Scan 14
Musical Courier 1903-02-25: Vol 46 Iss 1196, 1903
46 lines. Read by computer on 23 September 2026. Printed page 15. See the scan on archive.org.
1anna's Care" he has told his readers about the charm of Mrs. Severn's singing. And it was not only comic songs and nigger ballads that he would listen to; he liked fun, as his readers ought to know by now, and a good funny song, if the tune was sound, made him clap his hands in a quaint gesture and laugh all over—the more that there was much sadness in his thoughts. I remember Sir Edward Burne-Jones' account of a visit to the Christy Minstrels; how the professor dragged him there, to a front seat, and those burnt cork people anticked and shouted, and Burne-Jones wanted to go, and Ruskin wouldn't, but sat laughing through the whole performance as if he loved it. An afternoon, to him, of oblivion to the cares of life; an odd experience; but he would not call it music. "Now let us have something different," he used to say when he had laughed enough.
3The old songs were his delight, old English and French and Scotch. German songs, German music, and everything German, except Dürer and Holbein, he could not abide; German love songs especially; "songs of seduction" he called them. He would just endure a bit of Swiss caroling, with its breezy reminder of the Alps; but the unlucky individual who tried him with Fesca has cause to remember the event. Haydn and Mozart he classed with the Italians, and Handel with the good old standards; but Mendelssohn was not to be named. Worst of all he disliked execution without feeling; the brilliant young lady pianist had no welcome from Ruskin. Gaiety, or else tenderness, appealed; even among the old songs there were those he cast out of the program. Of "Charmante Gabrielle" he said once, "It might do when a king sang it."
5Corelli was one of his favorite composers; that was another link with "Redgauntlet" and wandering Willie; and though he was never a collector of rarities as such, he bought all the Corelli he could meet with, as well as various old editions and early music at Chappell's sales.
7From about 1880 for some ten years he took to making little compositions of his own; curious experiments. It need hardly be said, and it need never be regretted, that these were not workmanlike performances. The mere fact of his trying to compose is curious; and though it is not part of his life's work, it explains some passages and turns of his thought. It would be really more wonderful if he had succeeded in learning to be a musician, along with all the other things he attempted. But look at his face, in the truthful if not sentimental portrait by Mr. Creswick, which, I think, has not been photographed until now. I do not much believe in physiognomy, and yet in the faces of those who have the gift of execution—quite a separate power from intellectual or emotional appreciation, or even from composition—I think you notice that the groove which marks off the wing of the nose, ala nasi, at the top is strongly developed; sometimes it is so sharp as to be almost a deformity. There is none in Ruskin's face. That trait may mean nothing; but the fact remains that so able a man spent time and labor in vain over an art which many learn easily, without a hundredth part of his general power. In a word, he had a great love for music, and within certain limits a true taste, but no talent; and the finest brain and the firmest will are no use in matters of art if the Master of all good workmen has not given you the talent to spend.
9In "Elements of English Prosody," written in 1880, there is a good deal about his views on music, made sadly unreadable, not by the error of his ideas, but by his perverse neglect of recognized technicalities. Among the rest is an attempt at a setting of "Ye Mariners of England," with bars inserted as if to mark the feet of the prosody instead of the beat of the melody, which was part of his scheme, though it naturally offends a musician.
11His little output of musical composition need never see the light. Once he had "Blow, blow, thou winter's wind" set up in type, but it was discreetly blotted. The manuscript page of "On Old Ægina's Rocks" is in the Coniston Museum, for the curious to behold. Others were little rhymes for children—the words printed in his "Poems," or fragments from Scott and Shakespeare, "How should I thy true love know?" "From Wigton to the foot of Ayr," "Come unto these yellow sands," "From the east to western Ind," &c., with a couple of odes of Horace, "Faune, Nympharum" and "Tu ne quæsieris." Here, as specimens, it is enough to give a little scrap from "Marion," to which he set the air and sketched on accompaniment; and his own rough draft of a songlet, of which the words, at any rate, are lovely, and intimately Ruskin. They might be the motto to the Queen's Gardens of "Sesame":
13Trust thou thy Love; if she be proud, is she not sweet?
14Trust thou thy Love; if she be mute, is she not pure?
15Lay thou thy soul full in her hands, low at her feet;
16Fail, Sun and Breath—yet, for thy peace, she shall endure!
18Dr. Dufft Returns.
20Dr. CARL DUFFT has returned from a tour ranging from Lancaster, Pa., to Chicago, Ill., as follows:
21Chicago, Ill., Apollo Club, February 9, 1903.
22Danville, Ill., recital, February 10, 1903.
23St. Paul, Minn., Choral Club, February 12, 1903.
24Minneapolis, Minn., Philharmonic Club, February 13, 1903.
25Des Moines, Ia., recital, February 14, 1903.
26With the Redpath company, as manager of company:
27Allentown, Pa., February 16, 1903.
28Chambersburg, Pa., February 17, 1903.
29Norristown, Pa., February 18, 1903.
30Philadelphia, Pa., February 19, 1903.
31Lancaster, Pa., February 20, 1903.
33Dr. Dufft is already laying out his work for the summer period at Chautauqua, and looks forward to it, his second season, with anticipation. He became a pronounced favorite last year, and the following, from the Chautauqua Herald, echoes this:
35In fact, a voice of the calibre of Dr. Dufft has long since been the one element wanted, if anything were lacking, to round out a thoroughly artistic program. Dr. Dufft has sprung into most popular favor. His broad, round, robust voice, his own good natured bearing and his thorough musicianship have won for him at once a recognized place at these concerts. He would be missed already were he removed from Chautauqua.
37Rossignol-Durno Recital.
39MISS EMMA ROSSIGNOL, soprano, and Jeannette Durno, pianist, will give a recital at Mendelssohn Hall on the afternoon of March 4. Miss Rossignol is an Iowa girl who has been in Europe for the past ten years and has sung with success in concert and opera in the musical centres of Europe, including Dresden, Vienna, Berlin and in the Italian grand opera, Royal Theatre Manzoni, in Pistoria.
41Jeannette Durno is a pupil of Leschetizky and has given many successful concerts in Europe, and since her return to America she has appeared in most of the principal cities of the United States and Canada, her playing always calling forth the highest praise. She is booked to appear eighteen times with the Theodore Thomas Orchestra on its annual tour this spring, starting March 30.
43Bispham's Sunday Recital.
45DAVID BISPHAM will give his postponed song recital in Carnegie Hall on Sunday afternoon, March 1, at 3:30. He will sing the same program announced for the recital in January last, and which he was compelled to cancel because of illness. The list will comprise twenty songs by the greatest song composers, Schubert, Schumann, Franz, Brahms and Richard Strauss.
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