- formance sobs have broken forth from the
silent and attentive throng. Will any one say that for these people to have their feelings for once put through such a noble and long-sustained exercise as that could be otherwise than beneficial? If such performances of both sacred and secular music were more frequent, we should have less drunkenness, less wife-beating, less spending of summer gains, less pauperism in the winter.
(2131)
Music from Pain—See Suffering Transformed.
MUSIC, GOD'S
Since ever the world was fashioned,
Water and air and sod,
A music of divers meanings,
Has flowed from the hand of God.
In valley and gorge and upland,
On stormy mountain height,
He makes him a harp of the forest,
He sweeps the chords with might.
He puts forth his hand to the ocean,
He speaks and the waters flow—
Now in a chorus of thunder,
Now in a cadence low.
He touches the waving flower-bells,
He plays on the woodland streams—
A tender song—like a mother
Sings to her child in dreams.
But the music divinest and dearest,
Since ever the world began,
Is the manifold passionate music
He draws from the heart of man.
—Temple Bar.
(2132)
MUSIC, GOOD CHEER IN
It is related of James Nasmyth that the
rhythmic sound of a merry little steam-*engine
introduced into his machine-shop so
quickened the strokes of every hammer,
chisel and file in his workmen's hands that
it nearly doubled the output of work for
the same wages.
A master tailor employed a number of workmen, who, getting hold of a slow, doleful but catchy air, hummed it to the movement of their needles, much to the retarding of their work. Observing the secret, he treated the men to lively airs, having a merry swing and a rapid movement, and soon the deft and nimble fingers reverted to their accustomed quickness.
There is science as well as philosophy
in singing over our tasks.
(2133)
MUSIC IN THE SOUL
The orchestra does not make music; it
is only an instrument for conveying music
from one spirit to other spirits. The orchestra
no more makes the music which it conveys
than the telegraph wire makes the message
which it conveys. Music is not a volume
of sound; it is an experience which sound
transmits from one soul to another soul.
The composer creates in himself the symphony.
He translates this creation into
symbolic language upon a sheet of paper.
The orchestra translates this translation into
chords. These chords received through the
ear awaken in the hearer an experience
similar to that which was in the soul of the
original composer.—Lyman Abbott, The Outlook.
(2134)
See Soul Music.
MUSIC OF DESPAIR AND OF HOPE
On the occasion of the funeral service of King Edward VII, William Maxwell, in the Record and Mail, of Glasgow, writes as follows concerning the pipes and song:
No music can express the abandonment of
grief like the pipes, for none is so individual.
Its notes are the tradition of centuries of
wild freedom, and are bound by no ordinary
system. No music is so personal, for the
pipes are the retainers of the clans.
They, too, wear the tartan, and voice the feelings of their clan—its joy and grief, its triumph and despair; and none is more national, for it embodies the soul of a people, its strength and its passions.
They are famous ballads to which the music of sorrow has been wedded. For there are two national ballads known as "The Flowers of the Forest," and both are written by women. The first version was written by Jane Elliot, of Minto, and bewails at Flodden Field—
I've heard the lilting at our ewe milking,
Lasses a-lilting before the dawn of day;
But now they are moaning on ilka green loaning,
The flowers of the forest are a' wede away.
The second song was written on the same subject by Alicia Rutherford, of Fernilie, afterward known as Mrs. Patrick Cockburn, and is generally regarded as the more effective in singing, if not in composition.
