Excerpts on Music, Etc.
To me the overture to the Lobgesang is a vision of Christian life, with its own peculiar struggles and sorrows as well as joys. It is the sixth, seventh, and eighth chapters of the Epistle to the Romans in essence. The mingling of twilight yearnings, ever pressing onward, with calm and trustful praise, ever pressing #pward, is an’ almost unbearably true echo of the heart, especially in the § Allegretto agitato; then the Andante religioso is the still, mellow glow of ‘light at eventide,” to which one looks forward; then I go just one step farther, and find a fore-echo of the eternal song in the burst of vocal praise, after the long tension of the voiceless overture.
On no form of ‘‘ The Beautiful” is ‘‘ passing away” so engraven as on music; I have felt this with painful vividness. In “passing away” lies its very essence, not merely its accidents. The most exquisite passage, if lingered on, loses its very existence as well as beauty; the time, the motion, is the life, the actual notes only a dead letter without it; while to Zo/d it is simply an inherent impossibility.
Is not the tendency of the human voice to fall from the true pitch, one of the results of ‘‘¢4e Fall”? Adam and Eve must have sung in tune, like the birds. How wonderful it is, that the birds not only sing their own songs in tune, but all the songs always seem in tune with each other, except the cuckoo, when passing from his major third in May to his minor third (or even second) in June!
May not one apply this to the dissonances within, that stun and bewilder and weary us, and believe that if we are indeed God’s chosen praise-harps, all that is not as yet ¢wne is but the cuning, which is of in itself beautiful.
Next after prayer, nothing is so healing and calming as pouring out oneself in music. Not in singing; there, one is limited by words, but playing, it restores the balance marvellously. Conyentionality would forbid this ‘‘ antidote of medicated music” in some sorrows, but in such one can have the outlet of words and the balm of human sympathy; music seems an especial medicine, for all things in which this is not to be had, or could not be sought.
Gregorians are to me only curious and interesting, like dried plants or fossils, not living and lovely.
Of the chorus “And the glory of the Lord” (Handel’s ‘‘Messiah”) I shall never forget the impression of its first bars at the Birmingham Festival, 1867; it gave such a sense of clear swnmny grandeur, massive open-browed stateliness, and fearless, glorious, overwhelmingness; a musical expression of one’s ideal personification of TRUTH, majestically going forth conquering and to conquer.
Beethoven’s 95th Psalm is a grandly jubilant thing, with contrasts of sternness and melancholy.
I believe that everything earthly contains analogies of the heavenly, but that we have not yet the key to all the golden ciphers; and it may be that our yet ‘‘unpurgéd vision” is not capable of reading them, beyond a certain point. This too, all designedly, is the material fitted and planned to reflect the spiritual.
Rubens’ sacred paintings impress one with his wonderful av#, Vandyke’s with the reverent love he betrays for the subject itself.
Poetry is a second translation of the soul’s feeling; it must be rendered into thought, and thought must change its nebulous robe of semi-wording into definite language, before it reaches another heart. JZusic is a first translation of feeling, needing no second, but entering the heart direct.
Music seems the only universal language understood by men of every tongue and age, and by the angels too, It is an alphabet of the language of heaven, not any more equal to it than an ABC book is to Milton. Why should such a mysteriously subtle and unaccountable gratification have been provided for us? Verily He is Love!
The magnificent massive choruses in the ‘‘ Israel in Egypt” need a gigantic orchestra to give scope for their great swing of grandeur, The mighty flinging of sound from side to side, in some of the double choruses, is what might be carried out if Handel had Salisbury Plain for his concert room, cannon for his basses, an army for his tenors, and angelic legions for his sopranos.
As to the ‘‘infinite suggestiveness” of music, the ‘ Israel in Egypt” choruses exemplify this to a marvellous degree; so does ‘‘Let their celestial concerts” with its d/aze of light; so does Beethoyen’s Pastoral Symphony.
A hush comes over one at the very thought of one so loved being on the very threshold of eternal rest and joy, so near Christ’s own immediate presence. It is as.if the veil were growing half transparent, which hangs between life and its dreams, eternal life and its realities.
The shadow of orphanhood has now fallen upon you; and therefore His blessed name of Father acquires depth and reality; “doubtless Thou art our Father.” Some day, when we are where they reckon not by days and years, He will tell you why He has tried you, and let you look back on your life story and see the golden thread of His fatherly love and care shining over and around it all, — not as it is now, winding in and out, and only seen by glimpses.
“Faithful and True.” What a keystone to the grand bridge which His promises have made for us, over the abyss of despair and misery! Faithful as regards us; True, essentially and inherently.
Experience of life is a great commentary on the Bible, and a sort of realization of it. At first, the Bible is a detailed map, which we study and admire; but on the road we find the very same things noticed, but not realized, in one’s map. Many of the hills and valleys I read of (and only read of), in the Psalms, seem to have come across my own journey of late. It has been so to-day with Isaiah xxvi. 3, which is rather like sitting under the shadow of a great rock, which was marked in one’s map, but was not in sight a few days ago.
“I have given them Thy word”: John xvii. To me this has been a golden key to many other texts, or a sort of seal upon them; the Father’s word and the Saviour‘s gift. Apply this first to the ‘* word of reconciliation,” the Father’s message of salvation through Christ. Then to the whole Bible; it makes it ten times dearer, and it seems our claim to appropriate every sweet promise,