Scan 13
Musical Courier 1903-02-25: Vol 46 Iss 1196, 1903
26 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. Printed page 14. See the scan on archive.org.
1RUSKIN'S MUSIC.
3BY W. G. COLLINGWOOD.
5"It is well known," says a recent newspaper writer, "that Ruskin's ear was as deaf to musical sound as his eye was sensitive to natural beauty." On the other hand, Miss Wakefield, the celebrated singer and originator of country musical competitions, has put together a volume of 158 pages—most of them, certainly, in rather big type—under the title of "Ruskin on Music." The inference, of course, to an unbelieving world is that he wrote about what he did not understand. But Miss Wakefield understands; and she says: "What is to be admired in what he has said of the art is the beautiful way in which its spiritual meaning and teaching has been expressed by him in the short passages which he has devoted to it, and in which no one has ever excelled him."
7For his thoughts on music there is this book to read; but for Ruskin's quest of music, for his lifelong attempts to qualify as a musician, there is nothing to show. The story has not yet been told, because it has little bearing on his life's main work, and—to put it roughly—it is the story of a failure. Perhaps there are admirers who would rather not know about the failure; and yet—you shall judge when you have heard it!
9There are still in existence the bound volumes of piano pieces and operatic songs which he learned when he was an undergraduate at Oxford. One of these volumes is open on the piano, in our photograph of the Brantwood drawing room, arranged as it used to be when he strummed a little before dinner and read at the four candles after dinner. Each piece is inscribed by the Oxford music master with the usual vague respect of Town to Gown in the formula, "—Ruskin, Esq., Ch.Ch." The master does not seem to have known his Christian name, but he evidently dragged him through a great deal of Bellini and Donizetti and Mozart; and "forty years on—shorter in wind, though in memory long"—Ruskin had a keen recollection of these pieces, and liked to go over them with any young friend, showing how they used to sing "Non più andrai" or "Prendero quel brunettino," with all the flourishes. There are his fingering exercises, as elaborately annotated as all his old books are; he must have spent much time and taken great pains, in those early days, over his music. It was not for want of opportunity, nor for lack of intention, that he did not become a musician.
11When he left Oxford he still continued his lessons, especially the singing. I have never heard of his singing in company, but I can hardly doubt that the lessons did much for his voice. Anyone who has heard him lecture, or read, or even talk, knows how resonant and flexible it was, and how thoroughly under his command. He had naturally a weak chest, and caught cold easily and his throat was often affected; but he always, I think, was able to lecture, and his voice was the first thing that attracted an audience. The singing lessons were not without result.
13In later years his music master was George Frederick West, who taught him—or tried to teach him—harmony and composition. I can remember Mr. West coming to give him a lesson, but I don't think I was ever present at the ordeal. You can imagine that "Dr. Ruskin," as Mr. West always called him, was a most difficult pupil, wanting at every turn to know why; incredulous of the best authority; impatient of the compromises and conventions, yet, he said, "used them himself, few people more," so he was an energetic concertgoer. On arriving at Paris or any great foreign town his first question was: "What about the opera?" With classical Italian opera he was familiar from his youth up. He loved it, indignant when pestilent modernism hurried the tempo or took liberties with the well known score. In London he usually had a season ticket for the Crystal Palace concerts—you remember how he abused the Crystal Palace!—and when he was driven away by the "autumn cleaning," a great business in old Mrs. Ruskin's scrupulous housekeeping at Denmark Hill, he would stay at the Queen's Hotel in Norwood "to be near the Manns concerts."
15He has just mentioned Charles Hallé in "Ethics of the Dust," but in private letters comes out his real admiration of the great pianist. John Hullah was one of his friends; his copy of Hullah's "Manual" is scribbled with devices for simplifying the teaching of the keyboard. Being a born teacher, and counting as he did music an essential to education, he even taught—or tried to teach—what he knew of it whenever there was a chance. That class of
17Facsimile of Mr. Ruskin's Rough Draft of a Songlet.
19Johnson said of the performing dog, that he should do it at all. He might have been spending his time to better purpose, you think?
21Music lessons went on, at all available intervals, down to the close of his active life. At Sandgate, in 1887-88, he was learning from Mr. Roberts. In his lodgings, besides the cottage piano already there, he got a grand piano and a harmonium (the last was afterward given to a chapel in Coniston), and because he had few chances of hearing music in his retirement he engaged a young lady professional to play of evenings to himself and the friends who were staying with him.
23In his books there are several hard hits at concerts and concertgoers; but just as he wrote against railways and little country girls at Brantwood had to learn music, too; it was in his time of failing strength, and the story is tragicomic; but in such times the real heart reveals itself through all weaknesses, and it was a very kindly and earnest nature that made him write out neat cards of music lore reduced to its lowest terms for the cottage lasses whose lives he tried to raise and brighten.
25It was only on evenings of actual illness or serious trouble that he passed the time without music, and he generally managed to have somebody in the house who could play and sing. One of his admirations was "Clari-bel," whom he met at Jean Ingelow's; she sang her own songs, to his great delight. Later, among many, there were the Misses Bateman and Miss Wakefield; in "Jo
The computer misreads some letters and numbers. Where a name matters to you, read the scan.