PSALM. AS THE HART PANTETH AFTER THE WATER-BROOKS, SO PANTETH MY SOUL AFTER THEE, O GOD." As the Hart for the water-brook yearneth, For mine is all grief and all sadness, A cloud o'er my spirit is brooding, All lonely and sighing I languish, Oh! save in the midst of my anguish, Psalm xlii. MUSICAL NOTES. Нашеств No. I. BY ONE WHO HAS NO EAR. No EAR? Shade of Diafoirus, we hear some reader exclaim, the man must be a physiogical curiosity! Already, in fancy, we see our head preserved in spirits to adorn the collection of some future Cuvier, great in comparative anatomy. But such is not our meaning; nay, dame Nature has supplied us with no ordinary expanse of those useful appendages. Nor have we suffered ought from the executioner's Our natural ears stand in all their pristine proportions. The fact is, we spoke metaphorically, we have no ear for music. This is a melancholy fact. Even maternal fondness had to admit it, while we were yet in tender infancy. Our elder sister reiterated the opinion when we maliciously set at nought her cherished accordeon—an heirloom in the family. It gradually impressed itself upon our youthful mind that they were right. Singing masters came not near us. Social choirs eschewed our presence. Aunt Phebe's piano was taboo to our touch. Jewsharps were a sheer waste of our infantile pennies. Cornstalk fiddles gave forth no touching melody in our hands. Our voice was like unto the wind, whistling through rusty keyhole. We remember once attempting to whistle Yankee Doodle, and getting a compliment therefor, from our grandmother. The dear old lady listened a while with great zest; "well," said she, "that does beat all! "to think of a child like that whistling psalmtunes!" In short we were destitute of ear. We have spoken jestingly of this, yet in truth it has been no jest, but a mournful reality. This is no fancy sketch we are writing, but our own actual experience. Gifted with the more passionate love of music, we have been from childhood unable to gratify our own taste. The love of it has grown upon us with years, a strain of sweet music thrills us to the very soul, and yet for the life of us, we cannot sound a note correctly. Think not that it is a light thing, this want of ours. Imagine a man, alive to every charm of eloquence, to all the delights of sweet social converse, to every voice of affection, capable of listening to all these, and yet debarred from ever uttering a syllable from his own lips; what a poor, dumb, cold fragment of humanity, he would seem; in what constant misery he would dwell! Yet such a case would scarcely be worse than ours has seemed at times. The most intense delight to which our feelings are sensible, is derived from music; we have thought at times we would give years of our life to be able to utter ourselves, the entrancing sounds that have charmed us from other's lips-and yet we are doomed always to forego that pleasure. It has been an anomalous position, truly, thus to find our purest joy in sweet melody, and yet to be precluded from ever sharing the pleasure with others. We have many reminiscences associated in our memory, with favorite airs, and some of these it is our design to embody in these papers. and no doubt, "Some so merry that you'll laugh, "Some so trite that their approach, When we said we loved music, we did not mean to include all music. Nor even all good music, for we must confess to a most wayward taste, that setteth at naught many things of high esteem in the eyes of connoisseurs. It would be hard to define what we do like, so little do we know of the musical vocabulary. It is our impression that our favorite pieces are for the most part simple in style, and distinguished rather for melody, than the sudden contre-temps and artful discords of the modern school; but this we venture only as a mere conjecture. Our first reminiscence is of the accordeon afore-mentioned, wherewith our sister was wont to accompany herself in "Thou, thou, reignest in this bosom," all the summer evenings. Methinks I see her now, she was fifteen, and of course in love-sitting through the long twilight, in the old-fashioned stoop, alternately pumping at her aged instrument, and listening to the distant wailings of her beloved's flute, from the boarding school opposite. En passant, the flirtation lasted three months, then we heard her sing "My heart and lute are broken now," and for three days the accordeon fell into disgrace. At the expiration of that time, the heart was mended, and the melody-pump, once more in high favor, went wheezing on through another flirtation. We have another reminiscence like unto this, that is not many moons old. It is of a young lady, and an old piano, and the tune of Greenville. It was our delight, after we ourselves got hardened to the infiction, to inveigle luckless strangers into inviting her to play. She never needed a second bidding, nor was there much delay in selecting pieces. Greenville was all she knew, and that she did know with a vengeance! How the hapless victim stood, a whole hour by the watch, to hear that edifying tune, with all its variations-how the damsel did turn, and twist, and roll her eyes, and make great shew of using a pedal, that had been lamed for life years before-and above all, how we used to curl up in a corner, and laugh ourselves purplefaced at the fun! This same tune of Greenville calls to mind a second scene. Once upon a time, when it was heaven to us to spend an evening with a pretty girl, we were enjoying that bliss at the house of our friend T. We confessed our penchant for music, and by dint of half an hour's persuasion, got the charming Miss Mary to seat herself at the piano. "One tune then-only one-and that, you must choose." We turned over the leaves in blank despair. It was the collection of some long-named Academy, and without words. As for determining by the notes, we could as soon have read Hebrew. We gathered courage to decide upon a good looking page, and smilingly she began. Jove! it was Greenville! We grew sick at heart, and ghastly pale-all at once we remembered an engagement at that very moment. As we left the door, the music seemed to our excited imagination to take unto itself speech. "Wretched sinner, You're a did and used-up man!" But a truce to trivialities; we have an incident to relate of far different nature, and it is connected in our reminiscences with that more touching song, "The Watcher." This, hackneyed as it is, we do love dearly still, though it requires all our moral courage to confess it. Nothing has done the cause of music more harm, than this constant anxiety for "some new thing." The more beautiful a new piece is, the more universally popular it becomes; and then-not because it is -less beautiful than before-not in reality, because we are tired of it but because it is out of fashion, it must give way to some novelty, of far inferior merit. We confess that we are not partial to " Auld Lang Syne" on the jewsharp, nor " Long, long ago" as a music lesson; but when fittingly performed, they delight us now, as much as when we first heard them; nay, even more, for like the voices of old friends, they have an added charm, and bring with them a hundred pleasant associations. Hackneyed? so is the glorious light of Heaven hackneyed, and the clear cool water; yet, who thinks of avoiding the one, or rejecting the other? A young lady laughed at us once, for asking her to sing "Auld Lang Syne." We said nothing, but we expect to see her yet dancing over her grandmother's grave, because the dear old lady was buried a year ago, and must be hackneyed by this time. But this is a digression. The incident we were about to relate, though not precisely similar to that related in the song of" the Watcher," resembles it in some measure, and is besides an actual fact. It occurred some years ago, not far from our own home, and we heard the tale from the lips of the sufferer himself. A sudden tempest, one evening, overtook some fishing boats at the entrance of the Bay, and drove one of them some miles to sea. Her only occupants were a man and his son; the one a rough, hardy fisherman, familiar with danger, and fearless of it; the other his only child, a sickly lad of fourteen. To breast the gale was impossible; but by running before it, our fisherman hoped to ride through it, as more than once he had done before. The night was soon pitchy dark; but his heart did not fail him, till his boy, as he rose to perform some trifling duty about the boat, fell prostrate before him in a fit! Can fiction supply a more terrible situation than this, alone upon the tempestuous sea, in a frail shallop, and his only child lying in convulsions at his feet? On they ran, the wretched boy enclosed in the arms of his still more wretched father; but ere many minutes passed, the fisherman descried a distant, but rapidly approaching light. He knew it was a steamer, and that of the largest class that traverse our coasts; every minute was rapidly diminishing the distance between them, and his heart beat quick with the thought of safety for himself, and his child. A moment more and they were just abeam; with all his strength he cried for help, but the wind bore his voice far down to leeward, and it was lost in the tempest, and the clatter of her machinery. Again he shouted with all the energy of despair; he could see the men at work on board, and even the passengers in her saloon; but they could not see him, and the gale hurried him on, away from this, his last, his only hope! |