Various

“ Thus related to the unseen soul, music is a voice for faith, which is itself the realization of things not seen. And waiting as the soul is amidst troubles and toils, looking upward from the earth, and onward out of time, for a better world or a purer life, in its believing and glad expectancy, music is the voice of its hope. In the depression and despondency of conviction; in the struggles of repentance; in the consolations and rejoicing of forgiveness; in the wordless calm of internal peace, music answers to the mood, and soothingly breaks the dumbness of the heart. ”

“ Music in social intercourse is a fine awakener of sympathies, and a fine uniter of them. A violin or a piano is often not less needed to soothe the ruffled spirit of a company, than the harp of David was to calm down the fiend in the turbulent breast of Saul. Music, as we see in the customs of all nations, is used as an antidote to the sense of danger, as well as a stimulus to the passion of combat. And as embattled hosts move with measured tramp to the field of death, music is the magic that is trusted to charm away fear or to call up courage. ”

“ The great master of even a single instrument appears, indeed, a wizard. He seems, in truth, to be the only artist to whom the designation of wizard can with any correctness be applied. Men of other genius may be creators, but the musician is the wizard. His instrument is a talisman. It is full of conjurations—out from it he draws his witchery; he puts his spell upon all around him; he chains them in the slavery of delight; and he is the only despot that rules over willing captives. No other power on the imagination is so complete—so uncontrollable. ”

“ Hatred, malice—vengeance, envy, have, to be sure, their proper expressions in the lyric drama, but of themselves they are not musical, and by themselves they could not be endured. It is not so with the kind emotions. They are in themselves a music—and memory delights in the sweetness of their intonations. Love, affection, friendship, patriotism, pity, grief, courage—whatever generously swells the heart or tenderly subdues it—or purely elevates it—are, of themselves, of their own attuning and accordant graciousness, of a musical inspiration. ”

“ It is in the imagination or the word-music simply, as music presents nothing to the sense that is either coarse or base. The conception is from the mind to music, not from music to the mind. Speaking of music as a sensation, I speak relatively—for to man there is no music without soul. In music soul and sense both mingle—and become one in its inspired sound.
Yet the least part of music is the mere sensation. It is not on the ear but on the heart that its finest spirit dwells. ”

“ They banish strangeness from the rich man’s hall: they add refinement to the rich man’s banquet: they are joy in the poor man’s holyday, they express lovingness in the poor man’s feast. What so aids beneficent nature as such music does, to remove barbarism and to inspire kindness? How dear amidst all the toils of earth are the songs which were music to our infant ears—the songs of our hearth and of our home—the songs which were our childhood’s spells, a blessedness upon our mother’s lips, a rapture and delight! What solaces the exile, while it saddens him? ”

“ No ear is insensible to the trickling melody of the stream, to the deep song of the river—to the solemn anthem of the torrent, to the eternal harmonies of the ocean. Birds are peculiarly the musicians of the animal world. But how skillful and how rich their music is, we must learn, not from the printed page, but in the sunny grove. Though other creatures have not, as birds, the gift of song, yet are they not unmusical, and have their parts in the mighty orchestra of living nature. ”

“ It seems as a tune played by a spirit-minstrel, on a summer night, in the glade of a lonely wood, to which all the genii of music answer, in chorusses of holy, sad, enchanting modulation.
And of Mozart! What shall we say of him—of Mozart, less only than Beethoven in those strains which linger amidst remote associations, but versatile beyond most composers in the romance and reality of the comic and the tragic in actual life. If ever a genius lived with which all its work was play, that genius was the genius of Mozart. Constantly he made the merest play of genius. ”

“ If ideas, feelings, imaginations, are intellectual, then is music; if that which can excite, combine, modify, elevate—memories, feelings, imagination—is intellectual, then music is intellectual.
An art which, like music, is the offspring of passion and emotion, could not but take a dramatic form. The lyrical drama, secular and sacred, civilized humanity could not but produce. Nothing is more natural than that the gayety and grief of the heart should seek the intense and emphatic expression which music can afford. ”

“ Thou hast met him, and hast told me nothing of it?”
“Doubtless it has so happened, though he would have preferred meeting another.”
“And who is that other?”
“Thyself.”
“Me!” exclaimed Baïla, with her face suffused with blushes, as if she did not expect this reply, which she had skillfully extracted in order to force Mariam into her confidence. “And what does he want with me?”
“What does he want?” replied the old negress, again a prey to her first emotion. “What does he want? God keep me from saying?! He alone can tell you. But it will be death perhaps for us three.” ”

“ Life in power is Action—Life in memory is elegy or eloquence. A nation, like a man, dreams its life again—and until life is gone or changed it soliloquizes or sings its dreams. The music of memory lives in every man’s experience; and the excellence of it is, that it binds itself only to our better feelings. It is the excellence of our nature, also, that only such feelings have spontaneous memories. The worst man does not willingly recall his bad feelings: and if he did, he could not wed them to a melody. ”

“ For me, his head; for the lion, his body; and for thee, my beautiful rose of Incour—my faithful, for thee, his heart. Has he not given thee that heart? Well, go take it.”
Baïla, undecided, troubled with horror, knew not what meaning to attach to his words.
“Go, take it,” repeated Djezzar. “look, behold! powerless to defend himself, does he not appear himself to offer it to thee? Go, my soul, and if thy dagger is not enough for the work, use mine.”
The odalisk bent toward him—“Thou art sporting with me, Ali—is it not so?” she murmured in his ear. ”

“ Musical sounds are grateful to the sense—and all beings that hear listen to them, enjoy them, and need them. In music man has a common medium of sympathy with his fellow animals. The charger prances to the sounds that swell the heart of his master—for he, too, has a heart which they can enter and dilate. A melody can soothe the lion’s rage. The elephant treads delighted to the measure of the band. The dog bays gladness to the shepherd’s flute. The cow stands in placid rapture while the milk-maid sings. Man is scarcely ever so rude as to be beyond the reach of music. ”

“ God joined us, and trouble—death has bound us still closer. Pardon my past waywardness, and take your penitent, suffering Edda back to your heart. Think what a reckless, thoughtless, uncontrolled child I was when you married me, and have patience with me. I cannot live without you, Ralph. I shall die broken-hearted if you treat my selfish, wayward conduct as it merits. God forgives the penitent—will you be more just than He is, my beloved? Come to me, and let me hear from your lips once more, ‘dear Edda.’ Do not tell me you are poor ”

“ The moment expression becomes excited it has rhythm—it has cadence; and the tune of Rossini is nearer to instinct than the blank verse of Shakspeare. Who will say that genuine passion is not in this wonderful blank verse? But who is it that could impromptu speak it? So in the tones and harmonies of music. In both nature is carried into the region of art, out from the region of the actual; and within the region of art the musical utterance of nature is no more strange than the poetical utterance of nature. The moral view of the opera I do not here pretend to deal with. ”

“ Faces long in the clay bloom as they did in youth. An inward ear is opened through the outward—and voices of other times are speaking—and words which you had heard before come to your soul, and they are pleasant in this illusive echo. Your spirit is lost in the flight of days, and insensible to the interval of distance; it is back in other hours, and dwells in other scenes. Such are the mysterious linkings by which music interlaces itself with our feelings—and so becomes an inseparable portion of our sympathy. ”

“ As a mere sensation, music has power. A little maid I have known, who would sit on her cricket by her father’s knee until he had read the whole of Christobel—of which she did not know the meaning of a line. It was melodious to her ear, and merely in its music there was fascination to her infant spirit. The songs which primitive people sing—in which they have their best social interchange, are frequently poor in diction and bald in sentiment. It is the music that gives the words a life; and this life can transfuse energetic inspiration into the meanest words. ”

“ Largely are men indebted even to the music of ballads and of songs. Difficult it would be to measure the good which such music has done to mankind. To multitudes in days of yore songs were the only literature, and by the bards they had all their learning. Songs were their history; their romance; their tragedy; their comedy; their fire-side eloquence, giving utterance and perpetuity to sacred affections, and to noble thoughts—and keeping alive a spirit of humanity in both the vassal and the lord. Men have not yet ceased to need such influences, nor have such influences lost their power. ”

“ The union of these elements in the wholeness of Beethoven’s genius, have given to us that singular, that most original music, which seems to belong to the ideal region, which eastern fancy has peopled with genii and fairies. What a wonderful thing is a symphony of Beethoven’s! But who can describe it, in either its construction or its effects? You might as well attempt to describe, by set phrases, the raptures of St. Paul or the visions of the Apocalypse. It always seems the utterance of a mighty trance, of a mysterious dream, of a solemn ecstacy. ”

“ And then, in unison with this dread and solemn pathos, is the subdued but mighty anguish of the general harmony. When the victory is proclaimed—the victory over the grave—the victory over death—the victory in which mortality is swallowed up of life—we are lost in the glory of a superhuman chorus; our imagination breaks all local bounds; we fancy all the elements of creation, all glorified and risen men, all the hosts of Heaven’s angels united in this exultant anthem. Handel truly is the Milton of music. ”

“ Music is neither inductive nor raciotionative. It is an art; that is, it is an inward law realised in outward fact. Such is all art. In this music agrees with all arts, for all arts are but the outward realities of inward laws. But some of these are for utility, others for delight. Music is of those arts which spring from the desire for enjoyment and gratify it. It bears the soul away into the region of the infinite, and moves it with conceptions of exhaustless possibilities of beauty. ”