Part 13 (2/2)

This, this is life, when pleasure drives out care.

Short is the span of time we each may share.

To-day, while love, wine, song, the hours adorn, To-day we live: none know the coming morn.

Lord Curryfin's a.s.siduities to Miss Gryll had discomposed Mr. Falconer more than he chose to confess to himself. Lord Curryfin, on entering the drawing-rooms, went up immediately to the young lady of the house; and Mr. Falconer, to the amazement of the reverend doctor, sat down in the outer drawing-room on a sofa by the side of Miss Ilex, with whom he entered into conversation.

In the inner drawing-room some of the young ladies were engaged with music, and were entreated to continue their performance. Some of them were conversing, or looking over new publications.

After a brilliant symphony, performed by one of the young visitors, in which runs and crossings of demisemiquavers in _tempo prestissimo_ occupied the princ.i.p.al share, Mr. Falconer asked Miss Ilex how she liked it.

_Miss Ilex._ I admire it as a splendid piece of legerdemain; but it expresses nothing.

_Mr. Falconer._ It is well to know that such things can be done; and when we have reached the extreme complications of art, we may hope to return to Nature and simplicity.

_Miss Ilex._ Not that it is impossible to reconcile execution and expression. Rubini identified the redundancies of ornament with the overflowings of feeling, and the music of Donizetti furnished him most happily with the means of developing this power. I never felt so transported out of myself as when I heard him sing _Tu che al ciel spiegasti l' ali._

_Mr. Falconer._ Do you place Donizetti above Mozart?

_Miss Ilex._ Oh, surely not. But for supplying expressive music to a singer like Rubini, I think Donizetti has no equal; at any rate no superior. For music that does not require, and does not even suit, such a singer, but which requires only to be correctly interpreted to be universally recognised as the absolute perfection of melody, harmony, and expression, I think Mozart has none. Beethoven perhaps: he composed only one opera, Fidelio; but what an opera that is! What an effect in the sudden change of the key, when Leonora throws herself between her husband and Pizarro: and again, in the change of the key with the change of the scene, when we pa.s.s from the prison to the hall of the palace!

What pathos in the songs of affection, what grandeur in the songs of triumph, what wonderful combinations in the accompaniments, where a perpetual stream of counter-melody creeps along in the ba.s.s, yet in perfect harmony with the melody above!

_Mr. Falconer._ What say you to Haydn?

_Miss Ilex._ Haydn has not written operas, and my princ.i.p.al experience is derived from the Italian theatre. But his music is essentially dramatic. It is a full stream of perfect harmony in subjection to exquisite melody; and in simple ballad-strains, that go direct to the heart, he is almost supreme and alone. Think of that air with which every one is familiar, 'My mother bids me bind my hair': the graceful flow of the first part, the touching effect of the semitones in the second: with true intonation and true expression, the less such an air is accompanied the better.

_Mr. Falconer._ There is a beauty and an appeal to the heart in ballads which will never lose its effect except on those with whom the pretence of fas.h.i.+on overpowers the feeling of Nature.{1}

1 Braham said something like this to a Parliamentary Committee on Theatres, in 1832.

_Miss Ilex._ It is strange, however, what influence that pretence has, in overpowering all natural feelings, not in music alone.

'Is it not curious,' thought the doctor, 'that there is only one old woman in the room, and that my young friend should have selected her for the object of his especial attention?'

But a few simple notes struck on the ear of his young friend, who rose from the sofa and approached the singer. The doctor took his place to cut off his retreat.

Miss Gryll, who, though a proficient in all music, was particularly partial to ballads, had just begun to sing one.

[Ill.u.s.tration: In vain was pursuit, though some followed pell-mell 132-100]

THE DAPPLED PALFREY{1}

1 Founded on Le Vair Palefroi: among the Fabliaux published by Barbazan.

'My traitorous uncle has wooed for himself: Her father has sold her for land and for pelf: My steed, for whose equal the world they might search, In mockery they borrow to bear her to church.

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