Literary Errors About Music Author(s) : Arthur Elson Source: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Apr., 1917), Pp. 272-281 Published By: Stable URL: Accessed: 17/05/2014 02:45
Literary Errors About Music Author(s) : Arthur Elson Source: The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 3, No. 2 (Apr., 1917), Pp. 272-281 Published By: Stable URL: Accessed: 17/05/2014 02:45
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is not made very clear how this can be done. Their action be-
comes more impossible than ever when the author tells us that
they extemporized the strictest and hardest kind of music to
write. To quote his words, "They fugued, and canoned, and
counterpointed." Passing over the fact that verbs such as the
last three are not usually made from their corresponding nouns,
one is lost in amazement at the mind-reading powers of this
remarkable pair. Each would have had to know just what the
other was going to play next, and would have had to put a con-
trapuntal answer or accompaniment to it instantly. Incidentally,
composing counterpoint, let alone improvising it, is a matter of
slow, hard work.
After this the pair performed "in sordino" instead of "con
sordino."
Svengali, also, could transform the most trivial and cheapest
tune into something of the rarest beauty "without altering a
note." Composers and publishers are longing for someone of
this sort.
Trilby herself is not lacking in wonderful achievements.
Thus the author states boldly that she could sing Chopin's
Impromptu in A-flat, opus 29, a piece that has a compass of
over four octaves. Incidentally, she ended the work on E in
alt, as if she held that Chopin's ending with C, in the key, was
a mistake. The author continued with the startling statement,
"Everything that Paganini could do with his violin, she could
do with her voice,-only better." Living singers have difficulty
in double-stopping, for example, as the human voice is not well
adapted to singing two notes at once. The singers of the present
might also have trouble with harmonics and pizzicato effects.
There is a waiter in "Trilby" who is more modest in his
attainments, and does something that ordinary mortals can
imitate. He sings "F moll below the line." Probably he did
not know that he sang F dur also; just as M. Jourdain, in the
play, did not know that he talked in prose.
Trilby, in spite of her large compass, is outclassed by the
heroine of Meredith's "Sandra Belloni," who could "pitch any
notes."
The novelist known as Ouida (Louise de la Ramee) is another
writer who seems to have found some unusually gifted singers.
One of her characters could give "glorious harmonie" all by
herself. Another, a tenor, sang "ravishing airs from Palestrina,"
who, unfortunately, composed only part-music. Still another
rendered pages from the "grand masses of Mendelssohn," com-
positions which the musical world has not yet found. In view of
these statements, it is not surprisingto find that one of Ouida's
instrumental performershad a broken violin "on which the keys
were smashed beyond all chance of restoration."
Consuelo, in George Sand's novel, is another performerwho
does not confineherself to solo work. She sings Marcello's psalm
"I cieli immensi," which happens to be four-part music. This
singing of several notes at a time seems to be a favorite perfor-
mance with the vocalists of fiction.
Marie Corelli, in one of her novels, makes Prince Lucio
Rimanez state, "an amiable nightingale showed me the most
elaborate methods of applying rhythmic tune to the upward and
downward rush of the wind, thus teaching me perfect counter-
point." Applying tune to the downwardrush of the wind seems
to suggest the impossible feat of singing while inhaling; while a
nightingale that teaches counterpoint, which is more or less
involved part-writing, is a decided rarity. Taken as a whole,
this statement deserves the prize for inaccuracy.
Bulwer-Lytton, in "The Last of the Barons," avoids the
usual errorof giving one voice a numberof notes simultaneously.
He does, however, go somewhat astray by describingan occasion
where "Many voices of men and women joined in deeper bass
with the shrill tenor of the choral urchins." At present, women
do not sing bass; and the shrill tenor of boys is not a tenor, but
a treble.
Thackeray, usually so accurate, made an error, if not a slip
of the pen, in describingBeethoven's opera "Fidelio." He com-
mented upon the excellenceof the singing, especiallyin the phrase,
"Nichts, Nichts, mein Florestan." That passage, however, is for
spoken voice, and has no notes written for it.
The violin, though not as popular with the novelists as the
voice, has still receivedsome attention. Thus ArchibaldClavering
Gunter, in one of his sensational novels, speaks of a nervous
tension resembling"the C-string of a highly-tunedviolin." Even
the most individual of special tunings has never given the violin
a C-string. Paganini would sometimes tune up a semitone and
transpose the music down by the same interval, thus obtaining
the brilliant tone of tight strings without altering the pitch, but
neither he nor anyone else on record ever used a C-string on a
violin. The novelist adds the phrase "in the breeze," as if the
violin were used like an Aeolian harp.
Violinists of great ability are very common in fiction. Thus
the hero of "The First Violin"is able to take the post of Concert-