OLE BULL.*
A NEW generation of musicians has grown up since Ole Bull played for the last time in public in the British Isles, and this fact, coupled with the transference of the sphere of his activity from the Old to the New World in the last half of his life, is enough in the minds of many critics to confirm the adverse estimate which musical purists have passed upon his perform- ances and compositions. Mr. Brown, in his recently published Dictionary of Musicians, treats Ole Bull with scant courtesy as a clever charlatan, whose chief title to immortality rests upon • Ole Bull a Memoir. By Sara C. Bull. London T. Bieber Unsin.
his novel modes of advertising himself. Into a consideration of the justice or generosity of this remark we are not disposed to enter, although it is certainly true that the opinion of Moscheles tends to confirm it. America, the El Dorado of the virtuoso, has been harshly stigmatised as " the grave of Art ;" but the fault is fully as much that of the artist who performs trash, as it is that of the audiences who applaud it. Ole Ball was essentially the layman's artist, and as such was not proof against the tempta- tion to indulge in ad captandum displays. In response to a tenth recall at a farewell concert in New York, we read that he played " We won't go home till morning." But still, as the artist who so often charmed Malibran, spite of her natural partiality for De Beriot, with whom Liszt and Chopin at the zenith of their powers were content to be associated, and who as late as 1873 aroused the enthusiasm of the Florentines, Ole Bull occupies a notable rank among the great reproductive musicians of the century. When we add to his artistic achieve- ments a romantic career, a fervid patriotism, and a genial per- sonality, the justification for this biography is complete.
Born at Bergen in 1810, Ole Bull was more fortunate than many of his musical brethren in the surroundings and influences of his youth. His father judiciously encouraged, without unduly stimulating, the musical talent of the child, only allowing him to play his fiddle when his school-hours were over, while as a listener at the weekly quartet parties of his uncle, an amateur of the violoncello, he was early initiated into the delights of concerted music. At last his opportunity came. The first violin, Paulsen, his earliest instructor, who was notoriously fond of the bottle, was too tipsy one evening to lead, and, half in jest, the uncle called on Ole to replace him, promising him a stick of candy if he acquitted himself well. The result surpassed all anticipations ; he was elected a regular member of the quartet party, and given a new fiddle. For the rest, we learn that as a boy he was profoundly susceptible to the in- fluences of external nature, fond of roaming, climbing, and swimming, excelling in all sports save those which involved pain, and distinguished above his schoolfellows for his know- ledge of mythology. Between 1819 and 1822, he received no musical instruction, the bibulous Paulsen having quitted Bergen. Lundholm, a Swede, took his place; but his martinet ways were distasteful to Ole Bull, who nevertheless owed his statuesque repose of bearing to this master. After three years of study under private tutors—one of whom, though named Masten, was so untrue to the traditions of his name as to forbid the use of the violin—Ole Bull set off in August, 1828, for the University of Christiania, preceded by his fame as a violinist. In spite of all his good resolves and his father's admo- nitions, the first night of his arrival, and the next—that imme- diately preceding the examen artium—were spent in music, with the result that he was rejected for a year by his examiners. His host of the previous night, himself one of the Professors, was, however, equal to the occasion, and secured for him the ad interim directorship of the Philharmonic and Dramatic Societies, a post which was confirmed on the death of the previous Director, and which established Ole Bull on an independent footing. In the following summer, we find him hurrying off to Cassel, in the hope of having the partial verdict of hie countrymen confirmed by the opinion of Spohr. The latter's studied coldness damped his ardour considerably, and after a few months spent at Gottingen, he returned to Norway. After two years, the spirit of unrest once more drove him forth, this time to Paris, where his stay brought him many hardships, but ended happily. A timely subsidy from the Musical Lyceum at Christiania arrived when his funds were at their lowest ebb. Kind strangers nursed him through an attack of brain-fever ; and his playing at a soiree given by an Italian diplomate brought him patronage and engagements. Aided by Ernst and Chopin, he gave his first concert in April, 1832, under the aegis of Marshal Ney's son, the Duke of Montebello, and cleared 1,400 fr. A concert tour in Switzerland and Italy followed, and while at Milan, acting upon the advice of critics, he studied diligently under a singing- master, a course of training, to which his biographer traces his command of melody. His method of studying harmony had been even more original :- " When restrained by his tutor from playing, Ole resorted to whistling and singing, and he soon found that he could do both at the same time. In this way he studied the lawn of harmony. Ere long he was able to whistle and sing and accompany himself on two strings, and later he succeeded in playing on et four strings at once. These studies enabled him at length to combine six different themes at the same time, a sort of fugue study which he always enjoyed."
After visiting Venice and Trieste, he went to Bologna, where a piece of great good luck befell him. De Beriot, in a fit of pique, had backed out of an engagement, and Ole Bull, whom Madame Colbran, Rossini's first wife, had heard from the street, was routed out of his bed, to which he had retired early, to replace him. This was his real abut, and as his biographer happily puts it, "the Norns were now weaving bright threads in the web of his life." Malibran, inclined for the moment to be jealous of so formidable a rival to De Beriot, was far too generous to withhold her sympathy and admiration. Two most characteristic anecdotes about her are given here, and deserve to be quoted:—
" One night at the opera, Ole Ball, who was standing at the side of the stage, was so completely overcome by the dramatic power and the glorious voice of the great artist, that, unconsciously to himself, the tears were streaming down his face. Suddenly Malibran caught sight of him, turned for a moment from the audience, and without interruption perceptible to them, made a most absurd grimace. The discovery of her entire self-control while she moved others to the utmost was a disappointment which he could not afterwards disguise, but sbe laughingly excused it by saying : ' It would not do for both of no to blubber;' and when he thought what a combo sight his face must have been, he could not help joining in the laugh. Another evening, having invited him to supper after the performance, Malibran insisted on hurrying him off in her carriage, and running up the stairs to her rooms before him, she threw over him so he entered a large cape, tied on his head an old-fashioned bonnet, and pulling down a veil over his face, pushed him into a chair in the corner behind the table, just as the rest of the party were heard outside. Putting her finger to her lips to warn him to be silent, she introduced each guest in turn to her ' aunt just arrived from the country; but after they shad taken seats at the table, a few cats with her riding-whip sent bonnet and cape flying from the head and shoulders of her
respectable relative."
His success in Italy had the result of throwing open the doors of the Grand Opera to him on his return to Paris in 1835; and in the summer of the following year, he married Felicie Ville- mind, the granddaughter of the lady who had nursed him through his fever. In the same year, he visited London, where the intrigues and stratagems with which he had to contend, or imagined that he had to contend, remind the reader of the similar experiences of Berlioz. The opposition of Costa was, how- ever, unable to alienate the public favour from the new violinist. He appeared at the Philharmonic Concerts with Thalberg and Malibran, received as much as £800 for a single night's performance in Liverpool, and gave no less than 274 concerts in Great Britain in the course of sixteen months. Returning to the Continent, where he made the acquaintance of Paganini in Paris, he now embraced the profession of the travelling, virtuoso in earnest. How exacting and harassing that profession can be these pages vividly set forth. After fatiguing, though successful tours throughout the North of Europe, he returned to Norway to find himself famous. Wergeland, the poet, writing of his first concert, remarked :—" The greatest marvel of, all was that he brought Norway home to the Norse- men. Most people knew the folk-songs and dances, but were ashamed to admire them. Lifted by him into their confidence and love, these homely melodies suddenly began to gleam like stars, and the people came to feel that they too had jewels of their own." In a few months he set out on his third Continental tour. Spohr now welcomed him with, effusion ; but Finck, the Berlin critic, attacked him severely for his charlatanism. At this point, the biographer very aptly quotes MendeLssohn's remark, made in 1844, about Finck's capacity for finding out the weak points of what is good, and diecovering,raerit in mediocrity. It was not criticism, however, alone that Ole. Bull suffered from on lila way through life. His widow very frankly confesses how the want of a regular training, had unfitted him for the practical, concerns, of life. He was at. once dependent and suspicions. In spite of his large earnings, he was constantly landed in financial embarrassments through, the malpractices of the agents to whom he entrusted all his arrangements. To this period belongs his close friend- ship with. Liszt, with whom lie was associated in the historic performance. of the " Kreutzer" sonata at the Philharmonic Society's concert in 1840. This friendship, is illustrated by a most.aninsing story, related on p.122, which recounts how Liszt ordered Ole Bull to bold his manager, whom he had suspected of intriguing against him, at arm's-length out of a window on the third floor, until he confessed everything. So the record runs on of perpetual tours in Europe and America, varied by hair, breadth escapes or experiments in philanthropic colonisation and alternating with periods of rests and quiet-enjoyment spent on one or other of • his two beautiful island homes in Norway. His connection with America dates from the year 1843, and a good deal of space is devoted to the " tributes!' in prose and verse which his playing called forth from enthusiastio admirers on that continent. These range from the charming lines of Longfellow, in the Tales of a Wayside Inn, to the extra- vagant eulogies of some of his lady friends. One of the latter,, who, "in memory of the Persian nightingale," dubbed him " Ole Bulbul," speaks in another passage of his looking " pure, natural, and vigorous!, as I imagine Adam in Paradise." Again, commenting on his compositions, "Niagara," and the " Solitude of the Prairies," she says :—" The sea, the mountain ridge, Niagara, superexist in precantations which sail like odours in the air; and when any man goes by with ears sufficiently fine, he overhears them, and endeavours to write them down without diluting or depraving them." This is " high-falutin"' with a. vengeance.
Without extenuating the blemishes in her husband's character, Mrs. Bull has nevertheless given abundant proofs that he possessed many admirable and attractive qualities. Though his profession made him a cosmopolitan, he remained a fervid patriot to the last, contributing- generously to every public enterprise of importance. There mast have been something very attractive about a man of whom Ohlenechlager could write as he did in his Reminiscences, quoted on p. 145. He speaks of Ole Bull's musical performances as being " an expres- sion of his own character, a peculiar combination of a charming, childlike good-nature and tenderness, often interrupted by a restless excitement," and adds the following quaint anecdotes to bear out this description :—" When he at one time, on board the steamer, had caused my displeasure by a too severe criticism of the Swedes, and I had taken my seat on a bench, he came leaping towards me on• his hands and feet, and barked at me like a dog. This was a no less original than amiable manner of
bringing about a reconciliation When he played for the King in Copenhagen, and Frederick FL asked him who bad taught him to play, he answered,—' The mountains of Norway, your Majesty.' "
We had marked many other passages for notice, including a. few inaccuracies ; but while gladly foregoing the task of censure, we regret thenecessary omission, owing to considerations of space, of all mention of many interesting episodes and characteristic anecdotes. Ole Bull, who was fortunate in many things, was not least fortunate in his biographer.
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