Scan 9
Musical Courier 1895-10-16: Vol 31 Iss 815, 1895
121 lines. Read by computer on 20 September 2026, twice; the two readings disagreed in places. Printed page 10. See the scan on archive.org.
1BOSTON, Mass., October 13, 1895.
3I SEE that Mr. Krehbiel—for I suppose the admirable editorial article, "Operatic Subjects," in the New York Tribune October 2 was by him—finds Hänsel and Gretel to be "a fragment of an ancient religion." "It might be difficult to maintain this * * * if the story were taken out of the body of German folklore, but it is only necessary to call to mind the analogy which exists between Brünnhilde and Dornröschen (whom we call the Sleeping Beauty) to understand how myths become fairy tales in the process of time, and to be reminded of that persistence of mental and moral habit which has brought the lyric drama in Germany around to its starting point, in the primitive religious drama."
5And if Hänsel and Gretel is a religion, of course Sir Augustus Druriolanus is the grand high priest.
7* * *
9Filled with this precious thought, that naive opera is in many instances, if not all, religion, I girded up my loins and went to the Castle Square Theatre last Monday night, the 7th, to inquire in a spirit of love into the hidden mysteries of The Bohemian Girl. The very title of this opera is enough to awaken suspicion in the shaggy breast of any confirmed folk lorist.
11For the gypsies brought with them from India this legend: A sorcerer misrepresented the facts in the case to the gypsy leader Chen, who therefore married his own sister Guin or Kan. This imprudent marriage brought the curse of wandering on Chen's people. Hence the Romany are called Chen-Guin. Leland says, apropos of this story, "It is very evident that here we have Chon and Kan or Kam, the moon and sun, which is confirmed by another gypsy legend." And the gypsies in the East of Europe have a legend that they are descended from the sun and moon; the Sun having wronged his Moon sister was condemned to wander forever, and so they can never rest. The people of Borneo worship the sun and moon as real divinities. The Khasias of the Himalayas account for the changes of the moon by the theory that this orb, a man—also in the Teutonic tongues the moon is masculine—"falls monthly in love with his wife's mother, who throws ashes in his face." The inhabitants of the Isthmus of Darien have a tradition that the man in the moon was guilty of gross misconduct toward his elder sister, the sun. The Etruscan goddess Losna is a spirit of both the sun and the moon, and she encourages incest—another instance of the universality of the old legend believed in by the Irish, the Esquimaux, the people of Borneo and so many others. "In the spirit of collection first established by Grimm nothing was preserved, much less sought for, which was not fit, I will not say for young ladies, but even for the nursery." But as the good and reverend Timothy Harley, F. R. A. S., justly remarks, "Let us cease to call that common which God has cleansed, and with thankfulness recognize the solidarity of the human race, to which testimony is borne by even a lunar myth."
13* * *
15I throw off gaily these facts at random, carelessly, merely to show you that I prepared myself for full and philosophic enjoyment of Balfe's ballad opera. The familiar lines of Bunn, which in years gone by I had misunderstood and scoffed, are now symbolic, pathetic, terrible, mystic. What do you think is the cryptic significance of the Count's direction to Ruda: "Let her wound have every attention, though it presents no sign of danger"? And when he turns to Thaddeus and says, "Stranger, accept the hand of one who, however different to you in station, can never sufficiently thank you for the service you have rendered him," only the initiated can know the awful mystery contained therein.
17A gross and sensual hack wrote once a blasphemous poem entitled The Bohemian Girl, adapted to the meanest capacity. It was published in Punch in 1844:
19We have, then, a third act;
20A most curious fact,
21Which none understood till they knew.
22The author had thought
23That in justice he ought
24A moral to add to the two.
26So a lesson he gave
27(This poet so grave)
28To singers and men; and the fall
29Of Miss Betts at the end
30By the hand of a friend,
31Was felt as the moral by all.
33Ah, if this shameless jester only knew the inner meaning of the suffering and the death of the Gypsy Queen, whom he flippantly calls by the name of the singer who assumed the part without due comprehension of the tremendous task!
35* * *
37Do you ask me to divulge my discovery? Ask anything but this; for I propose in December and January to lecture before young men's institutes and female academies on The Sun Myth as seen in The Bohemian Girl; or, Balfe's masterpiece as a Fragment of Religion. I have bought a lot of books on folklore in various languages, including, at considerable expense, Elworthy on the Evil Eye. My meals are shirked or neglected, such is my enthusiasm. I admit that my good friend Mr. Krehbiel has several years the start, but I am bound to overtake him. Even now I can spell "sun" in eighteen different languages and can trace the origin of the steam radiator. This is surely something.
39I am trying to persuade Mr. Paur to accompany me on this tour. I shall open in Putney, Vt., and play the typical melodies in their naked beauty and in their rich harmonic dress; but he has a good deal to do this season.
41There are several new symphonies by Beethoven, a rising young Austrian composer, and overtures by Mozart and Weber to be given under Mr. Paur's direction in Music Hall. He assures me these novelties will compel his strict attention in the toilsome preparation. Mr. Lang is out of the question. As conductor of the Apollo, the Cecilia, the Händel and Haydn, teacher, organist, &c., he certainly would have no time to master the difficulties presented in Balfe's score, much as I should value his assistance. Has Mr. Seidl any open dates?
43* * *
45In the course of gigantic reading for the performance Monday night I ploughed my way through "A Memoir of Balfe," by Charles Lamb Kenney. He, a poor dullard, redeemed in a measure by his blind worship, never suspects the truth, never speaks of Balfe the Seer. Do you know the book? It is redolent with that species of rhetoric known in the higher circles as "Wild Irish." Listen to him:
46"'The heart bowed down with weight of woe,' I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls,' and 'when other lips and other hearts' beat upon the ear night and day like the waves of the restless ocean, till as the natural penalty—the Nemesis of success—the wearied listener wished the buoyant Arion at the bottom of the sea."
48And again:
49"The solid substratum on which these captivating charms rested, and the fact that the commanding attraction of the work was the result of its coherence with the laws of all beauty, added to the possession, moreover, of that intrinsic and special stamp of character which alone can give permanence to the myriad forms of harmony and proportion, have eventually been proved beyond cavil by the event."
51* * *
53I know of nothing equal to these extracts except a passage from the eulogy pronounced on Sir Daniel Donnelly, late champion of Ireland. It will be remembered that the hero having drank an almost incredible number of tumblers of punch at one sitting (out of mere bravado), and swallowed half a bucket of cold water while in a state of profuse perspiration after the aforesaid tumblers, burst a blood vessel and departed this life in the forty-fourth year of his age, February, 1820. Now some had objected to Sir Daniel's style of boxing, which showed perhaps too strikingly that he had excelled at the miscellaneous fighting of Donnybrook Fair. Listen to the superb defense: "His education certainly had not been neglected, but it had been irregular; there were not only Iricisms in his style, but even provincialisms, which were corrected in the London ring, not without danger to the success of his first prize essay; but the native vigor of the man prevailed over the imperfect institutions of his country, and with all the disadvantages of an irregular, imperfect, unfinished education Sir Daniel Donnelly not only triumphed over all his competitors, but sustained the honors of Ireland in a country perhaps too much disposed to disparage her; and in his last battle with the renowned Oliver the shamrock sprang up beneath his feet, rejoicing in the blood that dyed its threefold beauty, more proudly than it ever rejoiced when, sprinkled with the dews of morning, it waved its verdant locks to the breezes that swept the level expanse of the Bog of Allen, or the rugged magnificence of MacGillicuddy's Reeks."
55* * *
57Lord, what a press agent this same Mr. Kenney would have made, though there are several who even now approach him. Does anyone realize fully the importance of the passionate press agent? For importance read "impudence."
59How will the future historian of music be able to form even an approximately correct judgment of performance from the columns of newspaper files? I do not speak of inaccuracy alone. To merely name all of the husbands of Miss Lillian Russell, and in their succession, will be no easy task. But I speak of the contradictions found in so many journals. The painstaking historian will find an article, signed by the critic, in which a comic opera is condemned frankly and in detail. He will also find in the same paper a day or two after an unsigned article in which these phrases occur: "Overwhelming triumph," "libretto sparkling with wit," "charming music that is whistled everywhere," "praised by press and public," "the greatest success since 'Pinafore'." And in some instances he will discover a feuilleton signed by some one, not the regular critic, in which the latter's views are contradicted seriatim and hotly. Now, what is the painstaking historian to do? one of two readings
60How will the future historian of music be able to form even an approximately correct judgment of performance from the columns of newspaper files? I do not speak of inaccuracy alone. To merely name all of the husbands of Miss Lillian Russell, and in their succession, will be no easy task. But I speak of the contradictions found in so many journals. The painstaking historian will find an article, signed by the critic, in which a comic opera is condemned frankly and in detail. He will also find in the same paper a day or two after an unsigned article in which these phrases occur: "Overwhelming triumph," "libretto sparkling with wit," "charming music that is whistled everywhere," "praised by press and public," "the greatest success since 'Pinafore.'" And in some instances he will discover a feuilleton signed by some one, not the regular critic, in which the latter's views are contradicted seriatim and hotly. Now, what is the painstaking historian to do? one of two readings
62Mind you, I admit that we to-day read with zest the gossip, pleasant or scandalous, of singers of bygone generations. There is much entertaining matter of this sort in the books of Castil-Blaze, Lumley, Kelley, Burney. What would we not give to have some contemporaneous "special articles" on Shakespeare! Montaigne, Cellini, Restif, Casanova were their own press agents. Then there is that monarch of the race, James Boswell!
64What Melba eats and what Jean de Reszké does not drink, what Calvé reads and how Sibyl Sanderson amuses herself—these matters are not utterly beneath contempt; they are, perhaps, of more value to future generations than learned disquisitions on the singers' methods of tone production.
66But when it comes to the mass of contradictory evidence concerning the artistic value of a performance, to the material that must be sifted and weighed—this is, indeed, another affair.
68The knowledge of advertising methods practiced to-day.
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