Ole Bull

“ I must not omit my thanks for the delight Ole Bull gave with his violin at his first coming to this country more than forty years ago. From the touch of his bow, as if Neptune were speaking to the sea, a wave swept over the land from that ocean of harmony that slumbers in the human soul. Out of the same deeps came a second wave at the voice, much later among us, of Jenny Lind. Technical criticism cannot countervail much when a man has just wrought a miracle on the spot, and the United States rose to this as, in the same calling, never to any other man. ”

“ It remains to consider Ole Bull not only as an artist and patriot, but man; for, beyond all else, he was humane, cosmopolite, a citizen of the world, and did not distinguish himself, save by genius which he could not help, from other men, but was in union and close communion with all; and detract as we may from a man’s talents, or criticise as we will his accomplishments, the fact of a great wide and common love for him and from him cannot be set aside. ”

“ Recalling what the presence and music of Ole Bull were to Alice Cary in her comparative health and fullness of life, you can realize what they must have been to charm and uplift her spirit when, wistfully dropping human loves, with pathetic grief, yet with abiding faith, she stood at the very close of the valley of shadows, listening to his seraphic strains, sweet to pain, yet full of the promise and melody of heaven. ”

“ Dear Friend,—We are all sitting around our centre table; the blaze of the fire flickering on the walls, and enlivening the hearth. We are recalling the pleasant hours spent in Hartford. My husband says to me—Did you indeed see Ole Bull? He has always been one of my ideals—how I wish he would come here! Why, says I, he did promise to come, perhaps:—so you see that you are not forgotten. Do not, my dear friend, despair of human nature—nor wholly despair of America; the experience of the past has shivered so many brilliant illusions. ”

“ In the present case, he hit most happily upon just those features in Ole Bull’s genius and character, which were sure to win sympathy—the simplicity, the brightness, the sweet innocence, which in his music suddenly rises from the chaos of tumultuous passion, and the naïveté, generosity, and warm devotion, which in his personal intercourse with men were so singularly blended with his fierce hatred of all intrigue and malice.
In Norway we read this criticism with great delight. ”

“ But with Ole Bull fairly commenced our knowledge of the genius of Northern Europe. The play of the wind through her forests of pines, the glint of her frozen streams, the tenderness of her households, and the solemnity of her faith, seemed to breathe in the wizard tones of his violin; while her integrity was written in the form, the manners, and the very smile of the musician. Then the spirit of her literature began slowly to win its gentle but impressive way to the American heart. ”

“ Ole Bull’s tones have the power of melting the hearts even of the envious. When he commenced, he played to both enemies and friends, but he ended by playing to friends only. He has, by his personal worth, made himself universally beloved here. ”

“ Longfellow proposed the health and happiness of Ole Bull, which was drunk in a silence meaning more than words.
Thus ended a happy evening, a memorable birthday, sacred now as the last communion of love and music, between the poet of the North and that throng which [305] could have been multiplied a hundred times over if all those who have held in dear regard the great artist could have found admittance to that little room. ”

“ His playing is as wonderful as Ole Bull's, but not so fascinating; his compositions more contemplative and regular, not so wild and throbbing with the irregular pulsations of unsatisfied genius, as are Ole Bull's. I felt no disposition to compare, feeling how different they were. I thanked God when I came away that no one man has sole power, but that many may serve in this boundless temple, each in its various offices. Yet in my memory is Ole Bull the only man who has stirred me up as genius always must. When I heard Vieuxtemps, I knew what to anticipate ”

“ These men were there by hundreds, each bringing a green bough, or a fern, or a flower; they waited humbly till all others had left the grave, then crowded up, and threw in, each man, the only token he had been rich enough to bring. The grave was filled to the brim. And it is not irreverent to say, that to Ole Bull, in heaven, there could come no gladder memory of earth than that the last honors paid him there were wild leaves and flowers of Norway, laid on his body by the loving hands of Norway peasants. ”

“ When Ole Bull gave his last concerts in Dodsworth Hall, in New York, in 1857, he was so ill that he had to be helped on and off the stage, and occasionally the applause of the audience alone kept him roused to consciousness, so weak was he from the chills and fever. ”

“ No man had a finer sense of the mysteries of human life, or could discourse of them more earnestly. The love of liberty was a passion with him, and when he chanted of Freedom his countenance was as of one inspired. It would be superfluous to repeat here what rapturous pleasure Ole Bull’s music has afforded to hundreds of thousands in America during the many years he lived among us. ”

“ Ole Bull became the first and greatest festival in this people’s life; he gave us self–respect, the greatest gift possible at that time.
This is Ole Bull’s undying honor, this the supreme accomplishment of his life.
If one would measure the depth of an impression, he must seek its expression in literature. Read Welhaven’s poem at that time to Ole Bull. Any man with a knowledge of European literature will not hesitate to say that it is one of the most beautiful lyrics ever written. ”

“ But a young generation came, nourished on freedom, and without the fear and prudence of their elders, but with more of defiance, more of anger. They lived in the morning of freedom and honor, and in this dawn came Ole Bull’s tones like the first rays of the sun over the mountain tops.
At that time the folk–melodies invaded our music, the democratic invaded the aristocratic, the national the abstract, the individual the formulated ideal. To our honor be it said, we followed. ”

“ A still closer tie was soon to bind him to the United States, the country which seemed already his by adoption. In Madison, Wis., in the winter of 1868, Ole Bull first made the acquaintance which resulted in his second marriage. He took a kindly interest in the musical studies of his friend there, and later in New York. To others this delightful relation of teacher, adviser, and friend seemed the only one permissible; but he wrote: [257] “Other than human powers have decided my fate.... The sunbeams I shut out, but the sun itself I could not annihilate.” ”

“ A few years ago Ole Bull gave some fifteen concerts in Vienna, with the brilliant success which usually attends him. The Bohemian, who went with the crowd to hear him, was an enthusiastic admirer of his genius, and soon became personally acquainted with him. Until then he had considered himself the most learned man in Europe in the history of violins, the peculiar merits of all the most approved manufacturers, and the best methods of repairing deficiencies, or improving the tones. But with Ole Bull, love of the violin had been an absorbing passion from his earliest childhood. ”

“ A lad, a violin player, unable to conquer the instrument and elicit [205] from it what he had on his heart, held its apertures to the mouth of his dying mother, and from that time people, when he played, stood spell–bound, listening with heart and soul to tones not of this world. When Ole Bull went forth to the world, his mother, old Norway, had breathed into his violin, but not her last breath; the spell that bound his listeners had in it something healthy and cheerful joined with its magic power. ”

“ Its climate, as Jonas Lie has said, illustrates its folk–type; doubtless because it has helped to form it. The people are animated, enthusiastic, and practical, a curious combination of the prosaic and ideal; and all this, it is claimed, has made the old town rich in men of genius. Her children have been loyal; and the old mother, with her thousand years’ history, has had no more devoted son than Ole Bull.
He was born February 5, 1810. His paternal grandmother, Gedsken Edvardine Storm, married to the apothecary and army surgeon, Ole Bornemann Bull, was sister to the poet, Edvard Storm. ”

“ Longfellow.
Lingering as long as possible till there was but the shortest time to meet appointments, Ole Bull sailed from Norway in the fall of 1878 for the United States. So far as concerts were concerned, there is but the same story of a cordial [292] reception by the public and a pleasant winter. A few brief extracts from the many notices in the journals will suffice. He played in the principal Northern cities only.
The Boston Journal said of him:—
Ole Bull seems not a day older than he did a score of years ago, and certainly he has not lost a whit of his wonderful command over the violin. ”

“ After the first tones the blood rushed to her face, and when he had finished she exclaimed: “Signor Ole Bull, it is indeed your own fault that I did not treat you as you deserved. A man like you should step forth with head erect in the full light of day, that we may recognize his noble blood.” From that time she had for him not only a friendly but an affectionate interest. Another day when he was playing at her house, she said: “He has a much sweeter tone than you, De Beriot.” The latter thought that the superiority [60] lay in the instrument, but failed on trial to satisfy her of this. ”

“ He had not subsided from the gush and sparkle of life into the sediment of a form or stalagmite of a creed. The crystallization went on unfinished in the upper chambers of his soul, and had no cavern like the stalactites of the mine in which to drop. No decay gave hint of an end. There is sickness, death, but no end. He grew, advanced, never stopped, nor did the sutures, even at seventy, quite close over that busy brain. “To have to work so at my age!” said the French painter, Thomas Couture; but Ole Bull said, “I should vegetate without new engagements to fulfill.” ”

“ The lithe and agile figure has lost none of its elasticity, and the nerves are as steady as in the noon–day [277] of life. There is still the same nervous delicacy of touch and precision of execution, which, in the years gone by, charmed two continents and led the people of many lands in pleasant bondage after the car of the enchanting musician. The triumphs of to–day are destined to be no less great than those obtained in the past. Ole Bull, like a prince that had wandered from his own land and returned after a long absence, is restored to the throne he had abandoned by a delighted people ”

“ But, although he had no dogmas to offer, [405] never lived one who accredited more the being of God and immortality of the soul, and the immense superiority of unseen supernal forces to the seen. Thus he lived an ideal life, free from mercenary aims, so charming and enchanting men that his name became a household word, and the great manager in any city had to spend little time or means advertising him, if it were in the air that the magician would come....
Honor, then, in this sacred place, to the man and artist, Ole Bull. He held a sublime and tricksy, yet utterly simple bow. ”

“ Ole Bull actually sold his last shirt to hear the mighty master, and, having heard him, instead of saying like the crowd that nothing new was possible after that, began to seek after hitherto unknown effects that even Paganini had not discovered. Both these facts indicate clearly that Ole Bull was a musical transcendentalist, and his long retirement confirms it. A true transcendentalist dislikes publicity, and loves to cultivate himself in solitude. ”

“ This happy advantage has been accorded this year to Ole Bull. After the extraordinary success which he had attained at Roger’s entertainments, he could not leave Paris without giving a grand concert at the Théâtre [190] Italien. This is a custom made fashionable by Liszt, Thalberg, Madame Pleyel,—in fact, by all great artists; a fashion which some lesser stars with more boldness than success have followed. Ole Bull was not too sanguine in regard to his strength, for all the tickets are already sold. ”

“ One man remarked, as he left Ole Bull’s concert, “Well, there is no such thing as getting a dollar’s worth of music out of a fiddle, in three hours.” Of the same concert, a man of thorough musical science, and deep feeling for his musical art, writes to me thus: “Ole Bull has certainly impressed me as no man ever impressed me before. The most glorious sensation I ever had was to sit in one of his audiences, and feel that all were elevated to the same pitch with myself. My impulse was to speak to every one as to an intimate friend. The most indifferent person was a living soul to me. ”

“ On his way from Upsala to Stockholm, Ole Bull met at Jönköping his old teacher Lundholm, who, it will be remembered, had prophesied that his pupil would in time become as good a fiddler as himself. It was at the close of a snowy day, and the northern lights were shooting up the sky. [141] Lundholm, muffled in a bear skin, came along in a sleigh, and unwrapping his face called out to Ole Bull’s driver to stop. Then he shouted to the artist: “Now that you are a celebrated violinist remember that, when I heard you play Paganini, I predicted your career would be a remarkable one.” ”