 | Letters from New York |  |
LETTER XXVII.
It is curious to observe by what laws ideas are associated;
how, from the tiniest seed of thought, rises the umbrageous
tree, with moss about its foot, blossoms on its head, and
birds among its branches. Reading my last letter, concerning
the spiral series of the universe, some busy little
spirit suggested that there should, somewhere in creation,
be a flower that made music. But I said, do they not all
make melody? The Persians write their music in colours;
and perchance, in the arrangement of flowers, angels may
perceive songs and anthems. The close relationship between
light and music has been more or less dimly perceived
by the human mind everywhere. The Persian,
when he gave to each note a colour, probably embodied a
greater mystery than he understood. The same undefined
perception makes us talk of the harmony of colours, and the
tone of a picture; it led the blind man to say that his idea
of red was like the sound of a trumpet; and it taught Festus
to speak of “a rainbow of sweet sounds.” John S. Dwight
music as “a prophecy of what life is to be; the
rainbow of promise, translated out of seeing into hearing.”
But I must not trust myself to trace the beautiful analogy
between light and music. As I muse upon it, it is like an
opening between clouds, so transparent, and so deep, deep,
that it seems as if one could see through it beyond the farthest
star—if one could but gaze long and earnestly enough.
“Every flower writes music on the air;” and every tree
that grows enshrines a tone within its heart. Do you
doubt it? Try the willow and the oak, the elm and the
poplar, and see whether each has not its own peculiar
sound, waiting only for the master's hand to make them
discourse sweet music. One of the most remarkable instruments
ever invented gives proof of this. M. Guzikow
was a Polish Jew; a shepherd in the service of a nobleman.
From earliest childhood, music seemed to pervade
his whole being. As he tended his flocks in the loneliness
of the fields, he was for ever fashioning flutes and reeds
from the trees that grew around him. He soon observed
that the tone of the flute varied according to the wood he
used; by degrees he came to know every tree by its sound;
and the forests stood round him a silent oratorio. The skill
with which he played on his rustic flutes attracted attention.
The nobility invited him to their houses, and he became
a favourite of fortune. Men never grew weary of
hearing him. But soon it was perceived that he was pouring
forth the fountains of his life in song. Physicians said
he must abjure the flute, or die. It was a dreadful sacrifice;
for music to him was life. His old familiarity with
tones of the forest came to his aid. He took four round
sticks of wood, and bound them closely together with bands
of straw; across these he arranged numerous pieces of
round, smooth wood, of different kinds. They were arranged
irregularly to the eye, though harmoniously to the ear;
end, and some at the other; in and out, in apparent confusion.
The whole was lashed together with twine, as
men would fasten a raft. This was laid on a common table,
and struck with two small ebony sticks. Rude as the
instrument appeared, Guzikow brought from it such rich and
liquid melody, that it seemed to take the heart of man on
its wings, and bear it aloft to the throne of God. They
who have heard it, describe it as far exceeding even the
miraculous warblings of Paganini's violin. The emperor
of Austria heard it, and forth with took the Polish peasant
into his own especial service. In some of the large cities,
he now and then gave a concert, by royal permission; and
on such an occasion he was heard by a friend of mine at
Hamburg.
The countenance of the musician was very pale and
haggard, and his large dark eyes wildly expressive. He
covered his head, according to the custom of the Jews;
but the small cap of black velvet was not to be distinguished
in colour from the jet black hair that fell from under it,
and flowed over his shoulders in glossy, natural ringlets.
He wore the costume of his people, an ample robe, that
fell about him in graceful folds. From head to foot all was
black, as his own hair and eyes, relieved only by the burning
brilliancy of a diamond on his breast. The butterflies
of fashion were of course attracted by the unusual and
poetic beauty of his appearance; and ringlets à la Guzikow
were the order of the day.
Before this singularly gifted being stood a common wooden
table, on which reposed his rude-looking invention.
He touched it with the ebony sticks. At first you heard a
sound as of wood; the orchestra rose higher and higher,
till it drowned its voice: then gradually subsiding, the
wonderful instrument rose above other sounds, clear-warbling,
like a nightingale; the orchestra rose higher, like the
sweet tones of the magic instrument, rich, liquid, and strong,
like a sky-lark piercing the heavens! They who heard it
listened in delighted wonder, that the trees could be made
to speak thus under the touch of genius.
There is something pleasant to my imagination in the
fact that every tree has its own peculiar note, and is a performer
in the great concert of the universe, which for ever
rises before the throne of Jehovah. But when the idea is
applied to man, it is painful in the extreme. The emperor
of Russia is said to have an imperial band, in which each
man is doomed all his life long to sound one note, that he
may acquire the greatest possible perfection. The effect
of the whole is said to be admirable; but nothing would
tempt me to hear this human musical machine. A tree is
a unit in creation; though, like everything else, it stands
in relation to all things. But every human soul represents
the universe. There is horrible profanation in compelling
a living spirit to utter but one note. Theological sects
strive to do this continually; for they are sects because
they magnify some one attribute of deity, or see but one
aspect of the divine government. To me, their fragmentary
echoes are most discordant; but doubtless the angels
listen to them as a whole, and perhaps they hear a pleasant
chorus.
Music, whether I listen to it, or try to analyse it, ever
fills me with thoughts which I cannot express—because
I cannot sing; for nothing but music can express the emotions
to which it gives birth. Language, even the richest
flow of metaphor, is too poor to do it. That the universe
moves to music, I have no doubt; and could I but penetrate
this mystery, where the finite passes into the infinite,
I should surely know how the world was created. Pythagoras
supposed that the heavenly bodies, in their motion,
produced music inaudible to mortal ears. These motions
stated in numbers, corresponding to the numbers which express
the harmony of sounds. This “music of the spheres”
has been considered an idea altogether fanciful; but the
immortal Kepler applied the Pythagorean theory of numbers,
and musical intervals, to the distances of the planets;
and a long time after, Newton discovered and acknowledged
the importance of the application. Said I not that the universe
moved to music? The planets dance before Jehovah;
and music is the echo of their motions. Surely the
ear of Beethoven had listened to it, when he wrote those
misnamed “waltzes” of his, which, as John S. Dwight says,
“remind us of no dance, unless it be the dances of the heavenly
systems in their sublime career through space.”
Have you ever seen Retszch's illustration of Schiller's
Song of a Bell? If you have, and know how to appreciate
its speaking gracefulness, its earnest depth of life, you
are richer than Rothschild or Astor; for a vision of beauty
is an everlasting inheritance. Perhaps none but a German,
would have thus entwined the sound of a bell with the
whole of human life; for with them the bell mingles with
all of mirth, sorrow, and worship. Almost all the German
and Belgian towns are provided with chiming bells, which
play at noon and evening. There was such a set of musical
bells on the church of St. Nicholas, at Hamburg.
The bell-player was a gray-headed man, who had for many
years rung forth the sonorous chimes, that told the hours
to the busy throng below. When the church was on fire,
either from infirmity, or want of thought, the old man remained
at his post. In the terrible confusion of the blazing
city, no one thought of him, till the high steeple was seen
wreathed with flame. As the throng gazed upward, the
firm walls of the old church, that had stood for ages, began to
shake. At that moment the bells sounded the well-known
German Choral, which usually concludes the Protestant
Another moment, and there was an awful crash! The
bells, which had spoken into the hearts of so many generations,
went silent for ever. They and the old musician sunk
together into a fiery grave; but the echo of their chimes
goes sounding on through the far eternity.
They have a beautiful custom at Hamburg. At ten o'clock
in the morning, when men are hurrying hither and yon
in the great whirlpool of business, from the high church
tower comes down the sound of sacred music, from a large
and powerful horn appropriated to that service. It is as if
an angel spake from the clouds, reminding them of immortality.
You have doubtless heard of the mysterious music that
peals over the bay at West Pascagoula. It has for a long
time been one of the greatest wonders of the Southwest.
Multitudes have heard it, rising as it were from the water,
like the drone of a bagpipe, then floating away—away—
away—in the distance—soft, plaintive, and fairy-like, as if
œolian harps sounded with richer melody through the
liquid element; but none have been able to account for the
beautiful phenomenon.
“There are several legends touching these mysterious
sounds. One of them relates to the extinction of the Pascagoula
tribe of Indians; the remnant of which, many years
ago, it is said, deliberately entered the waters of the bay
and drowned themselves, to escape capture and torture,
when attacked by a neighbouring formidable tribe. There
is another legend, as well authenticated as traditionary history
can well be, to the effect, that about one hundred years
ago, three families of Spaniards, who had provoked the resentment
of the Indians, were beset by the savages, and
to avoid massacre and pollution, marched into the bay, and
were drowned—men, women, and children. Tradition
adds, that the Spaniards went down to the waters following
when about to commit self-immolation. Slaves in the
neighbourhood believe that the sounds, which sweep with
mournful cadence over the bay, are uttered by the spirits
of those hapless families; nor will any remonstrance against
the superstition abate their terror, when the wailing is
heard.” Formerly, neither threats nor blows could induce
them to venture out after night; and to this day, it is exceedingly
difficult to induce one of them to go in a boat alone
upon the quiet waters of Pascagoula Bay. One of them,
being asked by a recent traveller what he thought occasioned
that music, replied:
“Wall, I tinks it's dead folks come back agin; dat's
what I does. White people say it's dis ting and dat ting;
but it's noting, massa, but de ghosts of people wat didn't die
nat'rally in dere beds, long time ago—Indians or Spaniards,
I believes dey was.”
“But does the music never frighten you?”
“Well, it does. Sometimes wen I'se out alone on de
bay in a skiff, and I hears it about, I always finds myself
in a perspiration; and de way I works my way home, is of
de fastest kind. I declare, de way I'se frightened sometimes,
is so bad, I doesn't know myself.”
But in these days, few things are allowed to remain mysterious.
A correspondent of the Baltimore Republican
thus explains the music of the water-spirits:
“During several of my voyages on the Spanish main, in
the neighbourhood of `Paraguay,' and San Juan de Nicaragua,
from the nature of the coast, we were compelled to
anchor at a considerable distance from the shore; and
every evening, from dark to late night, our ears were delighted
with œolian music, that could be heard beneath the
counter of our schooner. At first, I thought it was the seabreeze
sweeping through the strings of my violin, (the
bridge of which I had inadvertently left standing;) but after
ear on the rail of the vessel, when I was continually charmed
with the most heavenly strains that ever fell upon my
ear. They did not sound as close to us, but were sweet,
mellow, and aërial; like the soft breathings of a thousand
lutes, touched by fingers of the deep sea-nymphs, at an immense
distance.
“Although I have considerable `music in my soul,' one
night I became tired, and determined to fish. My luck in
half an hour was astonishing; I had half filled my bucket
with the finest white cat-fish I ever saw; and it being late,
and the cook asleep, and the moon shining, I filled my
bucket with water, and took fish and all into my cabin for
the night.
“I had not yet fallen asleep, when the same sweet notes
fell upon my ear; and getting up, what was my surprise
to find my `cat fish' discoursing sweet sounds to the sides
of my bucket.
“I examined them closely, and discovered that there was
attached to each lower lip an excrescence, divided by soft,
wiry fibres. By the pressure of the upper lip thereon,
and by the exhalation and discharge of breath, a vibration
was created, similar to that produced by the breath on the
tongue of the jew's-harp.”
So you see the Naiads have a band to dance by. I
should like to have the mocking bird try his skill at imitating
this submarine melody. You know the Bob-o'link
with his inimitable strain of “linked sweetness, long drawn
out?” At a farm-house occupied by my father-in-law, one
of these rich warblers came and seated himself on a rail
near the window, and began to sing. A cat-bird (our New
England mocking-bird) perched near, and began to imitate
the notes. The short, quick, “bob-a-link,” “bob-a-link,”
he could master very well; but when it came to the prolonged
trill of gushing melody, at the close of the strain—
poured forth his soul in song; the mocking-bird hopped
nearer, and listened most intently. Again he tried; but it
was all in vain. The bob-o'-link, as if conscious that none
could imitate his God-given tune, sent forth a clearer,
stronger, richer strain than ever. The mocking bird evidently
felt that his reputation was at stake. He warbled
all kinds of notes in quick succession. You would have
thought the house was surrounded by robins, sparrows,
whippowills, black-birds, and linnets. Having shown off
his accomplishments, he again tried his powers on the alltogether
inimitable trill. The effort he made was prodigious;
but it was mere talent trying to copy genius. He
couldn't do it. He stopped, gasping, in the midst of the
prolonged melody, and flew away abruptly, in evident vexation.
Music, like everything else, is now passing from the
few to the many. The art of printing has laid before the
multitude the written wisdom of ages, once locked up in
the elaborate manuscripts of the cloister. Engraving and
daguerreotype spread the productions of the pencil before
the whole people. Music is taught in our common schools,
and the cheap accordion brings its delights to the humblest
class of citizens. All these things are full of prophecy.
Slowly, slowly, to the measured sound of the spirit's music,
there goes round the world the golden band of brotherhood;
slowly, slowly, the earth comes to its place, and
makes a chord with heaven.
Sing on, thou true-hearted, and be not discouraged! If
a harp be in perfect tune, and a flute, or other instrument
of music, be near it, and in perfect tune also, thou canst
not play on one without wakening an answer from the
other. Behold, thou shalt hear its sweet echo in the air,
as if played on by the invisible. Even so shall other spirits
vibrate to the harmony of thine. Utter what God giveth
graceful Paris, in frozen Iceland, and the deep stillness of
the Hindoo jungle, thou wilt wake a slumbering echo, to
be carried on for ever through the universe. In word and
act sing thou of united truth and love; another voice shall
take up the strain over the waters; soon it will become a
WORLD CONCERT;—and thou above there, in that realm of
light and love, well pleased wilt hear thy early song, in
earth's sweet vibration to the harps of heaven.
| Letters from New York | |