23 JUNE 1838, Page 16

HCGARTH'S MUSICAL DRAMA.

AVE have great pleasure in again meeting Mr. HOGARTH in the field of musical history and criticism ; a field which, in this country, has been very partially explored and cultivated. Bus. NET'S work has served as a tcxt•bcok for various subsequent com- pilers; and his erroneous facts, dates, and opinions, have bees transferred without examination, as entire pages and chapters have been appropriated without scruple or acknowledgment, into more recent manuals of musical history. HAWKINS, though on

the whole a more accurate and painstaking chronologist, wanted

BURNEY'S professional knowledge and experience, and wanted also the power which BURNEY possessed of writing an agreeable and

readable book. But in both these works, many portions of musi- cal history are lightly passed over ; their respective authors being diffuse on such branches of the art as most suited their respective

tastes, and of which the materials for history came most readily to hand, leaving others only partially explored and briefly noticed. Mr. HOGARTH, according to the plan we ventured to suggest in our review of his Musical History, has now taken one of the three divisions into which musical compositions are usually divided, and traced its history connectedly and clearly. The his- tory of the Musical Drama, more than any other branch of the art, connects itself with the literature as well as the habits of a nation. PADRE MARTINI correctly observes, that " as men vary in their dispositions and passions accordingoo variety of climate, forms of government, and modes of education, so a composer must study the character of the nation for whose stage he is about to write, and adapt his melodies to the taste of that country." The annals of the Italian, French, and German lyric drama, have been written by their countrymen ; but the first endeavour to accomplish this for England was made by the present Gresham Professor of Music; whose third series of lectures on the English Opera, recently delivered at the Royal Institution, brought down its history to the commencement of Dr. ARNE'S dramatic career. Mr. HOGARTH occupies a wider field—the musical drama uni- versal; and his work is, beyond all doubt, the most accurate, the most useful, and also the most entertaining, of its kind, in our language. It supplies a deficiency which has long existed in our musical histories—such portions of them, especially, as have treated of the Opera of England.

The usual notion, resulting from such scanty and often erro- neous information, is that the English have never had any strictly national dramatic music ; that our opera has been but a feeble copy of the Italian ; and that we have only imitated that which others had previously invented. This mistake has partly arisen from want of agreement as to the sense in which the term " opera " is to be used. DRYDEN, in the preface to his Albion and Albantus, adopted the Italian definition of the word, and insisted on such a restricted employment of it. "An opera," says he, "is a poetical tale or fiction, represented by vocal and instrumental music, adorned with scenes, machines, and dancing. The sup- posed personages of this musical drama are generally supernatural, as gods, goddesses, and heroes." Ho adds," As the first inventors of any art or science, provided they have brought it to perfection, are, in reason, to give laws to it, so, whoever undertakes the writing of an opera, is obliged to imitate the Italians, who have not only invented, but perfected this sort of musical entertain- ment." DRYDEN is wrong here in his facts, as well as mistaken in his inference. His description of what he calls an opera, fits exactly an English Masque,—a species of entertainment existing prior to the invention of the Italian opera, which in its very rudest shape cannot be traced back further than 1591; whereas in 1605 our masque had reached its most perfect and finished form, and received its highest polish from the hands of BEN JONSON. But PURCELL not only carried out the power of dramatic music fur- ther titan any of his Italian predecessors, but refused any allegi- ance to the laws which they had promulgated, and to which DRYDEN demanded implicit obedience. PURCELL founded and formed the English opera—that is, a drama in which music and poetry are frequent and essential ingredients, but of which the dialogue is spoken—not sung. He also enlarged the sphere and employment of music in alliance with the drama; connecting it with human feelings and passions, instead of restricting its lan• guage to gods and goddesses. We apprehend that Mr. HOGARTH has, almost unconsciously, fallen into the usual error of supposing that PURCELL was indebted to the dramatic writers of Italy, when he states " the melody of the stage had thou been polished by a succession of distinguished masters." We a;k for the evidence of this assertion—fur we know of none. Nothing can be more unmelodious and graceless than the style of the Italian operas which preceded those of PURCELL. If he had needed to borrow, they had nothing to lend. True it is, that be conflisses his obli- gations to Italian composers ; whom he emphatically praises for their " gravity, in opposition to the " frivolous balladry " of the French writers,—referring, doubtless, to PALESTRINA, VICTORIA, WILLAERT, and their immortal contemporaries, and to CARIS- SIMI, his illustrious rival in ecclesiastical composition. Prior to the age of PURCELL, no Italian composer had signalized himself as a writer for the stage, as the perusal of their extant composi- tions will show : and he displayed not only a clearer and more comprehensive acquaintance with the power of music as a dramatic agent than any of his foreign or English predecessors, but a far more enlarged and strikieg development of it. Even HANDEL, in this respect, is far, very far, behind him. The comparison, which may be fairly made between the King Arthur of the one and the Rinaldo of the other,—in which operas the story, incidents, and situations are the same,—will prove our great countryman's superiority. The enduring fame of PuacELL's dramatic music is partly owing to its intrinsic excellence, but partly, also, to its pure and perfect nationality. It is the musical language of an English- man, and therefore, to Englishmen, the language of nature. Mr. HOGARTIes observations on the absurd endeavour to naturalize the opera of one country in another, are sensible and judicious. "English recitative, instead of being founded on what may be called the natural melody of English speoch, is generally made up of a tissue of musical phrases burrowed from the Italian comp. is:rs; so that an English singer, deli- vering a piece of recitative in his own language, has the appearance of a foreigner declaiming, in broken English. The Caine thing, though iii a lesser

degree, is perceptible in our English airs; which being made up of passages originally suggested by the modulations of Italian speech, are destructive of the emphasis and accent of the welds to which they are united by the English com- poser. Similar effects ale produced by the present imitation of the German music. Our composers ,Ist precisely as a painter would do, who, in painting an English landscape, instead of looking upon the scenery around him,

should compose his picture by cooing his rocks from Salvator Rosa,

his blue distances from Poussin; his 'sunshine from Claude, his trees from Ruysdael, and his cattle from Ciyp. 'f he evil has been aggravated of late years

by the practice of adapting Italian, German, and French 'operas to the English

stage; a practice which has almost put an end to the existence of English me- lody. Even when setting an English ballad, our composers show that their leads are full of Rossini, Spolir, Weber, or Miller. Compare their exotic pro- ductions with the genuine English strains of Purcell, Arne, Linley, Arnold, Dibdin, and Shield ; and the difference is at once perceived between copying from art and copying from nature."

Mr. Honastrn's history of the Italian opera is correct and com- prehensive. To the truly great dramatic writ,cs of that wslionl he does ample justice ; and his criticisms are the evident result of intimate acquaintance with compositions which are its true pride and ornament, although now almost as little known to the fre- quenters of the Italian opera as if they had never been. It is the characteristic of those persons to amass nothing—to create nu store of musical wealth. They live from hand to mouth, feasting on the production of to-day because it is to-day's—rejecting it to- morrow, because a newer, though perhaps less palatable dish, makes its appearance. Music they treat as meat, on which the process of decay instantly begins—not like good wine, which im- proves by keeping. Mr. HOGARTH estimates the present race of Italian writers at their true value.

"The Italian opera, both in England and France, receives a greater share of public support, and forms the habitual amusement of a larger portion of the community, than it seems ever to have done at any former time. In this sense of the word, the Italian opera is in a flourishing state ; but, viewing its situa- tion with reference to the quality of the present productions of the Italian musical stage, it is any thing but flourishing. The preeminence so long main- tained by Rossini, whose pieces for a series of years held almost exclusive pos- session of the Italian stage, appeals to have checked the growth of original genius, and to have rendered his successors merely his imitators; and, as usual with imitators, they have been much more successful in imitating his peculiari• ties of manner, and even his faults, than his beauties. They have copied and even exaggerated the loud and boisterous style of instrumentation adopted by Lim in his later works, without being able to imitate the admirable effects pro. ducal by his skill in combination, and his thorough knowledge of the powers and properties of instruments. Ile was occosionally clumsy, crude, and incor- rect in his harmonies, from the haste and carelessness of an impetuous tempe- rament. They habitually combine their voices and instruments in a way which, in an earlier day, would have been held disgraceful to a tyro, from their shallow and superficial knowledge of their art. As an emphatic proof of this, it may be observed, that no Italian composer since Rossini has been able to produce a single opera overture which has been thought worthy to be transferred to the concert-room : and so much do they seem to feel their inability to stand this test of their skill as artists, that they have given up writing overtures alto- gether, thus depriving the opera of what has always been a beautiful and in- teresting feature.

" Such, we will venture to predict, is the light in which the fashionable Italian composers of the day—Pacini, 31ereadante, HAM, Ricci, Donizetti, and others—will be viewed before many years shall have elapsed."

To the French opera, an unusual, and we think an unmerited

space is given. The French school of music, if such it may be called, has never exerted any influence on the rest of Europe. It has been helped along its feeble course by foreigners of all sorts, but it has never bad any thing to give in return. Lust.' did more for the French opera than any other composer who ever resided at Paris, but he cannot be classed among the disciples of the French school. He had quitted Italy before he was old enough to re- ceive any decided musical impressions, so that his ( a mot be said to be the Italian style; nor could it be the French, for at the time of bis arrival in Paris they had no style at all. Luw's operas have a character of their own. Of the popular dramatic composers

who since Low's time have written for the French stage, GLucH was a German ; GRETRY,GOSSEC, and MEHUL were Flew- ings, (and the school of Flanders must not be confounded with that of France); while PICCINI, SALIERI, and CHERUBIM were Italians. These are all names known throughout Europe, but their French contemporaries are known only in France. Every legitimate French opera has rather the character of ballet- music : those of AUHER and the present race of writers, where they have not pilfered or parodied the works of ROSSINI, are little more than ready-made sets of dance-tunes. And such is the re- sult which the national habits would indicate. French dancing and French (lancers are the best that Europe affords : we import them for the same reason that we import Italian singers. Dancing is the art at Paris, and music bends and yields to it. We regret that Mr. HOG.SRTH has not devoted more space to the German opera; which stands far ahead of that of any other country, and harmonizes with his own sound and judicious ap- preciation of true dramatic excellence. We can only account for this partial omission from his having imposed on himself certain limits as to the size of his volumes. In such a work it would have been well to have incorporated SPOHR'S admirable and dignified address to his brother composers, on the true aim and highest ambition of a dramatic writer.

We have said enough to show that we regard Mr. HoGaRres book as a most valuable and interesting addition to our stock of musi- cal knowledge. It is seldom that a person competent to assume the character of a musical critic has the ability to write with clear- ness and elegance—to win the attention ef general readers while he satisfies the wants and expectations of the professed musician : less frequently does it happen that the same person is willing to look around upon the products of the art with an unprejudiced eye, to survey the works of different c iuntries with an impartial scrutiny, and to award to each its due share of praise or censure. It is no exaggeration to say, that in Mr. HOGARTH all these re- quisites combine. His work contains a fund of amusement as well as instruction : he has resorted, for the most part, to the best authorities, and gleaned from many passing records and obscure sources valuable and trustworthy information; thus focusing a work far superior in intrinsic exeellence to most of our recent musical histories, as well as much more attractive to such as read only to be amused.