Part 1 (1/2)

Cardinal Newman as a Musician

by Edward Bellasis

It is a rerapher that, ”Our Saint was profoundly convinced that there is in hty power to stir the heart with high and noble emotion, and an especial fitness to raise it above sense to the love of heavenly things”[1] In like manner the Saint's illustrious son, Cardinal Newentle, peaceful strain excites in us,” and ”how soul and body are rapt and carried away captive by the concord of musical sounds where the ear is open to their power;”[2] how, too, ”reater and more profound than any in the visible world, ideas which centre, indeed, in Him whom Catholicism manifests, who is the seat of all beauty, order, and perfection whatever”[3] Music, then, to hia”[4] For his and they thrill with an ecstatic ”[5] ”Is it possible,” he asks, ”that that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so siulated, so various yet so one and perishes? Can it be that those e yearnings after we know not what, and awful iht in us by what is unsubstantial, and coins and ends in itself It is not so; it cannot be No; they have escaped fros of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound; they are echoes fronificat_ of saints, or the living laws of Divine governance, or the Divine attributes, so are they beside themselves, which we cannot compass, which we cannot utter”[6] And with him, as with St

Philip, hts and plans”?[7] True, out of its place, he will but allow that ”playing ant pasti birds”[9] were no conceivable substitutes for education properly so called, any -Roo as an art in any given case did not tend to displace the more serious business of life; should it become for such an one an ”aid to reflection,” or, _per contra_, profitably distract him; in brief, if it anywise helped a soul on to her journey's end, then welcoift”

[Footnote 1: Cardinal Capecelatro's _Life of St Philip Neri_, translated by the Rev Thomas Alder Pope, of the Oratory, vol ii p

83]

[Footnote 2: _Discourses to Mixed Congregations_, p 297, Fourth Edit

1871]

[Footnote 3: _Idea of a University_, dis iv p 80, Sixth Edit

1886]

[Footnote 4: _Oxford University Sermons_, p 346, Edit 1884]

[Footnote 5: _Idea_, dis ix 230 Dr Chalmers writes to Blanco White: ”You speak in your letter of the relief you have found in ood ear, and yet I am conscious of a power in music which I ords to describe It touches chords, reaches depths in the soul which lie beyond all other influences

Nothing in my experience is more mysterious, more inexplicable”

(Blanco White's _Life and Correspondence_, edited by Thom, 1845, vol

iii p 195)]

[Footnote 6: _Oxford University Sere on : ”There are seven notes in the scale, make them fourteen; yet what a slender outfit for so vast an enterprise! What science brings so reat master in it create his neorld!” Mrs J Mozley says, ”We are pleased at your tribute to music, but what do you mean by fourteen notes? Do you nant at the idea I think you knehat you were saying Please tell me when you write”

(Mozley, _Corr_ ii p 411) He replies: ”I had already been both aross blunder about the 'fourteen' But do not, pray, suppose I _doubled_ the notes for seh it looks very like it The truth is, I had a most stupid idea in my head there were fifteen se it over when published, I saw the absurdity I have a great dislike to publishi+ng hot bread, and this is one proof of the inconvenience” (_Ibid_) The Second Edition has ”thirteen notes,”

which is correct, if the octave be included, but later editions go back to ”fourteen”]

[Footnote 7: Pope, _Capecelatro_, ii 82]

[Footnote 8: _Idea_, dis vi p 144]

[Footnote 9: _Ibid_]

Thus, of a pupil's violin playing, Septes, and I had so his proper studies Now since he has not been, his ain

To my mind music is an important part of education, where boys have a turn for it It is a great resource when they are thrown on the world, it is a social areat a point, e does not do this It is often a great point for a boy to escape fro difficult passages on the violin, and thinking of anything else” Perhaps he was speaking froan the violin when I was ten years old,”

and his two brothers used to acco to Oxford he kept up his music Thus in February, 1820: ”Our music club at St John's has been offered, and has accepted, the music-room, for our weekly private concerts;” and later: ”I went to the R's to play the difficult first violin to Haydn, Mozart, &c;”[10] and in June, 1820: ”I was asked by a o to his rooms for a _little_ ood-natured h his enthusias quartets on a heavy tenor from seven to twelve Oh, my poor eyes and head and back”[11]

When the news arrived of his success at Oriel he was practising e to take the news to the fortunate candidate--s in Broad Street, and found hier, who did not associate such an accomplishment with a candidateshi+p for the Oriel Common-Roo what may be considered to have been his usual forreeable news to announce, viz, that Mr Neas elected Fellow of Oriel, and that his immediate presence was required there,' the person addressedThis led theperson, to which Mr Newined, no sooner had thedown his instruain, ”With a half- them (his electors at Oriel), it was told theed to a club of instrumental music, and had himself taken part in its public performances, a diversion, innocent in itself, but scarcely in keeping, or in sy a satisfactory career to a nascent Fellow of Oriel”[13] So thought the _quidnuncs_; nevertheless, Mr Newers (the late Lord Blachford), joined him herein, and writes, January, 1834: ”Your sermonsand Beethoven are most satisfactory I wish I could hope to join you in the last in any moderate time However, I do expect you will take ain, if it were only to res I used to spend with you when at Iffley I ah of my bass to satisfy you without Beethoven in the course of next term” NB--”He was to be in Froude's room over my head,--JHN”[14] Mr Bowden also played the violoncello, and Neas further supported by one as a musician, and a deal more besides ”Mr Blanco White,” he writes, November, 1826, ”plays the violin, and has an exquisite ear”[15] ”I have only one sister alive now,” he said sadly in September, 1875, ”and she is old, but plays Beethoven very well[16] She has an old-fashi+oned, energetic style of playing; but one person, I remember, played Beethoven as no one else, Blanco White I don't kno he learned the violin, but he would see him”

”Both were violinists,” writes Mr T Mozley of Blanco White and Mr

Newman, ”but with different instruht after night anyone walking in the silence of Merton Lane ht hear his continual atteain and again like PhiloleNewings, where I was all the audience Most interesting was it to contrast Blanco White's excited and indeed agitated countenance with New rich notes with a steady hand”[18] Dr Neas still ”bowing” forty years later, by which tied ”sphinx-like i expression upon his face as strains alternated between grave and gay Producing his violin fro forward, and holding his violin against his chest, instead of under the chin in thein perfect tune, in execution aard yet vigorous, painstaking rather than brilliant, he would often attend at the Oratory School Sunday practices between two and four of an afternoon, Father Ryder and Father Norris soiven up the violin,[20] but finding soain by way of encouraging the for his boys And he quietly inculcated a lesson in self-efface before our tih opinion of his own perfor the Liverpool anti-Popery spouter's summons to battle, he relied rather on his friends' estimate of his powers than upon his own ”Canon M'Neill's well-known talents as a finished orator would th between them, because he himself was no orator He had in fact no practice in public speaking _His friends, however, told hireed to meet Canon M'Neill, he would only , and say all he had to say, after which he (Mr Newman) would conclude with a tune on the violin The public would then be able to judge which was the better , a fluency void of expression he had little patience, and when, at a term ”break-up,” a youth's bow cleverly capered about on a violoncello, he uttered no compliment when the boy had concluded his flourishes It was a

[Footnote 10: Mozley, _Correspondence_, i p 52]