THE LATE CHARLES INCLEDON.
" Young Meadows Sy Mr. Ineledon." •
DRURY LANE PLAY-BILL, Oct. 3, 1829.
How many delightful associations crowd on our mind at the sight of this well-known combination ! It has made us thirty years younger, and renewed the pleasures of our early musical life. Young INCLE- DON'S first appearance offers a fit occasion for us to recal and em- body some of those welcome recollections which must always connect themselves with the name of his father.
. Never did nature pour out her gifts more profusely upon any singer than upon CHARLES INCLEDON. The splendour and sweetness of his voice yet rings in our ears. It combined every excellence of which the vocal organ is capable. Powerful, brilliant, sweet, liquid, rich—it flowed out and onward like a torrent ; while its correct intonation, and sin- 'gularly melodious quality, made its most subdued tones effective. IN- ',CLEDON WitS DatliTeS songster. His knowledge of vocal science was small ; but it waa. enough for his purpose. Masters and books had done as much Tor hint as they could, for the trammels of art were .not suited to his taste. He gave to everything that lie sung his own read- ing, and nature was his only prompter. He could scarcely be said to have a rival, and he has been hitherto without a successor. Other singers have excelled in different walks of their art, but his path has been left untrodden. His most celebrated contemporaries were HAR- RISON, KELLY, and afterwards BRAHAM. We speak of tenor-singers only. But HARRISON was a being of a different mould, nay of an op- posite nature to INCLEDON. His voice had sweetness, and the inex- pressible charm of faultless intonation, but it had nothing more. His range was limited beyond that of any tenor-singer within our recollec- tion. He was of the old school—the school of the Ancient Concert ; but he could not take in the confined range even of that class of songs. He delighted you with his " Waft her angels," but the preceding re- citative was beyond his reach. He measured every tone with scrupu- lous accuracy, and never went beyond the limit which he had prescribed. " Fortissimo" was a word which had no place in his musical vocabulary, and even his " fortes " were but mezzi. Hence he was unable to sing even the half of HANDEL'S tenor songs. HARRISON, too, was by nature cold and saturnine. We have the marble inflexibility of his countenance, and the immoveable fixedness of his orchestral position, fill in our recollection. He did every thing by rule and measure— speaking as Well as singing.* INCLEDON, on the contrary, carried his heart on his tongue. Whatever he thought, he spoke; regardless of time, place, or person. We could illustrate this part of his charac- ter by some most ludicrous anecdotes ; but to those who knew him, his life was a continued illustration of our remark. This warmth of temperament diffused itself over his singing. In truth, it constituted one of its principal charms. Where others stood balancing and hesi- tating, he plunged in ; and his magnificent powers usually carried him triumphantly through every difficulty. He seldom crossed HARRISON'S path, for the scene of his triumphs was the stage. But when he sung at the Oratorios, or at Concerts, lie adopted the same bold and fearless style. If he was not here so successful, as more patient cultivation would have rendered him, it cannot be denied that he struck out beauties and produced effects which tamer singers dared not to at- tempt. In some passages of HANDELS songs, we have never heard his delivery surpassed by his best-trained and most polished contem- poraries or successors.
KELLY was a mere pigmy by the side of INceanoN. His Hiber- nian elasticity, and his collision and intercourse with the most cele- brated artists of the Continent, served to keep him buoyant on the stream of public favour. He was a useful, good-tempered, and, in his way, clever fellow ; but as an English sion'ea. his rank was far, very far below that of INCLEDON. BRAHAM was INCLEDONS last and most formidable rival. But it * We think it was BRABAM who once likened the three directors of the Vocal Con- certs, to oil, vinegar, and pepper; and the comparison was an apt one. was a rivalry more in name than in reality. They were both tenor- singers at the same theatre, and that was almost the only point of re- semblance between them. Their School, style, character, songs, were all different. BRAHAM, educated by Thunman., and fresh from the theatres of Italy, had formed himself on the best models of that great nursery of vocal excellence. INCLEDON was purely and exclusively English. He despised and detested foreign music of all kinds. Siege ing with him was so much a matter of feeling, that he laughed at those who pretended to derive pleasure from music adapted to a lan- guage which they could not understand. And he was the best of his school. We speak of CHARLES INCLEDON in his prime, not in his decay. We have heard no English ballads since that time. With him they ceased. We have occasionally met with puppies and pedants who have affected to sneer at the notion of INCLEDON'S being a great artist; but we never heard a musician whose opinion on the subject of vocal excellence was worth one farthing, who did not allow him that title. We once happened to hear some disparaging remark made on him in the presence of his accomplished and excellent friend SHIELD. " Sir," said SHIELD, " I have written as much for CHARLES INCLEDON as any man living, perhaps more ; and if I were to content myself with saying that he never disappointed my expectations in the performance of any song that I composed for him, I should do him injustice : he did more—often has he imparted to my melodies a grace, a beauty, a charm, which I did not previously ;suppose them to have possessed. Of the popularity they enjoy,. I am willing to ascribe a large share to his unrivalled excellence in their execution." But the best way to settle this question, is to ask—what is become of the songs which with INCLEDON enjoyed an undiminished popularity of twenty-five or thirty years' duration ? Intrinsic excellence they must have had, to insure such an existence. A season or two is the present age of a popular song ; but (we will name only three) "The. Storm," "Sally in our alley," and "Black-eyed Susan," were the favourites of succeeding generations. They died only when and because INCLEDON died.
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