Part 29 (1/2)

whereas this could have been said with truth by Mendelsohn and by Litzst. In Mendelsohn the enormous creative power was modified by the intellect and the conscience. Litzst has no creative power.

Litzst has thus drawn the character of Chopin:-”Rien n'etait plus pur et plus exalte en meme temps que ses pensees; rien n'etait plus tenace, plus exclusif, et plus minutieus.e.m.e.nt devoue que ses affections. Mais cet etre ne comprenait que ce qui etait identique a lui-meme:-le reste n'existait pour lui que comme une sorte de reve facheux, auquel il essayait de se soustraire en vivant au milieu du monde. Toujours perdu dans ses reveries, la realite lui deplaisait. Enfant il ne pouvait toucher a un instrument tranchant sans se blesser; homme il ne pouvait se trouver en face d'un homme different de lui, sans se heurter contre cette contradiction vivante.”

”Ce qui le preservait d'un antagonisme perpetuel c'etait l'habitude volontaire et bientot inveteree de ne point voir, de ne pas entendre ce qui lui deplaisait: en general sans toucher a ses affections personelles, les etres qui ne pensaient pas comme lui devenaient a ses yeux comme des especes de fantomes; et comme il etait d'une politesse charmante, on pouvait prendre pour une bienveillance courtoise ce qui n'etait chez lui qu'un froid dedain-une aversion insurmontable.”

108.

The father of Mozart was a man of high and strict religious principle.

He had a conviction-in his case more truly founded than is usual-that he was the father of a great, a surpa.s.sing genius, and consequently of a being unfortunate in this, that he must be in advance of his age, exposed to error, to envy, to injustice, to strife; and to do his duty to his son demanded large faith and large firmness. But because he _did_ estimate this sacred trust as a duty to be discharged, not only with respect to his gifted son, but to the G.o.d who had so endowed him; so, in spite of many mistakes, the earnest straightforward endeavour to do right in the parent seems to have saved Mozart's moral life, and to have given that completeness to the productions of his genius, which the harmony of the moral and creative faculties alone can bestow.

”The modifying power of circ.u.mstances on Mozart's style, is an interesting consideration. Whatever of striking, of new or beautiful he met with in the works of others left its impression on him; and he often reproduced these efforts, not servilely, but mingling his own nature and feelings with them in a manner not less surprising than delightful.”

This is true equally of Shakespeare and of Raphael, both of whom adapted or rather adopted much from their precursors in the way of material to work upon; and whose incomparable originality consisted in the interfusion of their own great individual genius with every subject they touched, so that it became theirs, and could belong to no other.

The Figaro was composed at Vienna. The Don Juan and Clemenza di t.i.to at Prague;-which I note because the localities are so characteristic of the operas. Cimarosa's Matrimonio Segreto was composed at Prague; it was on the fortification of the Hradschin one morning at sun-rise that he composed the _Pria che spunti in ciel l'aurora_.

When called upon to describe his method of composing, what Mozart said of himself was very striking from its _navete_ and truth. ”I do not,”

he said, ”aim at originality. I do not know in what my originality consists. Why my productions take from my hand that particular form or style which makes them _Mozartish_, and different from the works of other composers is probably owing to the same cause which makes my nose this or that particular shape; makes it, in short, Mozart's nose, and different from other people's.”

Yet, as a composer, Mozart was as _objective_, as dramatic, as Shakspeare and Raphael; Chopin, in comparison, was wholly _subjective_,-the Byron of Music.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

109.

Talking once with Adelaide Kemble, after she had been singing in the ”Figaro,” she compared the music to the bosom of a full blown rose in its voluptuous, intoxicating richness. I said that some of Mozart's melodies seemed to me not so much composed, but found-found on some suns.h.i.+ny day in Arcadia, among nymphs and flowers. ”Yes,” she replied, with ready and felicitous expression, ”not _inventions_, but _existences_.”

[Ill.u.s.tration]

110.

Old George the Third, in his blindness and madness, once insisted on making the selection of pieces for the concert of ancient music (May, 1811),-it was soon after the death of the Princess Amelia. ”The programme included some of the finest pa.s.sages in Handel's 'Samson,'

descriptive of blindness; the 'Lamentation of Jephthah,' for his daughter; Purcel's 'Mad Tom,' and closed with 'G.o.d save the King,' to make sure the application of all that went before.”

[Ill.u.s.tration]

111.

Every one who remembers what Madlle. Rachel was seven or eight years ago, and who sees her now (1853), will allow that she has made no progress in any of the essential excellences of her art:-a certain proof that she is not a great artist in the true sense of the word. She is a finished actress, but she is nothing more, and nothing better; not enough the artist ever to forget or conceal her art; consequently there is a want somewhere, which a mind highly toned and of quick perceptions feels from beginning to end. The parts in which she once excelled-the Phedre and the Hermione, for instance-have become formalised and hard, like studies cast in bronze; and when she plays a new part it has no freshness. I always go to see her whenever I can. I admire her as what she is-the Parisian actress, practised in every trick of her _metier_. I admire what she does, I think how well it is all _done_, and am inclined to clap and applaud her drapery, perfect and ostentatiously studied in every fold, just with the same feeling that I applaud herself.

As to the last scene of Adrienne Lecouvreur, (which those who are _avides de sensation_, athirst for painful emotion, go to see as they would drink a dram, and critics laud as a miracle of art,) it is altogether a mistake and a failure; it is beyond the just limits of terror and pity-beyond the legitimate sphere of _art_. It reminds us of the story of Gentil Bellini and the Sultan. The Sultan much admired Bellini's picture of the decollation of John the Baptist, but informed him that it was inaccurate-surgically-for the tendons and muscles ought to shrink where divided; and then calling for one of his slaves, he drew his scimitar, and striking off the head of the wretch, gave the horror-struck artist a lesson in practical anatomy. So we might possibly learn from Rachel's imitative representation, (studied in an hospital as they say,) how poison acts on the frame, and how the limbs and features writhe into death; but if she were a great moral artist she would feel that what is allowed to be true in painting, is true in art generally; that mere imitation, such as the vulgar delight in, and hold up their hands to see, is the vulgarest and easiest aim of the imitative arts, and that between the true interpretation of poetry in art and such base mechanical means to the lowest ends, there lies an immeasurable distance.