Scan 11
Musical Courier 1895-12-11: Vol 31 Iss 823, 1895
42 lines. Read by computer on 27 September 2026. Printed page 12. See the scan on archive.org.
1Music in Italy.
2Rome, November 11, 1895.
3"La musique est une autre vie dans la vie."—BALZAC.
5WHAT a sea of thought Balzac has opened with this! And if it is true (as who can doubt?) is not music subject to all those influences to which we mortals are subject? or does it make us subject to it through all these influences acting as its agents? And, provided one or the other is true, is not the same music, given in different countries and by different peoples, subject to entirely different interpretations? Is it, indeed, the same music? Even in its own country may it not be differently interpreted and honestly interpreted by people of different nationalities, or even by people of the same country and different temperaments—just, for example, as I told you the splendid music of Vessella's band was interpreted in Vienna and Berlin. To go even a little farther; as odor and tint and contour speak a common language, all lands may feel, while each, having its own language, appeals to the sentiments in a different way, moving the most perfect characters to their depths—is not each divine? And, as one who, with closed eyes, while listening to pure and perfect music, may feel all the emotions experienced when viewing nature's changing form and color and inhaling nature's intoxicating perfume, is not music blessed queen of all by reason of her power to bring to the service of him whose sight is sealed the quickening and inspiring emotions each represents?
7* * *
9There has just come into my possession a charming little treatise that I wish I could give you as it is. Whole lines and lines upon lines of thought converge from it, one leading from another and covering, it seems, every phase and every condition of life, that is, of the better part of life, "the life within a life." And yet this little book, La Musica e l'Igiene, is really a series of erudite thoughts and reflections and scientific deductions noted down in less than two months' time, and all springing from a conversation that grew out of a comparatively casual meeting in an Italian village during a sudden tempest which, "in the throat of the mountains, produced the effect of a Serenata del' Inferno!" Its writer is a prominent scholar and philosopher and medical man, Prof. Felice La Torre, who says: "We profane people who cannot claim the title of musicians, and so who may not penetrate into the temple of Art, may still come close to it and walk about it, and if we truly love music we may feel the magic of its effects, and gather and store away rich treasures from its influence."
11I cannot, as I said, give you all of Professor La Torre's delightful little volume, nor even a small fraction of the valuable and deeply interesting historic and archæologic truths with which it deals; as for example, that of the finding of a first or second century fresco in the Domitillian cemetery in Rome, which represents Jesus Christ in the figure of Orpheus; I cannot begin even to delineate all his fascinating lines of reasoning in his chapters on "Fabulous Power" and "Psychologic Effects," and "Therapeutic Effects," and "Pathologic Effects," but I may give you a few of the instances he has so admirably cited in the latter, and I don't believe I can find a better starting point for these instances, from the very character of the theme treated, than his delightful pages on the effect of bell music: "For the harmony that the bell sends out into infinite space, from the sonorous waves and billows that unfold from it like a limitless sea; from the precedence given the bell at the times of all our festas and all our griefs, in announcing the greatest solemnities, in celebrating the triumphs of our country; from its mingling with the cry of the new-born babe and the breath of the dying at all the ceremonies that form part of these two great facts of life—the bell holds the place of an unequaled voice, full of mysterious emotion and vibrant with nature's own tones, wafting the joys and the sorrows of humanity to the highest heaven and carrying their accents through all the earth."
13It is told of one of the most noted brigands that ever infested Sicilian soil—a man on whose head, "living or dead," large prices had been set—that lured by the promise of rich booty he wandered far outside his usual limits one day. Little by little he gained upon his prize; his victim was before him; his deadly weapon covered his heart, when, suddenly, clear and sweet and strong, from one of the most perfectly tuned bells in all the land, the Angelus chimed; the strong hand fell to the brigand's side; his massive head drooped; a precious life was spared and a foul crime was averted! But was it the prayer? No; for as his history has told us many times, the invocations of priest or preacher were powerless to move this man. It was the clear, rich, exquisite chiming of the perfect bell (and what is richer than such a chime?) forcing its music, wave upon wave, through his sin-hardened soul, compelling him to recognize Divinity; though perhaps with only a pagan recognition, still to recognize it! Said Chateaubriand, who was always strangely moved by bell music, in his Renato: "Thoughts and dreams of family, of country, of the cradle and the tomb; all sorts of delicious fantasies and profound imaginings take form in the music of the bell as it surges through one's native land."
15Napoleon I. was no less moved by it. Passing, chatting, to Malmaison with Bourienne, the sound of the village bell brusquely interrupted the conversation; the Emperor not only stopped talking, but he stopped walking—as if he were afraid the echo of his steps would impede the passage of the melody the bell tones sang. "I remember what this harmony said to me in my early days"—he remarked to J. Bourienne, as if he wished to justify the ecstasy into which the music transported him; and Bourienne noticed as he said these words that the great conqueror's voice was full of tears." On the solitary ocean-beat rocks of St. Helena he cried: "The chiming of the Angelus is wanting, and it is impossible for me not to wait and listen for it! The music of the bells never touches my ear without transporting my thoughts back, far back, to the days of my youth and to the years when I heard it first in the forests of St. Cloud!" It is the music of the bell that saves Roberto il Diavolo, and Faust, and Margherita. It was the voice of the bell that saved fair Florence in the times of Pier Capponi.
17"Verdi," continues Professor La Torre, "is the Von Moitke of music, said Minghetti to me one day. * * * What consummation of phosphorus parbleu—what influx of blood, and under what rapid passages of excitement and reflection and transportation of mind must the brain of a composer be subjected to? We are obliged to agree that the brains of grand masters of composition are far from ordinary; if not under the continuous action of varied and yet almost simultaneous emotions they would, perforce, burst! The functions of such a brain are not like the functions of any other brain, even if the other be the brain of a scientist." And then Professor La Torre goes on with a contemporaneous line of brilliant circumstance and authority and reasoning, including that of Professor Lombroso, the great Italian cerebral and pathological authority, one of the first in the world, indeed. * * * About the influence of music, especially of symphonic music, Professor La Torre says: "It is not a question of the composer, but of the form of the composition, and this, it is safe to say is, in musical hygiene, an axiom. We have a brilliant example of this truth in the fact that Malibran, the first time she heard Beethoven's symphony in do minor (at the Paris Conservatory), was carried out in convulsions! * * *
19"Music is a grand language, heard and uttered by all living creatures, and, like spoken language, it is most grateful and most salubrious when it is simplest; so, also, it is sweetest and most sonorous." The latter part of this chapter Professor La Torre gives to a masterly analysis between the physical and psychical effects of the music of Bellini and of Wagner. The volume tells for what maladies and under what circumstances certain music should be used, and then, again, in what maladies and under what circumstances it should not be used. It cites innumerable fascinating instances like those I have given you to prove the axioms and the theories it presents, and to substantiate its suggestions; it is, altogether speaking—that is, in its ensemble—one of the most original and fascinating of treatises on one of the most important and timely of subjects.
21But it is not entirely of this volume, vivacious as it is, and dearly as I should love to watch the discussions over its "pros" and "cons" that would be sure to spring from its closer acquaintance, that we are going to talk of to-day. Instead I want to speak of that most admirable Italian literary-musical publication, the Rivista Musicale Italiana, published every four months by the Fratelli Bocca (Booksellers to His Majesty the King of Italy). In type and form the magazine is really an elegant publication, while its contributors are authorities on the subjects of which they treat, and not only in the country they represent. It is a broad, many-sided cosmopolitan magazine, thoroughly in touch with the day, treating all its subjects skillfully and scientifically from the standpoint of the scholar, the safe, authoritative scholar, rather than from that of the novice. It is not in any way a book of réclame, but it is a book of vivacious, satisfying study and research. The leading articles in the number just out are from the pens of Combarien, D'Arienzo, Torchì, Mauke, Pilo and C. Levi, who has contributed a most charming article, fully illustrated with diagrams, on Geotopografia e la Canzone popolare.
23Naturally, anyone who has thought about music at all has thought more or less vaguely on this subject, but I frankly confess that I, for one, never began to realize the richness and depth of the subject until I had read Signor Levi's treatise. It has a curiously subtle bearing, too (has it not?) on the subject matter of Professor La Torre's work, and yet I venture to say the authors have never met, not even on paper, or if they have it has been in the most casual way. Is it, with the countless other little synthetic and analytic straws that are floating on the current of public sentiment just now, an indication that public attention is going to turn itself, even if unconsciously at first, to this subject of hygienic music or music and hygiene?
25Signor Levi says: "La canzone popolare originali of places of a certain similarity of character and contour have a form that is almost always general, that is, a standard form that presents almost equal changes and an aspect that has very little variation.
27This form is indirectly influenced by the contour and character of the earth where the song is made. (This word made seems to me far more expressive than any deviation from the literal translation could be). "Songs made in a country that is perfectly level have a character utterly different from those made in a region of hills and mountains, or in a plain surrounded by inaccessible regions, such as deserts and marmemmas.
29Transported songs—that is, songs made in one country and adopted by another—have the character of the place whence they come and of the place where they are adopted. These are the songs best known, those that we may best learn and study, though they may easily carry us into difficulty on the original form of the song. They would, therefore, be of minor consideration were it not for the important task they have of giving evidence how and why the same motif varies in one place and in another.
31PLAIN COUNTRY MELODIES.
33The greater part have very little modulation, and this modulation is generally limited to the third and fourth intervals; when there are extensions the value of one or the other or of both of the terminal phrases is prolonged. In these songs repetition of musical phrases and perorations is prevalent. Examples, the popular original songs of Chieri and the country of the Don (in lower Russia).
35HILL MELODIES.
37The form of these songs varies according to the place whence they come and to which they are transported. If the hills and mountains are fruitful, and not very high, or if they are rugged and precipitous. Examples, Chivasso, Asti di Piemonte (where Italy's delicious sparkling champagne is made), Superga and the most of Tuscany.
39SONGS OF THE MOUNTAINS.
41The variations in level observed in the songs of the hills are
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