Volume II Part 14 (1/2)
CHAPTER VII
MUSICIANS AS LOVERS
”Et le cortege chantait quelque chose de triste des oh! et des ah!”--ZOLA, _L'assoossip, to see if it has served any purpose, and if the multitude of experiences totals up into any definite result:
Of course, as you were just going to say, he said, ”If music be the food of love” But then you ed by saying, ”Much virtue in an 'if'” For music is not the food of love, any more than oatmeal or watermelons And yet in a sense, music is a love-food--in the sense I mean, that there is love-nourishment in tubes of paint, which can perpetuate your beauty, uese sonnets and erotic rondeaux; or in tubs of plaster of Paris, or in bargain-counterfuls of dress goods to add the last word to a woman's beauty In such a sense, indeed, there is _materia amorofica_ in music, for with music one can--or at least one did--show forth the very rhythated haruerite
But as there are in those same tubes of oozy paint horrific visions like Franz Stuck's ”War,” or portraits of plutocrats by Bonnat, and as there are in ink-bottles sad potencies of tailors' bills and scathing reviews of this very book, so it is possible under the naer exercises, and yet s of ”Hiawatha,” or ”_Du bist wie eine Blueneralisation, and that is a generalisation in the opposite direction You can prove anything by statistics, if you can only choose your statistics and stop when you want to But statistics are like automobiles Sometimes if you hitch yourself up with a statistic, you meet the fate of the farmer who put his fool head in the yoke with a skittish steer
There was a time when I could have written you an essay on theA little later, I could have done no worse with a thesis to the effect that one now, after a ti material from everyay for this book on musicians' love affairs For, to repeat, with a few statistics you can prove anything; with a co, or its next-door neighbour
The way to test any food is to observe its effects on those addicted to it To study the true workings of music, then, you would not count the pulse of one of those ”Oh-I'h even dance-music Nor would you take for your test one of those laymen who are fond of this tune or that, because it reht when Sally Perkins sang it while I was out in theKitty Gray, now Mrs van Van,--or was it Bessie Broho buried her husband two years ago next Sunday”
These are people to whom music is as much a rarity as Nesselrode to a newsboy
The true place, surely, to test the effect of music is in the souls of the people who live in it, breathe it, steep themselves in it, play it,--and what is worse,--work it
To the great musicians themselves, then, we have turned What could have been better for the purpose than to havetheir hearts on their sleeves, or in their letters, their music, their lives, as they trooped forth endlessly from the tomes of Burney, Hawkins, Fetis, Grove, Rieraphies and memoirs innumerable?
A motley crew they have formed, and you perhaps have been able to find a unity, if not of purpose, at least of result, in the music they have ain, only this tio by at a review--the second time at the double-quick Here they co the rout are those stately or capering figures, who, froreat virtuosi of their tie, when musical critics had no columns to perpetuate their iconoclas his lyre with a et out of it The gossips said he loved Daphne, and madly withal, but she took to a tree--No, let the Gods pass as they will It is with men we deal, not Gods
Note especially the cluster of those wonderful e, went from Flanders and thereabouts, into Italy and all around Europe, weaving their Flemish counterpoint like a net all over the world ofily doe blacksmith There is Marc Houtermann, called the Prince of Musicians He lived at Brussels, and died there aged forty, and the sarave by his musically named Joanna Gavadia, who knew music well, and who, let us still hope, died of a broken heart Cipriano de Rore, De Croes, and Jacques Buus were all es to fortune Philippe de Monte may or may not have married; we only know that a pupil of his wrote hi, and we can only trust that he did notstars of modern times,” whose music was so beautiful that once at Munich a thunder-storm was miraculously hushed at the first note of one of his motets, lived a love-life much like Schumann's, save that he seethen and purify his resolve The only court he went to, to win her, was the court at Munich, where his Regina was a maid of honour She bore him six children, and they lived ideally, it seeave way now and then before his hard work, and finally, when he had reached his threescore and ten, his wife canise her, who had been at his side for thirty years She guarded him tenderly, and strove hard to cheer his last days, but melancholy surrendered him only to death
Adrien Willaert had a wife, and loved her long and well, and wrote rew ely he never hter, as herself a composer, and had perhaps a romance of her own, down there in Juliet's country where her Flemish father took her
How otherwise is the doainst hier! When he ell rid of this baggage, he fell into an intrigue with a lady of the court of Ferrara Her name was Tarquinia Molza, and she was a poetess, but her relatives frowned upon the alliance of her poetry and his o back to her mother at Mantua, where she outlived De Wert some twenty-seven years
His is such a life as one would take to prove the unsettling effects of music; yet what shall we say then of Josse Boutmy, who lived ninety-nine years and raised twelve children, spending the greater part of his life with his faithful spouse in one long struggle against poverty, one eternal drudgery for the pence necessary to educate his family? Shall we not say that he was as truly influenced by one to Italy as a boy, and youthose soft Italian skies for his amorous troubles But then you'll encounter such a life as that of Palestrina spent altogether in Italy
HeHer name was Lucrezia, and their life seems to have been one of ideal devotion She bore hi the twilight of poverty, adorning that high noon of his glory, when the Pope himself turned to Palestrina, and implored him to reform and rescue the whole music of the Church from its corruptions It ell that Lucrezia could offer hiht him his direst distress When he was recovered and well, a better post was offered his ran s him broken-hearted with only one worthless son to embitter the last fourteen years of his ed life His nantly iuish of Lucrezia's death
The finest of the of the words:
”By the River of Babylon we have set us down and wept, Re our harps,”