LETTERS OF DISTINGUISHED MUSICIANS.* Tins book may be regarded as
a companion volume to the trans- lation of Alendelssohn's letters which Lady Wallace gave to the English public four years ago. The collection, which is interest- ing and suggestive, has been made by Herr Ludwig Nohl, of Munich, who has earned a reputation as the editor of similar works. Both the compiler and the translator introduce the volume with some prefatory remarks, very like in purport, in which they state that the letters of Mendelssohn, Haydn, and Gliick here collected, are published for the fast time, and that those of Weber- to his friend Johann Giinsbacher, fragments of which appeared in the biography of the musician, are presented in a complete form.
It is a suggestive and interesting collection, and one likely, we should imagine, to attract the general reader, as well as- the professor or student of. music. The life of men of genius has inevitably its prosaic and vulgar aide. A poet writes an inspired lyric one day and is in the seventh heaven, a musician composes an oratorio or an opera and forgets all mundane cares, but on the morrow the petty anxieties of life reassert their power. Even a poet is not exempt from the pay- ment of taxes and of butchers' bills, and a musician may be worried, like Weber, by a thousand miserable exactions, or be con- stantly distressed, like Haydn, with the follies of an extravagant wife. These letters reveal to us the men as well as the artists. We see a little of the way in which these great masters strug- gled on from day to day, fighting with adverse circumstances, and at what sacrifices they won their fame. "In my music," said Weber to his friend Lichtenstein, "you will find myself ;" and Haydn thought he could speak to the world only through the lan- guage which all the world can feel and understand, but yet they have both much to say also in their mother tongue which we would not willingly lose. Mendelssohn, moreover, was not only a great musician, but won also a literary reputation, and even the few letters here preserved of Gliick and of C. P. E. Bach possess a slight biographical interest.
Poets rarely if ever come of a poetic stock, while musicians, OD the contrary, frequently own to a musical parentage. It was so in the case of the Scarlattis, of Mozart, and Beethoven, and it was so in the case of three of the composers whose letters appear side by side in this volume. C. P. E. Bach was the son of the cele- brated Sebastian Bach, music director at Leipzig, whose four sons and five daughters are said to have been all excellent musicians ; the father of Haydn played the harp without knowing a note of music ; while Weber's ancestors had always evinced a passion for music and for the stage, his own father being a musical fanatic, who might constantly be seen "fiddling in public places as he marched at the head of his numerous progeny ; or working with his bow in the fields, to the amusement or derision of his fellow- citizens." Franz Anton, by the way, must have been sent into- this world for the special trial of his son's patience. He was one of those selfish, shiftless, thriftless men who like bast to spend other people's money, and live at other people's tables, and throw their whole burdens upon other people's backs. His son, Carl Maria, as being the nearest to him, suffered the most, and yet that son, to his praise be it recorded, never speaks of his father save in terms of reverence and affection. Weber was a wild scapegrace enough in early life ; but despite all his reckless follies there was an honesty of nature about the artist which preserved him from de- struction. In the letters which Lady Wallace has translated, the most superficial reader will be struck by his integrity of purpose and warmth of heart. To his friend Gausbacher he writes in the tender style which in England is common only between lovers or schoolgirls. In one letter he says, "It is really terrible to be so
• Leiters of Distinguished Musicians; ON& Haydn, C. P. E. Bach, 1Veler, Mendelssohn. Translated from the German by Lady Wallace. London : Longmans. 1867.
near, and yet not be able to speak to each other." In another he avers that when his friend left him the void in his life was terrible ; in a third, while suffering from a love disappointment, he exclaims, " Ah, if you only could have been near me, how would my heart have been soothed ! " and when, after escaping many of the pitfalls hit() which men with poet-natures are so liable to fall, Weber found in Caroline Brandt a woman worthy of him, he relates his good fortune in the same glowing, passionate language. First of all, however, the musician betrays jealous fears and gloomy forebodings as to the character of his future wife. He is annoyed that "her views of high art do not rise beyond the common-place pitiful conception that esteems Art merely as the means of procuring soup, roast meat, and shirts," and is afraid of
-the temptations to which a young actress is exposed. But
he invites some of his friends to an oyster feast, and in their presence betroths his "beloved Lino.," promising that if the girl remains steady all the year he will make her his wife at the end of it. It is pleasant to hear him tell eighteen months afterwards how happy he feels in the society of the woman he has chosen. "I am indeed a fortunate man," he writes "no one could in the most remote degree discover that my Lina had ever been an actress ; she is become such a busy, intelligent, and careful mistress of a house- hold, and takes delight in her new sphere ; we are both pictures of health and contentment." He is never tired of singing the praises of his "little wife," and is careful to tell his friend -of eaeh trivial domestic incident and of every family arrival.
Altogether, a pleasing and home-like picture is called up by this familiar correspondence of Carl Maria von Weber. It is a welcome addition to the charming biography of the musician written by his son.
Still more interesting, perhaps, are the eighty letters of Joseph Haydn. Like those of Weber, they give a vivid representation of the bondage too often endured by men of genius during the last .century at the petty Courts of German Princes. To serve under a Duke of Weimar was the fortune of but few. Poor Haydn had no such luck. As the Capellmeister of the Austrian Prince Esterhazy he seldom quitted the Prince's property, but was strictly chained to his official duties. The musician was for many years little better than a servant, and complains that he "never can .obtain leave, even for four and twenty hours to go to Vienna ;" -and yet he adds, "the refusal is always couched in such polite
terms, and in such a manner, as to render it utterly impos- sible for me to urge my request for leave of absence." The "gracious Prince," as he calls him, was intolerably exacting ! Haydn, as we have said, was unfortunate in his wife ; so he con- soled himself for the lack of home happiness by an attachment to Frau von Genzinger, the wife of a neighbouring physician. "Although," says the editor, "she was nearly forty years of age, a personal connection was gradually developed in the course of their musical intercourse that eventually touched their hearts, and gave rise to a bright bond of friendship between the lady, happily married, and blessed with fine, promising children, and the old though still youthful maestro, whose marriage was childless and far from happy." This friendship was, no doubt, perfectly inno- cent, but Haydn, who was sixteen years older than the lady, writes sometimes with a warmth of language which sounds strangely to English ears, lamenting the solitude of his home, and the loss of her society. "0 that I could be with you, dear lady," he says, "even for one quarter of an hour, to pour forth all my sorrows, and to receive comfort from you!" and he beseeches her to console him by her letters, "as they are so highly necessary to cheer me in this wilderness, and to soothe my deeply wounded heart."
Haydn observes with some archness that he is loved and esteemed by everybody except professors of music. From all petty jealousy he seems himself to have been free, and it is beau- tiful to read the hearty praise he awards to his great musical contemporary, Mozart :—
"I only wish," he writes " could impress on every friend of music, and on great men in particular, the same depth of musical sympathy and profound appreciation of Mozart's inimitable music that I myself f eel and enjoy ; then nations would vie with each other to possess such a jewel within their frontiers. Prague ought to strive to retain this precious man, but also to remunerate him ; for without this the history
-of a great genius is sad indeed It enrages me to think that the unparalleled Mozart is not yet engaged by some imperial or royal court. Forgive my excitement ; but I love the man so dearly !"
The affection appears to have been mutual. When Haydn, Teleased by the death of Prince Nicolaus, obtained an engagement in London, Mozart accompanied him some distance on his journey, and on parting said, with tears in his eyes, "We shall, no doubt, now take our last farewell in this life." Haydn, too, was deeply affected, and must have remembered the prophetic words when, in less than a year after this farewell, he recorded the death of Mozart in his diary.
The letters of Weber and of Haydn occupy by far the larger portion of the volume. Next to them in point of interest are the letters of Mendelssohn, but they are too slight and unimportant to add to the epistolary reputation of that delightful man. We meet, however, in them with some of the beautiful traits of cha- racter which make the memory of the illustrious composer so dear to his friends and so fragrant to the world.
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