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For Dwight's Journal of Music.

MY SONGS.

FROM THE GERMAN.

All my little songs and fancies
Are the moment's birth alone.
As the fleeting hour advances
Vanishes each winged tone.
Fate poetic souls must sever,

And no tongue must breathe their name.

Ah! how vain to hope that ever
I shall win a lasting fame.

Tones upon my harp-strings burning,

When my heart is touched and thrilled,
Only when to hearts returning
Find their destiny fulfilled.

May their ringing echoes cheer me
When my lyre is hushed and dead,
And the Angel Death is near me
Beckoning to my lonely bed.

TABULAR VIEW

OF THE

C. P. C.

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1630.

Allegri, Batten, Child, Cesti, Carissimi, Luigi Rossi, Bassani. 1670. Lulli, Wise, Aldrich, Kerl, Humphries, Purcell, Lock, Rogers, Blow, Scarlatti. 1690. Goldwin, Lotti, Clark, Clari, Vinci, Collonna, Chreyghton, Steffani, Corelli, Gasparini.

1710. Wagenseil, Geminiani, Green, Astorga, Keiser, Marcello, Durante, Graun, Handel, Croft, Leo, Arne, J. S. Bach, D. Scarlatti, Pergolese, Caldari.

1740. Rameau, Tartini, Alberti, J. C. Bach, W. F. Bach, C. P. Bach, Jomelli Galluppi, Guglielmi, Giardini, Terradellas, Gluck, Boyce, Hasse, Paradies.

1780. Crispi, Paer, Vanhall, Abel, Steibelt, Gretry, Viotti, Piccini, Sacchini, Bocherini, Paissiello, Cimarosa, Meyer, Beethoven, Kozebuch, Pleyel, Haydn, Mozart. 1800. Vogel, Cherubini, Hummel, Cramer, Kreutzer, Clementi, Mayseder, Winter, Moscheles, Auber, Dussek, Meyerbeer, Weber, Mendelssohn, Rossini.

The Musical World, (London.)

Advertisements.

MR. ARTHURSON,

AVING taken up his residence in the neighborhood of

H is prepared to receive a limited

for instruction in the MODERN SCHOOL OF ITALIAN AND ENGLISH VOCALIZATION. Terms, per quarter, $50. The first month, THREE lessons per week-cach lesson one hour's duration.

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Communications may be addressed to the care of GEO. P. REED, 17 Tremont Row. 3 3m

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New and Second Hand Pianos, bought, sold and exchanged. Cash paid for Pianos. PIANOS TO LET.

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Journal

VOL. I.

of Music,

A Paper of Art and Literature.

BOSTON, SATURDAY, MAY 8, 1852.

Dwight's Journal of Music,

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY,

21 SCHOOL STREET, BOSTON.

TWO DOLLARS PER ANNUM.

For Rates of Advertising, see last page.

Its contents will relate mainly to the art of MUSIC, but with occasional glances at the whole world of Art and of polite Literature, indeed at every thing pertaining to the cultivation of the Beautiful; including from time to time:

1. Critical reviews of Concerts, Oratorios, Operas; with timely analyses of the notable works performed, accounts of their composers,

&c.

2. Notices of new inusic published at home

and abroad.

3. A summary of the significant Musical News from all parts, gathered from English, German, French, as well as American papers.

4. Correspondence from musical persons and places.

5. Essays on musical styles, schools, periods, authors, compositions, instruments, theories; on musical education; on Music in its moral, social, and religious bearings; on Music in the Church, the Concert-room, the Theatre, the Chamber, and the Street; &c.

6. Translations from the best German and French writers upon Music and Art.

7. Occasional notices of Sculpture, Painting, Architecture, Poetry, æsthetic Books, the Drama,

&c.

8. Original and selected Poems, short Tales, Anecdotes, &c.

A brief space also will be devoted to ADVERTISEMENTS of articles and occupations literary or artistic.

All communications, relating to the business or contents of the paper, should be addressed (post-paid) to J. S. DWIGHT, Editor and Proprietor. SUBSCRIPTIONS RECEIVED

At the OFFICE OF PUBLICATION, 21 School St.

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MOZART'S DON GIOVANNI.

[The relation of this immortal music to the story and libretto is happily shown in the following imaginary conversation between the musician and the poet, each speaking from his own point of view. It is from a remarkable work (written by a Russian) upon the Life and Genius of MOZART, of which we are preparing a translation for the press.]

If we examine the scenes of the libretto singly, we find at first a want of connection and a strange medley, as if the most heterogeneous elements of dramatic poetry had been thrown into a bag and shaken up, and then drawn out like the numbers in a lottery. In fact what do we see? A merry marriage, and on the way to it a bloody corpse; love breaking its first vow, and life expiring with its last gasp; an orgy in house of the living, and in the churchyard a monument that speaks; trivial fun and drollery, mingled with attempted deeds of violence, with murder, cries of despair, oaths of revenge and apparitions from the tomb; a banquet with champaigne and spiced with music, and Death in person as a guest; Melpomene and Harlequin, men and demons, dancing at the same feast! Then, when all this crowd has whirled round to dizziness within this phantasmagoric circle, when all the contrasts of human nature have exhausted themselves in these Saturnalia of the imagination, every one withdraws, scarce knowing whither, with the exception of the hero of the piece, who goes to hell.

Can you imagine how DA PONTE, the successor of METASTASIO, the court poet at Vienna, nourished on the milk of the most sound and classic doctrines, could, in the year of grace 1787, have soared in this singular work to the highest pitch of romance, which reminds one of the "Mysteries" of the middle ages, and which, forsaking all the traditions of dramatic art in the eighteenth century, could not seem good enough for anything but a puppet show! Many years had flown since "Don Juan" was first put upon the stage, when the critics cried out about the absurdity of the poem, though they admitted that it had afforded to the composer the matter for a music, the like of which was never heard before. They did not explain this accident, for accident admits no explanation; besides, they were in the right. The libretto without the music is as absurd as possible; and yet this absurd text and this sublime music form together but one body and one soul; and yet, for all that, there is no one who will not recognize how far the images of the composer

NO. 5.

exceed the contour of their poetic outlines, and how little they are like them too. No one will fail to see in the story of Don Juan, as it is moulded by the music, an order of things entirely foreign to the contents of the libretto.

We wish to point the attention of the reader, with the finger, so to speak, to the difference in the points of view from which the musician and the poet proceeded. If you consider them singly, their intention is divided, indeed sometimes even opposed; yet there is throughout an understanding and a harmony between them, as soon as you take them together. To this end we imagine a sort of historical romance, but without any outlay of fancy, a dialogue, in which the authors of "Don Juan" talk over their design, one proceeding from the letter of his poem, the other from the spirit of his score. Both seem to us to be so clear, that we run no risk, if we translate their thoughts.

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MOZART. My dear Abbé, I want a text for an opera, but do not give me, I beg you, another French comedy. This time I have to do neither with the court, nor with Vienna. I am to work for the Prague public, who understand every syllable from me, and for the orchestra in Prague, who play me at sight. The troupe is excellent, and the singers can do everything I ask of them. It is precisely as if MOZART were working for MOZART. It must do me honor. I should like to have something out of the common run. Help me to it.

DA PONTE. You could not come more opportunely. I am just now engaged upon a text. It is taken from an old comedy by TIRSO DE MOLINA, and is called: "The Marble Guest, or the Scape-grace of Seville." MOLIERE and GOLDONI have made comedies out of it; I have an idea of working it up into an opera. It is the most remarkable tale of diablerie. Nothing like it was ever offered to the dilettanti; only I feared that no composer would be pleased with it.

MOZART. Let me see what there is in this devil story.

DA PONTE. In the first place there is an equestrian statue, who, being invited to a supper, gets off his horse, because it would not be quite the thing to enter a saloon borne upon four feet. The statue refuses to eat anything; on the contrary, he holds forth to the master of the house, a precious scamp, in a very edifying discourse, and thereupon takes him down with himself to hell. That will be very fine, I assure you. A player

with chalked face, a delft helmet, white glazed gloves, and a complete Roman suit of armor manufactured of old linen. (Laughs.) Moreover there will be lightning out of all the trap-doors, and devils of every hue. About one thing only I am in despair, you see. And that is the speech of the spectre; for, although I flatter myself that I understand my trade as well as any one, I am not SHAKSPEARE, that I can make ghosts speak. MOZART. No matter what he says. Death will speak in my orchestra, and in a way to be understood. I know too well how he speaks. Excellent! The statue is a settled matter. What else is there?

DA PONTE. Next there is a beautiful lady; the statue is her father, who was killed in single combat by the reprobate, the hero of the piece. The Signorina weeps, is naturally quite inconsolable, and indeed the more so, since the traitor has nearly played her a very base trick, her, the daughter of a Commendatore, and what is more, the betrothed of the handsomest young man in Andalusia. She swears to be revenged. So far it all goes well for you, maestro; but now comes the bad part. The young man, who expects to marry her, and who is charged with the duty of avenging her father, makes many promises, in fact he draws his sword; but before the knave, who is as resolute and brave as four, he loses his presence of mind, and the sword improves this opportunity to slip quietly back into the scabbard. Our lover is, I confess, a poor knight. You see him always following the footseps of his beloved, like a prolongation of the train of her black robe. There was no means of representing him otherwise; so that the lamentations of the Signorina and her schemes of revenge bring nothing

to pass.

MOZART. You would bring the impossible to pass! You would hasten the justice of heaven! You would wake up the dead from their graves! You ought to comprehend that it is the imperious cry, the superhuman cry for vengeance, which brings in the statue. Between these things there is an obvious connection. Abbé, I am in raptures with our prima donna; I would have chosen her among thousands.

As for the bridegroom, he deserves not your reproaches. How can you desire the poverino to do battle with this incarnate devil, who offers a glass of wine to the ghost of the old man whom he has murdered? The daughter's husband would have gone after his father-in-law, and then, as in " Figaro," we should have had no tenore. A fine advantage! Caro amico, you know not what such a man is; I understand your scape-grace; but patience! when you

shall see him on the stage, facing the statue, his eyes flashing with desperation, irony and blasphemy upon his lips, while the hairs of the audience stand on end (I will look out for that!); when he shall say: parla! che chiedi? che vuoi? (speak! what do you ask? what do you want?); then you will recognize him. No, no, a reprobate of this stamp can not be punished by the hand of a living mortal. It would make the devil jealous. Body and soul, the devil alone must have all; have compassion therefore on the young man. He promises, he would, he even tries is not that all a prima donna could require of a loyal tenor in such a case! You see, the life of our lover is altogether an internal life; it is all spent in his love; it will be great and beautiful, my word for it. (Looking over the manu

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script.) You make him swear by the eyes of his beloved, by the blood of the murdered old man. What a duett!

DA PONTE. Truly,' maestro, you are right. What a blockhead I was not to see how much wit I had; that seldom happens with my peers! But will you be as well contented with the rest, which I have yet to lay before you? This villain is a terrible devourer of women. In Spain alone he has already swallowed one thousand and three, and the devil of a man has travelled much. You will see that I could not bring all these ladies on the stage; but I needed at least one as the representative of this host of victims. I have taken her from Burgos, where our man stole her heart, and then, what know I how or where, deserted her. This Didone abandonnata, wife, widow, or young lady, (for that is a point which I leave undecided), cannot digest her shame. She pursues him over hill and vale, and inquires of every one she meets about the faithless fellow. At length she finds him deeply occupied with another. Instead of offering her excuses, the briccone laughs in her face and leaves her with his servant. The lady never loses courage. She is persuaded to wander through the streets by night with this very servant, disguised in the cap and gold-laced mantle of his master. She perseveres in loving the traitor, and after all hope is lost, seeks at least to convert him, though compelled to renounce his possession. Between ourselves, maestro, I believe that she is mad. You see, we can make nothing else out of her.

MOZART. O, the noble, the adorable person! Mad, say you? yes, for you poets, who regard nothing but the actions of persons and the words, which you put into their mouths at random. But to what different interpretations are not the words, nay even the actions liable! It is necessary to look into the heart, and, next to God, it is the musician only who can look in. Mad! At all events she is good enough to excite coarse merriment! Make her say what you will, but when my music like a mirror shall reflect the image of this high-minded and devoted soul, I trust my friends will see something very different from a mad woman in her. (Looking through the manuscript.) She comes to his last supper. That is altogether admirable; the unheeded voice of the guardian angel, letting itself be heard before the voice of judgment. (After musing a while.) Besides, this passionate and energetic person is the necessary link between the other persons, the two most prominent of whom, as I already perceive, are destined to a passive part. Didone abandonnata shall be the angel of the drama, and, so far as the music is concerned. the nucleus of the concerted pieces. She will afford us trios, quartets, perhaps even a sextet, should there be occasion. I have found a relish in the sextet, since we tried it in "Figaro," although the lyric stuff was very poor. Is it not strange, my dear friend; the better you do your part, the less are you aware of it!

DA PONTE. I am satisfied, if you take it so. As to the sextet, there is an opportunity for one; we are not yet at the end of our list of persons; there is one who certainly will please you: a young rustic bride, who is open-hearted, full of feeling, a little coquettish, to be sure, and even somewhat imprudent, but only from necessity, as you shall see. A morsel worthy of you, my gal

lant maestro!

MOZART. And of thee too, thou holy man of an Abbé.* We know you.

DA PONTE. The scape-grace meets her with her wedding procession. He is a connoisseur, this scape-grace, we do him the justice to acknowledge that, and he has always a plenty of intrigues on hand. A moment suffices for him to lead the wedding guests aside as well as the bridegroom, who is a blockhead, a regular simpleton. The peasant bride is on the point of falling into the snare, like a lured bird, when some one grasps her arm and holds her back. This is our Didone abandonnata, who carries off the prize from the briccone in the very nick of time. This master in the art of seduction however is not put down; he tries to to use force, which happily does not succeed. The bridegroom, blockhead as he is, is nevertheless enraged and means to have his rights; but it turns out, I do not know exactly why, that he, instead of administering blows, gets them himself, and well laid on. He howls like one possessed. The little lady comes running in at his cry, and examines the bumps and bruises they have left upon the dear man with the butt of his own musket. A trifle! the little lady knows a specific, that will heal him in a moment. You must not forget, maestro, that the night just commencing is that of her wedding day. I have done the best I could, caro maestro, and have written a sort of Cavatina.

MOZART. Let us see the Cavatina. (Reads.) Vedrai carino, &c. Hem! a very poorly disguised

-! Well, you could not have made it anything else; but my plan, do you understand it? is to describe in music the sweetest moment of life, the heart's supreme bliss and ecstacy! Another poet would have tried to express this in his way, and would have just spoiled it all for me; but you, whom I love as the apple of my eye, you, my devoted comrade, my faithful Pylades, you, the true poet of the composer, you take my hand, lay it upon a heart beating with rapture, and say to me sentilo battere (feel it beat). Now indeed, it is for me to feel and to make others feel. All the ecstacy of love shall express itself in this Cavatina; glowing and chaste shall it be, in spite of the text. The text gives the language of a peasant girl; it becomes her; the music shall be its soul, the soul of MOZART, as he led his Constance to the nuptial bed. You see, I am already madly in love with our country maiden.

DA PONTE. (Somewhat excited). I knew that she would please you.

MOZART. (After reflecting anew.) But, dear Abbé, to what genus does our common work belong. Plainly no opera seria will come of it. The great scape-grace and woman-devourer, the Didone abandonnata, about whom they make merry, the blockhead who is jeered and cudgeled, even the statue, who accepts an invitation to supper, all this seems to be far from suitable to the heroic kind. At the most, only the daughter of the Commendatore and her lover could come on in the cothurnus; and your renowned predecessor, Signor Metastasio, of glorious and enduring memory, would have rejected even these with contempt, because they are neither Greeks nor Romans, neither kings nor princesses. On the other hand, a piece, which ends with the death of the principal person, and whose closing decoration is a representation of Hell, is quite as far from being an opera buffa. What is it then?

* The Abbé passed for a woman-hunter.

.....

DA PONTE. (Almost angry.) Corpo di Bacco ! am I then a simpleton, that you can suppose meant to make an opera seria of such materials. My purpose was, to write a dramma giocoso, and the comic element is nowhere wanting in the plot which I have the honor to explain to you. But you take the thing up in a way. MOZART. Let us not get excited. Am I not contentissimo with all that you have given me? Dramma giocoso let it be then; what care I for the title of the work? after us perhaps somebody will find a better one for it. What is of the most importance to me is, that all sorts of contrasts are found united in it; everything in this opera must be brought out in strong colors. Foolery must not look paler than crime; nor love paler than anger and revenge. Else would the last form, that of death, crush all to atoms. There is something so fine in laughter! In "Figaro" I have only smiled; but here I want to laugh out heartily, to unburden myself in earnest; only about whom and with whom, is so far not quite clear to me. You know my views about your alleged crazy lady. The country bumpkin, to be sure, might entertain the public by his rôle, but this does not afford much material for the score. A blockhead in music is the same thing as in the world, poco o niente. Have you not perhaps still another person in reserve? You smile.

DA PONTE. I see, I must produce in selfdefence the very thing which I kept back at first, in order to prepare a pleasant surprise for you. Yes, my dear, we have a buffo ex officio, and I agree to lose my place as poet to the imperial royal troupe in Vienna; yes, I will renounce my peculiarity as an Italian to become a Tedesco (a German) in the broadest sense of the word, if the buffo is not to your taste.

MOZART. I do not doubt it. You Italians are masters in buffoonery.

DA PONTE. You Italians! And who are you, then, sir composer of the "Marriage of Figaro"? MOZART. I flatter myself, I am your equal in certain respects, though not in all.

DA PONTE. And do you presume to be more than an Italian in Music?

MOZART. We will talk about that, when our present business is finished. Now the question is about the buffo; and if it is worth the pains, I will endeavor to make myself, so far as I am able, your compatriot.

DA PONTE. PAISIELLO would kiss my hand for his like. Judge yourself! Our buffoon is the servant, the secretary, the steward, the factotum of the briccone. Here it may be said: "like master, like servant." He resembles his master about as much as a well-dressed ape might have resembled the devil, before the rebellious angel had cloven feet and tail. As to the morale of the creature, he is a coward, a lick-spittle, a great talker, and a jester, and for the rest the best man in the world. He frankly blames the conduct of his master; he mourns most heartily over the young birds, who let themselves be caught by his amorous oglings and caresses; and this pursuit, in which he is entirely disinterested, seems to him so diverting, that he cannot help seconding with all his powers the bird-catcher, whose dexterity has inspired him with a profound admiration. He curses every day the onerous drudgeries, the long fastings and the dangers, to which the adventures of the Don expose him; every day he takes his leave, and every day his sheer

simplicity, a certain spirit of adventure, and more than all, his attachment to his master, whom he regards at the same time as a monstrous villain and as an admirable man, entangle him against his will in the most abominable transactions. You see him sticking his nose into every broil. If his own hide is in danger, the rogue slips through your fingers, like an eel, the very moment that you think you have him. Should he see the devil, he would first shut both eyes, then he would half open one of them, because the devil is a sight not always to be seen. In short he is a compound of good nature and low drollery, of cowardice and light-hearted improvidence, of awkward apishness and instinctive cleverness, of natural and original stupidity, and of some borrowed understanding. Ha! what say you to him? Have I not given you a rich conception of our buffo?

MOZART. Yes, above price! sketched with a master's hand; the only character that you have perfectly comprehended! It only remains for me to put on the coloring; this time, if I fulfil your design, I am lucky.

DA PONTE. I forgot to tell you, that the pleasant rogue is the editor of a private journal, for which his master furnishes him the matter. Such a delectable journal, such an awful chronicle there never was before. In it you find entered, in the order of dates and places, the names, qualities, ages, and a complete inventory of all the beauties whom his patron has honored with his attentions. I presume that you would find also a historical sketch of each adventure. For the journal already forms an immense folio volume. Naturally enough, this servant is rather proud of his labors as editor. He reads it to everybody, who will or who will not listen. As to seizing the fit hour and audience, you will see that he has about as much tact as any of his colleagues, who drive the pen. The forsaken Dido awaits an explanation; now is the time or never, thinks the historian of the king of scape-graces. Surely, nothing can console her so well as a work. in which there is a chapter especially devoted to her; and instantly he prepares this edifying lecture for her. Is not this comic?

MOZART. Comic certainly, but scandalous, and almost horrible. I will put in an apology to the audience, that they may pardon you this joke. At bottom it is quite pardonable. Dido is an entirely victimized person in the dramatic point of view; one wrong more, one insult less, - she is used to that, poor lady. These are all glowing coals heaped upon the head of the briccone! We could not collect grievances enough against him, to bring the contents of the piece into harmony with the developement and the finale. But, a propos! how many acts has the opera?

DA PONTE. Two acts, which will certainly outweigh four.

MOZART. What shall we have for the finale of the first? I should like a grand finale with choruses and scenic action.

DA PONTE. Verily that shall not be wanting. You shall have a splendid festival, to which the briccone invites all the passers by. You shall have peasants, peasant-girls, and masks, ball, music, and magnificent supper. Here is the knave of a master, planning the most abominable tricks, and the knave of a servant, paving the way; others are busied with plans of revenge; the crowd

....

drink and dance, including the blockhead, whom they also persuade to dance, though his heart goes not to the violins. All is pell-mell, what we technically call a beautiful confusion. Suddenly in the midst of this gay whirl is heard a piercing shriek from an adjoining cabinet. What is the matter? They all look round, and find the young lady missing; the briccone too has disappeared. Ah! the traitor! ah! the arch villain! you understand. . . . . They shriek, they swear, they storm, they beat the door with violence, it bursts open, and forth steps the briccone, sword in hand, dragging his servant by the hair. He the guilty one! O, no! bold liar. He is surrounded, encircled, pressed upon, insulted, stunned, confounded; a hundred clubs are brandished over his head. The tenor makes the most of his lungs, the women support him with their screams, as the old geese do when the goslings fight; the musicians jump over their overturned desks and rush out; a storm, which happens to be raging out of doors, comes as if called to take part in the heathenish uproar. Shrieks and confusion, seem to know no bounds. Ah, mein Herr! are we fairly rid then of our scape-grace; the pitcher goes to water till it breaks. No, by no means! Our briccone, whose eyes glare like a tiger's, his drawn sword in his right hand, hurls back with his left whatever opposes his way; he cudgels the invited guests, receives no wound and disappears behind the scenes, with a loud, devilish laugh. The curtain falls; you clap your hands with approbation.

MOZART (embracing the Abbé several times with enthusiasm.) Friend! brother! benefactor! What demon or what god has poured all this into thy poor poet's brain? Know, that the world owes you a monument for this finale. Tell me no more; I know the thing now better than yourself. You are a great man. You task the powers of the musician terribly, but never did a more splendid opera subject come out of the head of an artist, and never will there come such another. Let me embrace you once more, my dearest friend, and thank you in the name of all the Faculty of composers, singers, instrumentists and dilettanti, nunc et in sæcula sæculorum!

DA PONTE (much flattered.) O, you are too good, dearest maestro! Spare my modesty. In your opinion then I have produced a masterpiece?

MOZART (inspired.) Without the slightest doubt. You, or the destiny of MoZART. It now remains for us to combine the concerted pieces; in relation to which you shall receive from me, as you did for “Figaro," the most precise and circumstantial instructions. I will also give you the poetical thoughts of the arias, which shall characterize the persons as I conceive them. As to the action, there is nothing to be said.

DA PONTE. My rule, my metrical compass, my shears and file are at your service, and I will say all that your propose to do. You believe then, that our opera will rise to the stars?

MOZART. I know nothing about that, but I believe that sooner or later "Don Juan" will make some noise in the world.

ERNST IN SWITZERLAND. From Bâle, Ernst went to Zurich, and the day after his arrival he gave his first concert in the Casino. What gave to this concert a more than ordinary interest, was the presence af the unfortunate Countess Batthyani, who was desirous of hearing the accom

plished virtuoso whom Hungary had applauded and fêted in happier times. Since the illustrious lady has inhabited Zurich, she has not been once to the theatre. Ernst played his famous solo on the Hungarian melodies, with that expression of tender poesy which always animates his execution. Tears were seen to flow from the cheeks of the Countess Batthyani, and the following day she was anxious to see and speak with the great artist, who had given her such sweet and profound emotion. This touching interview produced a deep sensation in Zurich and the vicinities.

[HENRI HEINE has written perhaps better verses for music than almost any man since Shakspeare. The following little wildflower of his fancy (of which we translate the form only, and the sense, so far as it is not for life or death involved in the untranslateable melody of the German words,) is the theme of one of ROBERT SCHUMANN's most exquisite and unique melodies. It will be understood that in German, the Moon is masculine and the Sun feminine.]

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These aberrations of an over-excited feeling, which however never lessen the rare worth of the harmonic material on the contrary they entice the initiated to a deeper study of it- are scarcely to be found at all in the more familiar and favorite compositions of CHOPIN. His Polonaises, which are less sought than they deserve to be- to be sure, it is very difficult to perform them perfectly -belong among the finest products of his inspirations. That they have nothing in common with the painted primness of ball-room, virtuoso and saloon polonaises, will be understood of itself. Their powerful rhythm electrifies the slack nerves of our blasè indifference. The noblest traditions of the Polish national character are preserved in them that firm determination and that earnest pride of the old Slaves steps forth from them to meet us. Almost all of them breath the warlike sentiment, together with the tranquil, thoughtful power, which was the inheritance of those Poles, who, following the maxim of Boleslaw, the duke of Pomerania: "First weigh it, then dare it!" combined the courage of the brave with that chivalric courtesy to women, which neither on the day before nor after the battle ever forsook those warriors, and which to the heroic king Sobiewski, "when the horse-tails of the Crescent were as thick before him as the ears upon a corn-field," suggested the tenderest letters to his wife.

In listening to many of CHOPIN's Polonaises, you fancy that you hear the firm and heavy tread of men, advancing with the consciousness of courage against every turn of fate. In some of the

others this broad manner disappears. Especially
in the Polonaise-Fantasie, which belongs to the
last period of his works, you perceive no more
those bold and brilliant portraits; no more the
lively step of that cavalry so used to victory; an
elegiac mood predominates, which at the most is
interrupted only by a melancholy smile.

sound like the chattering, confidential whisper of a Peri, a Titania, an Ariel, or of those elemental spirits, which likewise are subject to the bitterest illusions and to unendurable enneui.

Amongst the great number of his Mazourkas, too, there reigns a striking diversity of subjects and of the impressions they call forth. In many you hear the clink of spurs, but in the most above all the scarcely distinguishable rustling of crape and gauze in the light breeze of the dance, amid the flutter of fans and the jingling of gold and diamonds. Some seem to describe the lively enjoyment of a ball, which on the eve of a storm

The celebrated Mazourkas of CHOPIN wear an entirely different character from the Polonaises. Upon a wholly different ground play tender, pale and opaline nuances, instead of the juicy and strong coloring. The feminine-and even effeminate - element is no longer placed in a certain mysterious twilight, but advances into the foregrounding of the castle is as it were undermined with with such decided significance, that the other elements vanish before it or are banished into its train. Woman here appears the queen of life: Man, to be sure, is still spirited and proud, but lost in the dizziness of pleasure. In spite of this, there is a sad vein running through it. The national songs, in their melody and in their words, strike both these tones, and both bring out the singularly effective contrast, which results in real life from that necessity of cheering sorrow, which finds a magical narcotic in the grace and stolen charm of the Mazourka. The words, sung in Poland to these melodies, give them moreover the right to cling closer to the life of memory than any other dance music.

CHOPIN has happily appropriated to himself the popular melodies and transferred into them the whole merit of his labor and his style. In polishing these diamonds to a thousand facettes, he discovered all their hidden fire, and, even gathering up their dust, he set them in a pearly ornament. Could there be a better frame, in which to enclose his personal recollections, poesy of all sorts, attractive scenes, episodes and romances? These now owe to him a circulation far outreaching their own native soil, and they belong at present to the ideal types, which Art surrounds with the glory of its

sanction.

CHOPIN has set free from its bondage the secret essence of Poesy, which is only indicated in the original themes of the Polish mazourkas. While he has adhered to their rhythm, he has ennobled their melody, enlarged their outline, and magically introduced into many passages a harmonic chiaroscuro, which gives back that world of excitements and emotions, wherewith hearts are moved in the dance of the mazourka. Coquetry, vanity, fantastical humors, inclination, sadness, passion, the outgush of feelings, all are in it. To comprehend how admirably this frame suits these soul-pictures, which CHOPIN executes within it as with a pencil dipped in the colors of the rainbow, one must have seen the Mazourka danced in Poland; there only can one learn the whole that lies in this national dance.

Indeed one must perhaps have been in CHOPIN'S Fatherland, fully to understand and appreciate the character not only of his Mazourkas, but also of many of his other compositions. They almost all breathe that aroma of love and longing, which surrounds his Preludes, his Notturnos, his Impromptus, like an atmosphere, in which all the phases of passion move by in succession. In all these compositions, as in every Ballad, every Waltz, every Etude of CHOPIN, lies the memory of a fleeting moment of life full of poetry, which he often so idealizes and spins his web out of such fine, etherial threads, that they seem no longer to belong to our nature, but to the fairy world, and

heaviness: you hear the sighs throughout the dance-rhythm, and the dying away of the farewell, whose tears it veils. Through others glimmers the anguish, the secret sorrow, which one has carried with him to the festival, whose stir cannot drown the voice of the heart. There it is a murmuring whirlwind, a delirium, through which a breathless and spasmodic melody is hurrying to and fro, like the impetuous beating of a heart, that breaks and perishes in love and passion. There again resound from afar bold fanfara, like distant reminiscences of glory and of victory. Some there are, whose rhythm is as vague and evanescent, as the feeling, with which two lovers contemplate the rising of a star in the firmament. One afternoon- there were but three of us CHOPIN had been playing a long time, and one of the most distinguished ladies of Paris felt herself overcome by a certain mournful feeling of devotion, somewhat such as comes upon us at the sight of grave-stones on those fields in Turkey, whose cool shades and beds of flowers hold out to the astonished traveller the promise of a cheerful garden. She asked him, whence the involuntary awe might come, which bowed her heart before monuments, whose exterior disclosed only what was soft and lovely to the eye, and how he would name the extraordinary feeling which he enclosed in his compositions, as if it were the ashes of unknown ones within sumptuous deeply hollowed alabaster urns? Conquered by the beautiful tears, which moistened such beautiful eyelashes, CHOPIN answered with an openness, that was rare with him, in cases which concerned the secret relics he had concealed in the shining casket of his works. He told her, that her heart had not deceived her in its melancholy mood; since, bright and cheerful as he sometimes was, he could not free himself entirely from a feeling, which in a certain manner formed the bottom of his heart, and for which he found an expression only in his mother tongue, no other having a word corresponding to the Polish Zal. This word includes the whole gradation of feelings, which a deep grief engenders in the soul of man, from mere dejection and regret to bitterness and hatred.

And in truth it is this Zal, which gives to all of CHOPIN'S works their peculiar color. It is not wanting even in his loveliest reveries, those iu which BERLIOZ, that Shakspearian mind, embracing all extremes, saw with so accurate a glance "de divines chatteries; "* that is to say, the coaxing, flattering love-charm, which is peculiar only to the women of those semi-oriental countries, whereby the men are cradled by their mothers, fondled by their sisters, enchanted by their sweethearts, and in comparison with which the coquet

*Untranslateable. By chatteries Berlioz seems to have had in mind the playful fondling of little kittens.

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