the same airs; and this is seldom the case, except with popular songs, so that the glowing sentiments of a favourite bard would have a greater chance of circulation, when conveyed in musical strains which sprang from the same origin. The poets actually sang their own songs to the lyre. Particularly do we read this of Pindar, and we may judge from the discursive and abrupt variety of his measures, how artfully the rhythm of his music must have been conducted. While, on the one hand, the melodies of the Greeks were perhaps never performed without being "married to immortal verse;" on the other hand, the inspiring strains of the early poets were not written to be coldly read, but were poured upon the excited senses of religious multitudes, with all the cunning modulations of song and instrumental symphonies. To this union we must attribute many of the marvellous effects which are said to have resulted from the music of the ancients; for beneath the most violent of their fables, there must still have been a modicum of truth, sufficient to render the story tolerable to the populace. And we cannot doubt, that at the time when such narratives found credence, there were extant songs which reigned over the affections of extensive districts. It must be a matter of surprise to every classical scholar, that during "the most high and palmy state of Rome," so little should be said of music. When luxury of every kind began to break in upon the enfeebled empire, we know indeed that the delights of song were common; but we find few traces of what may be called popular music. The genial climate did not then produce the same effect as upon the modern Italian. The rugged conquerors of the world were engaged in a perpetual self-discipline, of which the object was to repress the inclination for the softer pleasures, and brace every fibre into the posture of resistance or offence. Both Nepos (in Epam.) and Cicero (Tusc. Disp. t. 1.) concede to Greece superiority in this accomplishment, with the air of men who are proud of their want of skill. When Christianity began to prevail, it necessarily swept away all the popular songs, because throughout their whole texture there ran the subtle threads of gentile mythology. But sacred song became a part of Christian worship, and by degrees ecclesiastical music took its rise. In the earlier ages, we have reason to believe that the Christian hymns were more lyrical than when the Ambrosian chant imposed a lengthened stateliness on the service. In this lighter form, they were more easily circulated, and became in a sort popular or even national. The heresiarch Arius was a poet, and made strong impressions upon the populace by his Greek hymns. During the dark period when the irruption of northern barbarism was obliterating all the refinements of southern Europe, popular minstrelsy naturally died away. But ecclesiastical harmonies were rising with corresponding rapidity. The offices of the church gave at once an employment and a retreat to men of taste. Music as well as learning found her asylum in the sanctuary. There is no more striking epoch in her annals than the reformation by Gregory the Great. Thousands of youth were educated for the choir, in the public Orphanotrophia. In one of the schools near the Lateran were to be seen, as late as the ninth century, the couch upon which Gregory used to lie when he gave instructions to the singers, and the rods with which he castigated the boys, together with the original of the Antiphonarium. Under his auspices, modern harmony made its first advances. But the antiphonal singing and canto fermo did not admit of being conveyed, even in fragments, from the church to the populace. For this it was too ponderous as well as too sacred; and it was only by the general culture which it afforded to the popular taste, that it tended to produce characteristic national melody. The middle age was the era of popular music. From the eleventh until the fourteenth century, the Troubadours were actively engaged in the cultivation of a style which was eminently suited to the multitude. From them proceeded the Minnesingers, who ruled the taste of Germany in the thirteenth century. Among them were numbered margraves, princes, and even kings and emperors. After the art became debased, minstrels wandered over Europe under the names of Jongleurs, Musars, Violars, and other titles. The Provençal singers gave origin to the Italian romancers, and even England, now long destitute of national music, was then the paradise of a privileged minstrelsy. Chaucer's Clerke is no doubt the sample of an extensive tribe: "In twentie maner coud he trippe and daunce, After the scole of Oxenforde tho, And with his legs casten to and fro. And play songs on a small ribible, Therto he song sometyme a loude quinible. In all the town nas brewhouse ne tauerne There any gay tapstere was.' The Romancers and Troubadours carried the strains of chivalry and the tender passion alike to cottage and castle; and their influence on European literature is too well known by all scholars for us to be allowed any liberty of enlarging here. It seems highly probable, from the inveterate fondness with which the Alpine mountaineers cling to all their usages and pleasures, that the same airs which now resound among the glens of Switzerland and the Tyrol, were known among the ancestors of these peasants centuries ago. Nations differ strikingly in the amount and marked character of their national music; and there is something in the predominant traits of the Swiss which renders them susceptible of these deep impressions. While some tribes of mankind are prone to let every great national feeling express itself in song, others pass through the most remarkable vicissitudes without any such enduring memorials. A more striking instance can scarcely be found, than in the two great nations of Britain. Here we find a marked contrast. Of national melodies England has very few, and these are doubtful, and if genuine, have no characteristic traits. Her soil once gave birth to noble bards, and her Alfred was a harper, but no relics of their melodies are now current. There is said to be no dance tune older than the year 1400. The specimens of old English music exhibited by Dr. Crotch to the London Institution, such as "The Carman's Whistle," the "Light of Love," &c., are now entirely obsolete. The national airs are borrowed, and the national taste is formed by mere cultivation from without. England has no national instrument since the Cambrian harp. The march of improvement has trampled down and trodden out those sparks of national enthusiasm which glowed in the age of the bards. Of her mighty wars and convulsive revolutions, she has no musical records embalmed in the memory of the peasant, or consecrating the traditions of the fireside. And from our English descent, we seem as Americans to labour under the same national phlegm. But how different is the case when we turn to Scotland. Here there is melody unlike all other. There surely never was a wilder vagary of genius, than the supposition that David Rizzio imported the Scots music from Italy. Not to mention the technical peculiarity, arising from the incomplete minor scale of old Scots airs, the characteristics are too prominent to be mistaken. Indeed, modern professors acknowledge, that these melodies are, for variety and expression, superior to those of most nations. A family likeness pervades all these airs. A pensive sweetness is discernible even in the merriest dances, arising from that peculiar key, which has been likened to that of the Greek nomic melodies, and which is probably to be traced to the scale of the ancient bagpipe. They are the patrimony of the Scottish peasant. They are heard in every cottage and on every moor. They gave inspiration to the muse of Burns; for it is well known, that as he traced his furrow, he was accustomed to sing his compositions to familiar airs; and to this we may attribute the remarkable adaptation of his songs to musical delivery, a quality often wanting in lyrical productions, which are highly admirable as poetry, but which have been composed without reference to any musical accompaniment. The works of which we have placed the titles at the beginning of this article, are collections of those celebrated melodies called the Ranz-des-Vaches, or Swiss cowherds' songs. It is a common error to suppose, that there is a single air current throughout Switzerland under this name. These books contain more than fifty, and there are many still unrecorded. The words are in the various patois of the French and German cantons, which probably have the same Doric charm to the inhabitants which belongs to the lowland Scotch. We find airs of Emmenthal, of Ormond, of Guggisberg, of Frybourg; indeed, almost every nook of the Alps seems to have its appropriate Ranz-des-Vaches. M. Wyss has furnished the songs with a number of explanatory notes and a very useful glossary. The examination of these songs will perhaps mortify some zealous antiquaries, who, in every thing which so deeply affects the popular mind, expect to discover the very inspiration of poetry. In all cases they are very simple, being expressions of deep attachment to native scenes, lays of the seasons, rude pastorals, and ditties of humblest love. But in many cases these effusions are not only trivial but ridiculous, and the refrain is often a jargon of unmeaning syllables. This indeed is not always the case, for there are some fraught with tender sentiment, and one or two highly humorous. The fifty-third in number is a favourite song in Schiller's Wilhelm Tell, and we have seen it also in Dutch; the basis of it being no doubt an ancient ballad.* The most celebrated Ranz-des-Vaches, and one to which the name has been sometimes restricted, is familiar to American musicians, and is eminently plaintive and pastoral. We give it according to the text of Laborde. "Quand reverrai-je un jour Tous les objets de mon amour? Nos clairs ruisseaux, nos côteaux, nos hameaux, nos montagnes, Et l'ornement de nos campagnes, La si gentille Isabeau, A l'ombre d'un ormeau? Quand danserai-je au son du chalumeau? Quand reverrai-je un jour Tous les objets de mon amour? Mon père, ma mère, mon frère, Ma sœur, mes agneaux, mes troupeaux, ma bergère? Quand reverrai-je un jour Tous les objets de mon amour?" But there are a number of the songs which are not thus sentimental; and it is, after all, more the music with its associations "1. Mit dem Pfeil, dem Bogen, Durch Gebirg und Thal, 2. Wie im Reich der Lüfte Was da kreucht und fleugt." than the embodied thought, which moves the soul of the Swiss pâtre. It is oftener so in other cases than is readily admitted. Melodies are not so restricted in their expression as to be capable of adaptation only to one fixed modification of sentiment. Some of Burns's most pensive songs are set to old airs, of which the very titles provoke laughter. It was, if we remember, Biron, the great French vocalist, who once gained a wager, by moving his audience to tears when he sang some of the most frivolous songs to sad music. There is no small amount of assumption in many pretences to musical expression, and we need not wonder to find the Swiss penetrated by tunes which are allied to paltry words. The principle is conceded even by professors. Sir John Hawkins gives some remarkable instances. In Dr. Brown's Ode, entitled The Cure of Saul, there is a solo air, which is a saraband from the eighth sonata of Corelli's second opera; and Purcell's great movement in O give thanks, is turned into a chorus. The music to the song in Samson, Return, O Lord of Hosts, is an Italian cantata of Handel's younger days. The chorus in Alexander's feast was originally an Italian trio. And a great part of the music to Dryden's lesser Ode for St. Cecilia's day was composed for the opera of Alceste, written by Smollet, but never performed. . The same thing, we may digress to add, was remarkably exemplified at the time of the Reformation, when the hymnology of the Protestants became somewhat lyrical. Most of the hymns in the vernacular tongue were set to popular songs, much to the scandal of many good people. The French version of the Psalter was begun by the darling poet of the age, Clement Marot, who gave origin to le style Marotique, of which Voltaire so bitterly complains. Marot was the inventor of the rondeau, and the restorer of the madrigal and the sonnet. He undertook the Psalter at the instance of Vatablus, and dedicated the version of thirty psalms to Francis I. The Parisian faculty of theology censured the version, but the king connived at it, being an admirer of the bard. They were sung to ballad tunes, and such was their popularity, that they could not be printed fast enough to meet the demand. Every one adapted to them such airs as he chose, and each of the princes and courtiers selected his psalm. Henry II. was fond of the 42d, "Ainsi qu'on oit le cerf bruire and made it his great hunting song. The queen selected the 6th, "Ne veuille pas, & Sire Me reprendre en ton ire;" and sang it to a lively tune. And Antony of Navarre chose the 26th, Seigneur, garde mon droit." |