception of the fact that even in his day there was a great deal of humanitarian nonsense t

and M

od's uni

to keep the

Samson. But the universality of the law must be held

a Letter to

d been received by the solicitor

ady I am engaged to and her name and address are Mis

Yours tru

opening bars of "Welcome, w

s Showe

st description of a warm sunny refreshing rain that I have ever come across and o

ra and

ot much) varied manner and I am interested to observe that he did not adhere to that manner in Jephtha, but I should be sorry to convey an impression that I think Theodora and Susanna are in any way unworthy of Handel. I prefer both to Judas Maccab?us which, in spite of the many fine things it contains, I like perhaps the least of all his oratorios. I have played Theodora and Susanna all through, and most parts (except the recitatives) many times over, Jones a

sing, Honour, Adoration" is omitted in Novello's editio

f dazed grief is just varied now and again with a little writhing passage. Whether Hande

ebasti

r by the hand. The true musician would not snub so much as a musical critic. His instinct is towards the man in the street rather than the Academy. Perhaps I say this as being myself a man in the street

or care. I take or leave as I choose, and alter or leave untouched as I choose. I prefer my music to be an outgrowth from a germ whose source I know, rather than a waif and stray which I fancy to be my own child when it was all the time begotten of a barrel organ. It is a wise tune that knows its own father an

suggested by, a few bars in the opening of Beethoven's pianoforte sonata op. 78, and a few bars in the accompaniment to the duet "Hark how the Songsters" i

ent in The Beauties of Purce

ne

teal. It is only great proprietors who can steal well and wisely. A good stealer, a good user of what he takes, is ipso fact

al Cr

Times I saw this able, heartless failure, compact of gnosis as much as any one pleases but without one spark of either true pathos or true humour, called "the crowning achievement of dramatic music." The writer c

owing i

n the other hand, while they admit of borrowing no less freely than literature does, do not admit of acknowledgement; it is impossible to interrupt a piece of music, or paint some words upon a picture to explain that the composer or painter was at such and such a point indebted to such and such a source for his inspiration, but it is not l

is due laurels. So it should, if the work will bear it; but more commonly times will have so changed that it will not. A composer may want a bar, or bar and a half, out of, say, a dozen pages-he may not want even this much without more or less modification-is he to be told that he must republish the ten or dozen original pages within which the passage he wants lies buried, as the only righteous way of giving it new

, "Yea, let him take all," should be his answer. He should know no self in the matter. He is a fisher of men's hearts from love of winning them, and baits his hook with what will best take them without much heed where he gets it from. He can gain nothing by offering people what they know or ough

eater than knowledge of what has been done by predecessors. What, I wonder, may he take from these-how may he build himself upon them and grow out of them-if he is to make it his chief business to steer clear of them? A safer canon is that the develop

ented wheels when we hire a cab, independently of this, it is surprising how large a part even of the most original music consists of common form scale passages, and closes. Mutatis mutandis, the same holds good with even the most original book or picture; these passages or forms are as

as they may be connected with a school or epoch; no one, therefore, is offended at finding them associated with one set the more. Familiarity beyond a certain point ceases to be familiarity, or at any rate ceases to be open to the objections that lie against that which, though familiar, is still not familiar a

ecially true of music, whose grammar and stock in trade are so much simpler than those of any other art. He who loves music will know what the best men have done, and hence will have numberless passages from older writers floating at all times in his mind, like germs in the air, ready to hook themselves on to anything of an associated character. Some of these he will reject at once, as already too strongly wedded to associations of their own; some are tried and found not so suitable as was thought; some on

mselves to, and grow out of those predecessors who are most congenial to them. Beethoven grew out of Mozart and Haydn, adding a leaven which in the end leavened the whole lump, but in the outset adding little; Mozart grew out of Haydn, in the outset adding little; Haydn grew out of Domenico Scarlatti and Emmanuel Bach, adding, in the outset, little. These men grew out of

not due to his deliberately taking from them. He makes their ways his own as children model themselves upon those older persons who are kind to them. He loves them because he feels they felt as he does, and looked on men and things much as he looks upon them himself; he is an outgrowth in the same direction as that in which they grew; he is their son, bound by every law of heredity to be no less them than himself; the manner, therefore, which came most naturally to them will be the one which comes also most naturally to him as being their descendant. Nevertheless no matter how strong a family likenes

erman or Hungarian composers. For the most part, however, the soundest Englishmen will be stay-at-homes, in spite of their being much given to summer flings upon the continent. Whether as writers, therefore, or as listeners, Englishmen should stick chiefly to Purcell, Handel, and Sir Arthur Sullivan. True, Handel was not an Englishman by birth, but no one was ever more thoroughly English in respect of all the best and most distinguishing features of Englishmen. As a young man, though Italy and Germany were open to him, he adopted the country

ver said less about his art-or did more in it. There are some semi-apocryphal [128] rules for tuning the harpsichord that pretend, with what truth I know not, to hail from him, but here his theoretical contributions to

eech is in their hands not in their tongues. They look at us like seals, but cannot talk to us. To the musician, therefore, what has been said abo

u

lpture, painting (what there is of it) and literature to have been in all essentials like our own, and not only this but whereas we find them essentially the same in existing nations in Europe, Asia, Africa and America, this

on whether, if we were as much in the habit of using the Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian and Mixo-Lydian modes as we are of using the later ?olian mode (the minor scale), we should not find these just as satisfactory. Is it not possible that our indisputable preference for the Ionian mode (the major scale) is s

sc

but in modern music almost any conceivable discord may be taken unprepared. We have grown so used to this now that we think nothing o

usly insisted on; their resolution-generally by the climbing down of the

re it as a concord, take it on a strong beat, and resolve it downwards on a weak one. The preparati

chr

are sure to accuse him of being an anachronism. The only man in England who is permitted to write in a style which is in the main of home growth is the Irish Jew, Sir Arthur Sullivan. If we may go to a foreign style why may we not go to one of an earlier period? But surely we may do whatever we like, and the better we like it the better we shall do it. The great

ers i

advised, as it seems to me, Gaudenzio Ferrari broke up a space of the same shape and size at Varallo into many compartments, each more or less complete in itself, grouped round a central scene. The subdivision of books into chapters, each with a more or less emphatic full close in its own key, is found to be a help as giving the attention halting places by the way. Everything that is

he O

The plot, of course, is stupid to a degree, but plot has very little to do with it; what can be more uninteresting than the plot of many of Handel's oratorios? We both believe the scheme of Italian opera to be a bad one; we think that music should never be combined with acting to a greater extent than is do

lharmoni

the movements too long and, speaking for myself, if I had a tame orchestra for which I might write programmes, I should probably put it down once or twice again, not from any spontaneous wish to hear more of it but as a matter of duty that I might judge it with fuller comprehension-

farò" in it. I do not mind this, and if it had been "Che farò" absolutely I should, I dares

of the last movement was the tune of one of Arthur Robert's comic songs, or of any music-hall song, it would do very nicely and I daresay we should often hu

ot feel that any of the movements were the mere drivelling show stuff of which the concerto had been full. But it, like everything else done at these concerts, is too long, cut down one-half it would have been all right and we should have liked to hear it twice. As it was, all we

h, I daresay, is very fine but with wh

ioz, which, if Jones could by any possibility have written anyth

d, when he meant stopping, he stopped much as a horse stops, with little, if any, peroration. Who can doubt that he kept his movements short because he knew that the worst music within a reasonable compass is better than the best which is made tiresome by bei

Wind

us the unsatisfactory character of wind unsupported by strings. I rather pleased Jones by saying that t

andel

ve? Were the spring flowers out? Did he walk the greater part of the way as we do now? And what did he hear? For he must sometimes have heard music inside him-and that, too, as much above what he has written down as what he has written down is above all other music. No

on the top of the axis round which all should turn, but nothing turned and nothing moved and the angels

nearing, and behold! it was the Lord br

id one, "isn

"and if you drop a penny into

le Lords dropped a plaque of metal into it. And then the angels played and the world turned round and the organ mad

and D

th Handel. It does not matter, but it pained me to think tha