Lieder

“ Music has been called the speech of angels; I will go further, and call it the speech of God himself—and I will, with God’s help, show you a little what I mean this Christmas day.
Music, I say, without words, is wonderful and blessed; one of God’s best gifts to men. But in singing you have both the wonders together, music and words. Singing speaks at once to the head and to the heart, to our understanding and to our feelings ”

“ The singing that haunts us, which becomes part of our life, which fills the memory with tender and happy images of other days and scenes, is not necessarily that of the finest voices, but of that mingling in music of voice and skill and feeling which weave an enchanted spell. ”

“ Some are music and some are words, and some, like prayers, are feeling. The real song is in the thrush's heart, not in the silvery rain of sound that comes from the green boughs in Spring. When you open the door of your heart and let all the joy rush out, laughing—then you are making a song. ”

“ Historians exaggerate, perhaps, the function of music in awakening and guiding the exercise of lyrical poetry. The lyric exists, they tell us, as an accompaniment to the lyre; and without the mechanical harmony the spoken song is an artifice. Quite as plausibly might it be avowed that music was but added to verse to concentrate and emphasize its rapture, to add poignancy and volume to its expression. But the truth is that these two arts, though sometimes happily allied, are, and always have been, independent. ”

“ There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. ”

“ We can set our deeds to the music of a grateful heart, and seek to round our lives into a hymn—the melody of which will be recognized by all who come in contact with us, and the power of which shall not be evanescent, like the voice of the singer, but perenninal, like the music of the spheres. ”

“ Sing of glory to God and of good-will to man!
Hark! joining in chorus
The heavens bend o'er us!
The dark night is ending and dawn has begun;
Rise, hope of the ages, arise like the sun,
All speech flow to music, all hearts beat as one! ”

“ Clearly I call, keeping the melody, An old evening-singer unceasing in song, To earls in their houses I bring great bliss; When I chant my carols in varying strains, Men sit in their dwellings silent and still. Say what I’m called who mimic so clearly The songs of a jester, and sing to the world Many a melody welcome to men. ”

“ And then mark! how, amid the chorus of a hundred voices and a hundred instruments,--of flutes, and drums, and trumpets,--this universal shout and whirl-wind of the vexed air, you can so clearly distinguish the melancholy vibration of a single string, touched by the finger,--a mournful, sobbing sound! Ah, this is indeed human life! where in the rushing, noisy crowd, and amid sounds of gladness, and a thousand mingling emotions, distinctly audible to the ear of thought, are the pulsations of some melancholy string of the heart, touched by an invisible hand. ”

“ Playing the while our little children sing:
⁠The world is full of music — not for me!
I dreamed last night of some dim abbey choir:
⁠The lights were burning where the singers stood
Chanting my anthem. I crouched in the dark,
⁠Weeping for joy to hear they called it good!
O music of my sleep, that mocks my soul
⁠With cruel joys that are fulfilled no more
Than his who dreams of light and love at home. ”

“ While we were at the Waterfall, some half-score peasants, chiefly women and girls, assembled just out of reach of the Spring, and set up—surely, the wildest chorus that ever was heard by human ears,—a song not of articulate sounds, but in which the voice was used as a mere instrument of music, more flexible than any which art could produce,—sweet, powerful, and thrilling beyond description. ”

“ And if the people saved be called the lyre, it will be understood to be in consequence of their giving glory musically, through the inspiration of the Word and the knowledge of God, being struck by the Word so as to produce faith. You may take music in another way, as the ecclesiastical symphony at once of the law and the prophets, and the apostles along with the gospel, and the harmony which obtained in each prophet, in the transitions of the persons. ”

“ Continue as long as thou canst this melody in the gatherings of the beloved; thus may the minds find rest and joy and become in tune with the love of God. When eloquence of expression, beauty of sense and sweetness of composition unite with new melodies the effect is very great, especially if it be the anthem of the verses of oneness and the songs of praise to the Lord of Glory. ”

“ What divine music she lured out of the old violin--merry and sad, gay and sorrowful by turns, music such as the stars of morning might have made singing together, music that the fairies might have danced to in their revels among the green hills or on yellow sands, music that might have mourned over the grave of a dead hope. ”

“ It is almost impossible to make them idealize the words through the elocution of singing; and yet in the artistic rendition of a song, a ballad, or a dramatic aria, the words are often of more importance than the music. The singer should study the story of a song by reading it aloud upon the highest plane or level of emotional or dramatic expression. ”

“ Wherever man might dwell.
And to each he apportioned a fragment of song—
Those broken melodies that belong
To the seraphs' chorus, that we might learn
The healing of gladness and discern
In beauty how all is well.
So music dwells in the glorious throats
Forever, and the enchanted notes
Fall with rapture upon our ears,
Moving our hearts to joy and tears
For things we cannot say. ”

“ Imagine some old psalm tune, screamed forth, line by line, from the cracked throats of the old, and by the shrill voices of the young, all singing the air, each voice pitched on a different key, and some idea of their style of music may be formed. ”

“ The flow of his melody turned the very air into music. I thought I was in the presence of Divinity as I listened to the warbles, and murmurs, and the ebb and flow of the silver tides, from his violin. And I said: Music is the dearest gift of God to man. The sea, the forest, the field, and the meadow, are the very fountain heads of music. ”

“ Shall we now begin the singing,
Sing the songs of old tradition?
Singers can but sing their wisdom,
And the cuckoo call the spring-time,
And the goddess of the heavens
Only dyes the earth in beauty ”

“ Not to thy gifted numbers known?—
But the latest touch was light and calm,
As the voice of a hymn, the night-falling balm;
Holy and sweet, as its music were given
Less from a vision of earth than of heaven. ”

“ An old hymn tune, or an old song, a turn of phrase, a scent in the garden, a tone of voice, a curve in the path—everything comes to us weighted with its own treasures of memory, bitter or sweet, but always significant. ”

“ Alighting on nearby trees, they sing with a hearty vengeance, bursting out without any puttering prelude in gloriously glad concert, hundreds or thousands of exulting voices with sweet gurgling _baumpalees_ mingled with chippy vibrant and exploding globules of musical notes, making a most enthusiastic, indescribable joy-song, a combination unlike anything to be heard elsewhere in the bird kingdom; something like bagpipes, flutes, violins, pianos, and human-like voices all bursting and bubbling at once. ”

“ All the men but one leaned back upon the settles or forward upon the tables, their hands on their tankards, watching the one who sang a ballad—a ballad known to them so well that they seemed not to listen, but simply to let the melody surge about them and provoke what thoughts it would. ”

“ Is caught and held fast in the pipes of Pan's flute.
And what conjure you? Imprisoned is the song,
It lingers and longs in the reeds where it lies;
Your young life is strong, but how much more strong
Is the longing that through your music sighs. ”

“ An opposite conclusion would be at war with our convictions of the wisdom and benevolence of the Deity, who made the hearing ear and formed the melodious voice, and strung the soul of man with chords ever responsive to the influence of sweet sounds. Music is as truly the voice of nature as speech ; that is, it is as natural for man to convey and to receive the movements of sentiment by the influence of sweet sounds as by the use of words. ”

“ They do sing the melody in all human life, as well as the melody in music. They carry the leading part, at least in the sense that they are a step in advance of us, all the way in the journey heavenward. ”

“ And, to the same end, why is it that your school can sing readily, even without the book, the first two or three stanzas of so many songs, while every stanza beyond is an unknown land to them? It is because, owing chiefly to the slowness of our ordinary singing, we seldom compass the whole of a hymn. At the close of a well-written hymn is the climax, the thought up to which the whole has led, which binds it all together. Our songs, if they are to get hold upon our minds and lives, must be sung beyond their prelude, sung straight through. ”

“ At such a time it is made to sing a song, which, readily awakening the sympathies of the soul, causes the listener to recognize and feel the effects of the intonations of pathos, of passion, of deepest melancholy, or those of lightsomeness and wildest joy. ”

“ Melody is a retrogression of the matter into æther, of the formed world into the primary world; through melody is the spirit of the world revealed. The ear is the first liberation of the animal from all terrestrial matter; through the ear the animal becomes for the first time spiritual.
2869. Melody is the voice of the universe, whereby it proclaims its scheme, or its innermost essence. Hence the wondrous, mysterious action of harmony, the secret sovereignty of music. Music is the expression of the ardent desire to revert to the primary idea. ”

“ I. "Encore un hymne, O ma lyre Un hymn pour le Seigneur, Un hymne dans mon delire, Un hymne dans mon bonheur." One hymn more, O my lyre! Praise to the God above, Of joy and life and love, Sweeping its strings of fire! ”

“ And what else is the power of melody but the power of feeling? Music is the [4] language of feeling; melody is audible feeling—feeling communicating itself. Who has not experienced the power of love, or at least heard of it? ”

“ With those just spirits that wear victorious palms
Hymns devout and holy psalms
Singing everlastingly,"—
his voice sank again, though it was easy to see that a prayer trembled on his lips. As a strain of music fades into silence, his tones fell away, fainter and fainter; and with the same seraphic light on his countenance his breathing ceased. ”

“ The meaning of the third stanza is clearer if we put it into prose as follows: Let music swell grandly on the breeze, and let the sweet song of freedom ring from all the trees; let every human being sing the song; let all living things join in the chorus. Let even the rocks break the silence and prolong the music with their echoes. ”

“ What a gentle, mystical song resounds from among the willows, as of a nightingale endowed with a human voice in order to sing to the listening night in coherent rhymes the song of his love and his melancholy rapture. ”

“ Sweet, affecting music—not the tone of the piano, nor the peals of the organ—but a melodious air, sung by strong and well-disciplined voices, and accompanied by the flute and viol—such music reaches the fountains of thought and feeling ”

“ The globe of poets then, The choir of angel-men, Each sing a different song, That doth to each belong. Yet the songs one and all, Are of a single call. And make one body free, Doth with itself agree. Then in society. Rises an anthem high, 'Tis as a perfume cast From all flowers far and fast ; A STRANGE BOOK 359 And every fibre heaves With perfume in its leaves, And every part doth thrill With perfume from its will. But when men sing on earth, Song hath no heavenly birth. ”

“ To present each hymn with its tune appeared the natural and most satisfactory way, as in most cases it is impossible to dissociate the two. The melody is the psychological coëfficient of the metrical text. Without it the verse of a seraph would be smothered praise. Like a flower and its fragrance, hymn and tune are one creature, and stand for a whole value and a full effect. ”

“ What music is like this,
where each note is a kiss?
The golden willows lift
their boughs the sun to sift:
Their sprays they droop to screen
the sky with veils of green,
A floating cage of song,
where feathered lovers throng. ”

“ Singing is so directed to here as to show that, if any be in circumstances of mirth and prosperity, he should turn his mirth, though alone, and by himself, in this channel. Holy mirth becomes families and retirements, as well as public assemblies. Let our singing be such as to make melody with our hearts unto the Lord, and God will assuredly be well pleased with this kind of devotion. ”

“ At harvest time in our country I hear, or I imagine I hear, a sort of chorus rising over all the hills, and I meet no man who is not, deep down within him, a singer! So song follows work: so art grows out of life! ”

“ The slightest sound becomes a crash, and we hear the fall of waters, the roar of cataracts, the blare of trumpets, or brilliant harmonies. I have seen persons, naturally almost insensible to music, lifted by a few musical notes into an ecstasy such as we read of in the lives of saints. ”