BOOKS.

HALF-A-CENTURY OF MUSICAL ANECDOTE.*

GREAT men are liable to be turned to strange uses after death, and Dr. Engel's two volumes afford a striking illustration of the pertinence of the oft-quoted reflection on the possible fate of "imperious Caesar dead and turned to clay." Here the mighty dead—and in some cases the illustrious living—have been used as so many pegs whereon to hang a congeries of anecdote heaped together without rhyme or reason, style, grammar, or taste. If musical biographies are to depend for their worth and attractive- ness upon detailed accounts of such matters as the contents of the jewel-boxes of prime donne, the conversational powers of their parrots, and discussions upon their growing tendency towards embonpoint, then these essays must be regarded as masterpieces. Everything is reduced to the level of the feuilleton, and infected with the taint of personality. No great man is a hero to his valet, and this, it would seem from these volumes, is true also of great composers or performers and their present biographer. Dr. Engel has a genius for introducing us to his heroes en deshabille, or in some unheroic attitude. We see Rossini without his wig ; Meyerbeer haggling with a barmaid over the price of an anchovy-sandwich ; Heine stretched on the floor, " shrivelled, dried up, with a large green shade over one eye, the other protruding," &C. ; Schumann in felt shoes ; Mozart giving slight coups de canif in his contrat de mariage, to quote Dr. Engel's elegant phraseology. Fortunately for all those who respect and honour Beethoven, Haydn, Mendelseohn, and Schubert, he has left these great men alone, content with having vulgarised Mozart, alternately ridiculed and vilified Wagner, and deified Rossini. The composers with whom, from their date, the place of their residence, or other causes, Dr. Engel was not acquainted, have certainly fared best at his hands, for the excellent reason that he cannot represent them as having said or done, while in his company, something whioh would impair the esteem in which we hold them. For such is his irresistible desire to tall an anecdote, that it is perfectly immaterial to him whether it shows a "celebrated friend," or even himself, in an unfavourable light. The impression that we derive from a perusal of this book is that Dr. Engel was, or is, an intimate friend of M. Gounod's. And yet the monograph on that com- poser is largely devoted to showing what a poseur, as Dr. Engel would say, or, in plain English, what a humbug he is, how insincere in his praise, how mock-modest in his appreciation of others. In another passage, after giving details as to the infamous system of black-mailing carried on by a well-known musical critic in Paris, be relates a very amusing anecdote which proves that the knowledge of this fact did not prevent him from correcting this gentleman's proofs when he was out of town. It comes to this, in fine,—that the author is so anxious to impress upon the reader the fact of his (Dr. Engels) acquaint. ance or intimacy with all the personages, notable, or notorious, who are mentioned in his pages, that he is rendered perfectly oblivious to the damaging inferences to be drawn from the

context.

Not the least characteristic feature about this book is the preface. In it, after comparing the relations between an author and his work to those of father and child, Dr. Engel adds :-

" To the ladies' kind heart, therefore, I recommend this baby ; look at it with sympathy, it is sore to take to yea kindly, and maybe its babbling will amuse. It has learned a little about this and that it has learned, if that be any recommendation, to speak the truth, an effort neither easy nor always gratifying ; but the honest endeavour may meet with recognition all the more that the author has lees to gain by it than the reader."

The parallel is maintained throughout in the eame falsetto pitch, and winds up with the following excruciating cadenza :—

" Do, please, find it very interesting, very instruotive, fall of new and nnrevealed facts, a most desirable book that 'ought to be found on every table.' It would be so kind of yen to spoil the child and make it quite conceited. The struggle of life is hard enough, and the child has yet to find out later on that it must still deserve the early friend's kindness. If this work come to a second, third, or even a fourth edition, cud its little sins of commission or omission are most carefully looked to, and it then appears before the • Prom Molart to Mario: Reminiscences of Half-a.Coneurv. By LOWS Engel. 2 vole. London: Bentley and Bon.

world an improved and regenerated man, you will be proud to know that it is to your indulgence, to your kind reception, that the result is doe, over which you will be sure to rejoice with its grateful, happy Father, L. E."

This is in truth a piteous appeal ; but not being of the sex to which it is addressed, we can proceed without compunction to an examination of the utterances of Dr. Engel's indiscreet and precocious bantling. The first statement that we are inclined to call in question is that on p. 10, where we read that Habeneck introduced Beethoven's symphonies to the Conservatoire audiences thirty-five years ago. As a matter of fact, it was about fifty-seven years ago, or in 1829, according to Grove, confirmed by Berlioz (Memoirs, English translation, Vol. I., p. 103), who says that he had just caught sight of Shakespeare (as interpreted by the Irish actress—not English, as Dr. Engel might have learnt from his friend Berlioz, or at least from consulting his Memoirs—Henrietta Smithson) and Weber, when he beheld Beethoven's giant form looming above the horizon. Dr. Engel certainly gives one the impression (Vol. L, pp. 31-32) that Mdlle. Bigottini created the part of Pendia in La Muette. Per contra, we have it on the authority of Lajarte Musicale de rOpgra, Vol. II., pp. 129.130), also Castil.Blaze (L'Academie Musicale, Vol. IL, p. 208), that Mdlle. Noblet was its original representative. On p. 35, we are told for the first time the anecdote of the circumstances under which Rossini composed the prayer in Moie in Egitio, and how by dipping hie pen into some lotion instead of the ink, he accidentally produced what is now considered one of the finest effects of the number. Dr. Engel tells the story again (Vol.II.,p. 72), but by that time the lotion has become a tisane. On p. 40, we read that the Due d'Olonnes was produced in 1844. According to Clement and Larousse (Dictionnaire des Optiras, p. 238), this opera, the right title of which, by the way, is the Due d'Olonne, was brought out two years earlier. A few pages later on, p. 47, I propos of the first performance of Tannhauser in Paris, occurs the sentence:" Several musicians discussed the music before Auber, who at last said, `It would be childish to deny Wagner's great talent. The misery is that his music is written like a book without a stop or a comma ; you don't know where to take breath, and you are suffocated even when you feel inclined to admire.' " Curiously enough, we have encoun- tered in M. Charles Pigot's charming life of Bizet something very like this, in the shape of an appreciation, also ascribed to Anber :—" Wagner est nn musician de talent, et sa partition renferme de belles pages : mail elle ressemble h on livre qui serait ecrit sans point ni virgule de la preface h Is conclusion ; on ne Bait a quel endroit respirer memo lorsqu'il admire l'auditeur etouffe " (p. 44). It is quite possible that Anber ex- pressed himself to the same effect on more than one occasion ; but we cannot help feeling a slight suspicion, suggested by Dr. Engel's treatment of hie "celebrated friend" M. Pougin, that we have here a specimen of his method of translating the words of others into what is not always English, but invariably Engel-ish. On the very next page, we learn that Madame Marie Bozo made her debut in Amber's last opera, Le Premier Jour do Bonheur, on February 15th, 1868. Now, according to Grove, confirmed by the Journal des Debate of August 15th, 1865, this singer made her first appearance in Herold's Marie, in that year and month ; while Amber's last opera was Le Rive d'Amour, produced in December, 1869 (see Clement and Larousse, p. 810). So that here we have a double inaccuracy. Having admitted the finality of Berlioz's Memoirs as to all matters of fact connected with his first studies and

struggles, Dr. Engel might have had the grace to let this "true and dear friend" of his—whom he knew "long in his olden days," whatever that may mean—tell his story in his own words, without paraphrasing it (cf. the letter of Chateau- briand on pp. 66.67, with the original in Berlioz's Memoirs, Vol. I., p. 39, and his retort to Cherubini, p. 72, with the account be gives in the Memoirs, Vol. L, p. 46). There are two more points in connection with Berlioz—whom, by the way, Dr. Engel strangely calls "a teacher of humanity" —on which it is perhaps worth touching. On p. 140, Vol. I., our author says that Berlioz, in common with Moacheles and Mendelssohn, proclaimed Chopin "the most original, interesting

pianist of the day." If the reader will turn to Berlioz's Memoirs (VoL II.,pp. 287-288, English translation), he will find it stated,in

the course of a comparison instituted between Ernst and Chopin, that the latter could not play strictly in time, that he was purely the virtuoso of elegant drawing-rooms and intimate gatherings, and that although in certain respects there was ground for the

comparison, in others, and those the most important, there was none whatever. The other composer the opinions concerning whom, expressed in the Memoirs, are rather hard to reconcile with those attributed to Berlioz in these pages, is Rossini. After an account of the end of Rossini, containing one sentence beginning, " So we laid Rossini in his temporary grave," &c., in which the use of the pronoun is most characteristic, Dr. Engel tells us that, on his way home, he met Berlioz, who, in alluding to Rossini, quoted the words of Hamlet,—" He was a man, take him for all in all, we shall not look upon his like again." This comes as a revelation to those who are familiar with the antipathy expressed more than once in Berlioz's Memoirs (see Vol. I., p. 65, English translation), where he speaks of his " melodious cyni- cism," and Vol. I., p. 107, where he classes him with Handel as an lioname de venire, in contradistinction to Gluck and Weber, who were homilies de contr. In the course of the paper on Schumann, which is inoffensive enough, save for a digression, as preposterous as it is gratuitous, in which the author condemns translations on principle—(what would Berlioz have done without them P) —there is not much to detain us, except the misspelling of Schumann's friend Rosen, who appears as " Rose " (p. 220), and of the " Davidslsindler " (p. 237), who are mulcted of the "s." But the paper on Verdi is full of mistakes—assuming that the excellent biography of that composer which M. Arthur Pougin has recently published is to be regarded as a thoroughly trustworthy record. It is not clear on the face of it whether Dr. Engel had the advantage of consulting his " cele- brated friend's" monograph in its later, or only in its earlier form. Anyhow, a considerable divergence exists between his version and that of M. Pougin wherever we have compared them. This, however, need not surprise us. After all the home truths he has told of his friend Gounod—his pliability, his disposition always to be of the same opinion as his inter- locutor, his unctuousness, his bad memory, his affectation, &c. —mere differences of opinion with his friend Pougin as to dates, names, and places are too trifling to be taken into very serious account. Such as they are, however, we propose to enumerate a few of them. M. Pougin tells us Verdi's father was an Spicier in a small way, besides keeping an inn. Dr. Engel says he was a confectioner. (Vol. IL, p. 87.) On the next page, he gives the date of the London Exhibition as 1867, whereas it was 1862. On p. 98, the bad Italian inscription on Verdi's old spinet, rightly translated by M. Pougin on p. 11— (see also Grove's Dictionary, " Verdi ")—is mistranslated by Dr. Engel, who, having produced nonsense, triumphantly inserts a sic, as a proof of his skill. Further on (p. 136) he ascribes the libretto of the Trovatore to Piave, whereas, according to M. Pongin (pp. 151-319), it was by Cammarano. On p. 145,8 propos of the production of dicta, Verdi is represented as writing to a friend:— "What redames, what beating of the tam-tam ! Why not let the work stand on its own merits ? Oh, how I regret the time when I was let alone, without any preparation, to go to the theatre, and the public listened to the music, and if they liked it the success was genuine, sincere, without all this raise-en- scene ."' We have not been able in M. Pougin's pages to discover the letter in which all this passage occurs. The word reclames, and one sentence in the middle of what we have quoted, will be found in a letter given in extenso by M. Pougin on pp. 224-5 of his biography ; while an allusion to the beating, not of the tam-tam, but of the big-drum, occurs in M. Pongin's own text on the previous page. Unless we are greatly mistaken, Signor Verdi and M. Pongin have gone together into the crucible, and emerged nominally Verdi, but in reality all Engel. Dr. Engel speaks (on p. 148) of Verdi being serenaded by the long trumpets used in Aida at Milan. According to M. Pougin (p. 235), it was at Naples. The latter tells a delightful anecdote (pp. 235.8) of an impertinent young man who dunned Verdi for the expenses he had incurred in hearing his new opera. His letter, that of Verdi to his pub- lisher, Ricordi, and the young man's reply are all given by M. Pongin ; whereas Dr. Engel, on pp. 150.1, has only given the young man's first letter, and in such a form that hie "cele- brated friend " would hardly recognise it. He has boiled it down, garbled it, and altered the name of Parma, which occurs in it, to Milan. On p. 151, be says that Verdi wrote a quartet for stringed instruments after composing his Requiem ; whereas the impression conveyed by M. Pongin, p. 233 and p. 244, is dis- tinctly the reverse. Finally, he states that Verdi always took from four to six months to compose an opera. M. Pougin says (p. 156) that be generally took four months to write one; but states (on p. 141) that Rigoletto was completed in forty

days. A curious inaccuracy in the essay on Paganini deserves to be noticed. By Dr. Engel's own showing, for he gives the dates of his birth and death, Paganini lived to be fifty-six ; but on p. 227 he states that he died at fifty-four.

Such, then, is the result of a very limited and partial com- parison of Dr. Engel'e text in regard to matters of fact with the statements of other and recognised authorities. It has proved a wearisome task to us, and, we fear, will have well-nigh exhausted the patience of our readers ; but after the pretentious claims to accuracy advanced in his preface, and the pointed references to the enormous amount, and even the weight, of the literature which he has perused in orderto prepare himself for the adequate

discussion of his subject—(see Vol. I., p. 255, and Vol. II., p. 37)—it seemed to be advisable to apply some such test as the foregoing. Turning from matters of fact to those of taste and opinion, we find that amongst "the bigwigged planets of the musical heaven" (to borrow an original metaphor which occurs in these pages), ROssini and Meyerbeer are undoubtedly Dr. Engel's prime favourites. The former really carried out what Wagner only preached, while the latter wrote " the grandest dramatic effects composed in this century." On the other hand, " Wagner, with his glorious past, his deep science, and his frightfully tedious inartistic present, represents the step from the sublime to the ridiculous." (Vol. I., pp. 185.6.) Elsewhere he charges Wagner with having posed all his life long as a "misunderstood or ununderatood" victim of popular prejudice. He ascribes to him the invention of " music without melody," and waxing humorous, remarks in another passage, " He tried to do the impossible, and as it has always happened since the tower of Babel whenever man attempted the impracticable, so it happened to Wagner, who, like the frog in the fable, so inflated himself that he burst at last." Dr. Engel attacks Wagner for the gratuitous immorality of his libretti ; but his championship of the muse of decency is somewhat impaired by his indulgent allusions to the domestic irregularities of his heroes, and the interpolation of certain anecdotes which have nothing to recommend them save a spice of impropriety. In fine, Wagner—whom our author shrewdly suspects to have been a Jew—was a false prophet, who suited his politics to his interests, and by clever intriguing managed to excite a factitious enthusiasm about what was radically unnatural in music. (See Vol. II., p. 41.) It only remains for us to be assured by Dr. Engel that Wagner was a dear friend of hie ; but this fact, strange to say, we have failed to ascertain. The sketch of Madame Patti's career is chiefly remarkable for the author's assertion that he is con- cerned only with bare facts, leaving all that belongs to the domain of gossip to "those friends who make it their business to inflate their friends' quarrels, to endorse their friends' suspicions, to widen, in fast, every breach until it becomes impassable, and all under the sacred aegis of intimate friendship." This, be it remarked, occurs only a few pages after a paragraph relating how Patti's mother threw a big pair of scissors at her eldest daughter. Authors seldom realise their own greatness, and Dr. Engel is no exception to the rule. In regard to " bare facts " he is not always above sus- picion ; but in gossip he stands alone,—at least amongst musical essayists.

Of the literary merit of his essays, we have already given our readers some slight conception. He tells us that M. Dumas, pbre, praised his French. We are sorry not to be able to repeat the compliment to the strange jargon which does duty for English throughout these volumes. In this polyglot mosaic, a good many French words—e.g., esprit, spirituel —are to be met with, not standing out in the relief afforded by the device of italics or inverted commas, but embedded in the text. He uses the word " genial " more than once in such a context as requires the German rather than the English accepta- tion of the word. " Unproportionately," " eetheric," " fore- studies," "a powerful sum," may serve as samples of his style, which we should not have gone out of our way to criticise had he not himself set up as an authority in this matter. (See Vol. I., p. 259.) Dr. Engel's Latin quotations, though well-worn, will pass muster ; but the reference to seatertios is unfortunate, and it will certainly prove "a new and unrevealed fact" that Ulysses escaped the wiles of the Sirens by stuffing his ears with hair.

With all their defects—and no work of this description ever possessed more—these volumes are not absolutely devoid of merit. Dr. Engel has a good deal to say, and says it well, on the growing disinclination evinced by singers to submit to a long and thorough preparation before coming before the public, and the disastrous effects of their precipitancy. His account of the tariff and organisation of the claque at Paris is decidedly amusing. He shows ingenuity in collecting the widely different opinions as to the merits of Thalberg's playing ex- pressed by Schumann, Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Rubinstein. And, lastly, it would be idle to deny that a great many of his anecdotes are exceedingly diverting. Here, for example, is an excellent story of "the well-known trick which Lablache played upon a provincial, who rang his bell, mistaking the first-floor, where Lablache lived, for the second-floor, where the dwarf Torn Thumb lived. By chance Lablache himself opened the door. Tom Thumb ?' timidly asked the visitor. ' I am he,' answered Lablache, with his thundering organ. ' You F' said the frightened visitor ; ' but they told me he was quite small ? "Oh said Lablache, that is when I perform in public, but at home I take it easy.' " But the occasional smiles which are provoked by such passages cannot mitigate the resentment which we own to harbouring against Dr. Engel for the misuse of his opportunities, and the abase of his subject. Here is a man who, by his own showing, was more or less intimate with Rossini, Berlioz, Auber, Meyerbeer, Thal- berg, Liszt, Rubinstein, and Donizetti ; who knew Heine, Victor Hugo, and Lamartine, and corresponded with Carlyle and Jules Janin ; who was courted by social lions and lionesses, besides being hunted by a live "king of the desert " (it was cruel of Dr. Engel to withhold the details of his escape, which were quite as relevant to the matter in hand—Chopin—as the account of his interview with the Pope was to the life of Mozart); and whose frequent and familiar mention of duchesses prove him to have moved in the most esoteric circles of aristocratic life. But, as a French critic remarks after enumerating the many natural gifts of Offenbach, "Il a gaspilld tout cela." Much as we regret the comparative dearth of attractive works by English writers upon music, we may congratulate ourselves in the present case that the author is non Anglus lied Angelus.