Rezension: Scottish Airs von Carl Maria von Weber (WeV U.16) innerhalb von George Thomsons Veröffentlichung von 1826

A Select Collection of Original Scottish Airs, with Introductory and Concluding Symphonies and Accompaniments for the Piano-Forte, Violine, or Flute, and Violoncello, by Pleyel, Haydn, Weber, Hummel, Beethoven, &c., and Characteristic Verses adapted to the Airs, including upwards of One Hundert Songs by Burns. By George Thomson, F.A.S., Edinburgh. A New Edition, in Five Vols. folio, 1826. (Preston, 71, Dean Street, Soho.)

This is a new and improved edition of one of the largest collections of national music and lyrical poetry that has ever appeared in Great Britain. It was originally the vehicle which conveyed to the world the inimitable effusion of Burns, – the first great assemblage of Scottish melodies, presented in their purest form, decorated with the harmonies of the most accomplished musicians of the age, and united to beautiful and characteristic poetry. Its publication attracted to Caledonian music the attention which it so well deserved, and rendered it an object of general interest and admiration. This work, accordingly, like every remarkable production of a new species, has been the occasion of a great number of similar publications; and it may be considered as by no means one of the smallest benefits conferred on the public by the editor, that his work was the prototype of the Irish Melodies of Moore

Before the original publication of Mr. Thomson’s collection, the Scottish Melodies were but little known, and little valued, south of the Tweed. We had been long accustomed, indeed, to hear a few of the most pleasing of them sung in The Beggar’s Opera, a circumstance owing to Gay’s having resided in Scotland while engaged in the composition of that piece. These, with a few more which had found their way into other operas, (particularly The Duenna,) constituted very nearly the whole Scottish music known to the English, whose opinion of it was chiefly formed from a set of spurious “Scotch ballads” manufactured in London, for Vauxhall and the theatres.The words of these cockney fabrications were full of Jockies and Jennies, and the airs were plentifully supplied with that jerking and snappish character which was supposed to belong peculiarly to the Scottish style. A very few of these were, on the whole, pretty, and became popular; but, in general, they obtained little notice, and deserved still less. The counterfeits were, indeed, not much like what was meant to be imitated; and when the rich mine of nothern melody was once opened, and its sterling treasures brought to light, we immediately saw the worthlessness of what had been palmed upon us.

We discovered that Scotland possessed a body of national music, of great extent, and vast variety of character and expression; many of the airs being as remarkable for grace, elegance, and even grandeur, as others for rustic hilarity, tenderness, and pastoral simplicity. The Scottish melodies, consequently, have taken the rank to which they were entitled. They exercise the talents of our greatest composers, display the power of our best singers, and contribute very largely to the musical pleasure of the most refined and elevated classes of society. For much of this the music of Scotland has to thank the Editor of the present work; and, by the stock of original lyric poetry, to which he has joined this music, he has, moreover, made a great and permanent addition to the literary capital of our country.

Of the poetry contained in these volumes, by far the greatest part is modern; and the editor has often been charged with having displaced the venerable relics os Scottish song, to make room for the verses of modern poets. Were we to give full credit to all that has been written by national enthusiasts on the subject, we should necessarily believe that Scotland possessed a great inheritance of traditional poetry, handed down from a very remote ancestry, and of unrivalled excellence. He is no good Scotchman, Dr. Johnson has said, who does not love Scotland better than truth; – a proposition which has been demonstrated by writers on Scottish song. But the fact is, that the traditional poetry of Scotland , judging form the little now known of it, seems to resemble that of other rude nations, both in kind and quality. The only considerable portion of this, which has descended to us, consists of the Ballads now so well known by means of Sir Walter Scott’s “Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.” – These are very interesting on several accounts, but chiefly as being illustrative of the history and manners of the times to which they belong. They frequently warm the imagination, too, and rouse the feelings, by romantic adventures and tragical scenes; while, in the undaunted bearing of their champions, and the devoted attachment, even unto death, of their too often frail fair ones, there is a beauty which every reader acknowledges. But the ballads of this class, though they were probably chaunted, in former times, to some simple melody, which would enable the singer, or rather reciter, to deliver them with nearly the rapidity of ordinary speech, (as is still the practice of our rustic ballad-singers,) are now totally unfit for the purposes of music. Few will now listen with patience to a ballad of twenty, or, it may be, fifty stanzas, drawled to some monotonous tune. If heard at all, it must be through the medium of a spirited and expressive recitation. And, therefore, however valuable and delightful we may find these poetical remains in the Minstrelsy of the Border, they are quite unfit for insertion in a musical publication.

Besides these, which form the great body of the old Scottish ballads still extant, our collectors have preserved several which contain most humorous and animated pictures of the domestic manners of the olden time, such as “Muirland Willie,” “The Gaberlunzie Man,” “Take your auld cloak about ye,” and a few more. The best of these are contained in the present collection; and we believe it will be found, that only those have been omitted which are inadmissible into any decorous publication.

The want of suitable verses to the Scottish melodies was felt by Allan Ramsay, whose “Tea-table Miscellany,” published in 1724, was the first extensive collection of Scottish songs. In that work, Ramsay, “being assured how acceptable new words to known tunes would prove,” introduced about a hundred new songs, to the most popular airs; and he was so liberal of his alterations in the old songs which he retained, that, in many cases, he left them little more than the name and subject. He has, consequently, been often upbraided (and by Ritson in particular) not only for the liberties he took for the earlier pieces which he published, but also “for preferring songs written by himself, or the ingenious young gentlemen” who assisted him, to ancient and original words, which would, in many cases, all circumstances considered, have been probably superior, or at least much more curious, and which are not irretrievable." This objection is more in the spirit of an antiquary than of a man of taste or feeling: but even an antiquary would be puzzled to point out any ancient and original words, supplanted by Ramsay, and superior to those which he substituted for them. Ramsay’s standart of poetic excellence was by no means high, – his sense of delicacy was not acute, or his taste fastidious. His wish, however, seems to have been to preserve the old songs entire, so far as his ideas of beauty and refinement would permit. “Of the many fragments of oral songs,” says Allan Cunningham, “which it has been my fortune to find, a number bear the names and characters of those which has been numbered among the lost favourites of our forefathers; they are all alike licentious and indiscreet; and if I may judge of those suppressed by those that have survived, we ought rather to praise Ramsay’s good sense, than to censure his want of sympathy with the remains of our minstrelsy.”

Allan Ramsay’s book,immediately on its publication, obtained immense popularity in Scotland. It supplied, what was then a great desideratum, a body of agreeable songs, adapted to the melodies of the country. South of the Tweed, Ramsay’s productions never got much into notice, for they did not possess a sufficiency of intrinsic poetical merit to exite attention, without the help of musical and national associations. It is enough to look into them to be satisfied, that to these collateral aids their popularity in Scotland was, in a great measure, owing. Ramsay was an acute observer of the character and manners of Scottish peasantry, and has produced many pleasing and homorous sketches of the habits and sentiments peculiar to that race. His humour, indeed, is admirable; and there is often considerable beauty in his pictures of pastoral life, with its feelings and affections, its joys and sorrows. But the feelings he paints are never very refined, nor the affections exalted – the joys are neither rapturous, nor the sorrows deep. Ramsay’s verses breath a gentle and kind spirit, but little or no passion; and it is impossible to conceive that he could ever have experienced, in his own person, those emotions which are the life and soul of lyric poetry. There is, of course, plenty of love in his songs; but, whenever he writes naturally on the subject, as in his songs of drawn from low and rural life, love is never depicted as a resistless and overwhelming passion, but as a mere sentiment, composed of a moderate degree of affection, much of that feeling which is generally considered both unfit and unworthy to occupy a place in such descriptions, – and a large share of exceedingly cool worldly prudence. In another class of his songs, and a very numerous one, where, in despite of nature and education, he attempts to imitate the polite English song-writers of the time, his love is expressed, according to the fashion of the day,in tissues of commonplaces, conceits, and mythological allusions. His songs of this class, we do not hesitate to say, are almost destitute of merit; they are laboured, cold and heartless, incapable of kindling a spark of sympathy, or touching a responsive chord, in any bosom. In respect to composition, he is very defective. His language in inelegant, flat, and prosaic; and his happiest thoughts are often marred by his clumsy and cumbrous phraseology. There is, besides, a degree of coarseness and indelicacy, both in his ideas and expressions, even in his most polished effusions, which is quite repugnant to the taste of the present time. Ramsay’s poetry, therefore, declined in popularity, even in Scotland, as taste and delicacy advanced; and the want of better verses to the Scottish melodies was felt, and occasional attempts made to supply it, long before the task was so effectually accomplished by Burns.

The period between the times of Ramsay and of Burns was an interval of downright sterility in songwriting, as in many other kinds of poetry. The luxuriance of the literary harvest, about the beginning of the eighteenth century, seems to have produced an exhaustion in the soil, from which it did not, for many years, recover. This was truly the dark age of English lyric poetry – it was a long and dreary night, illumined, indeed, by the moonbeams of Goldsmith, and the glimmering of some minor luminaries. Cowper gave the prospect of returning day; but it is only in the time in which we live, the time of Byron, Scott, Campbell, Southey, Baillie, and Moore, that our poetical genius has re-appeared, in even more than its ancient splendour. Before the rise of these illustrious persons, and of the other distinguished individuals who shed such a glory over the literature of our country, our poetry consisted almost wholly of cold and constrained imitations of classical models. The ancients were considered as having exhausted all the possible forms of poetical beauty; accordingly, we had epic poems cast in the precise mould of Homer and Virgil – filled, whatever the subject, with their mythological machinery, and their style copied, down to the initiatory invocation; satires and epistles in imitation of Horace and Juvenal; didactic poems on the plan of Virgil, Horace, or Lucretius; pastorals like those of Theocritus, and even love-songs and epigrams on the model of Catullus or Martial. The voice of nature was silent; or, if now and then faintly raised, it was stifled by the all-powerful force of authority. Voltaire, indeed, he said,–

“Tout genre est bon, hors le genre ennuyeux;”–

but this admirable maxim was disregarded by all the world, and even by the great man who uttered it. A poet of those days durst no more deviate from the established models of poetical composition, than an architect of the present period dares to introduce a new form into one of his buildings. How far this scrupulous adherence to ancient models is favouralble, even to the art of architecture, we shall not venture to inquire; though we do feel it somewhat difficult to believe, that the ancients have exhausted every form of architectural beauty.

Be this as it may, however, it is certain that poetry languished while under the despotic influence of classical authority. It was then like a clipped and puny shrub in one of the well trimmed alleys which surrounded the habitations of our ancestors; but it now thrives and flourishes, beacause it is allowed to shoot wild and free, like a vigorous tree of the forest. Perhaps the luxuriance of its growth degenerates sometimes into ranknes; but this is a small evil compared with the universal mediocrity of the preceding age.

Song-writing, of course, underwent the same revolutions as the other kinds of poetry. Those of the Elizabethan age, of which so many specimens are to be found in the old English plays, were conceived in the spirit of the dramas themselves; – vigorous and animated, full of striking sentiments, and highly poetical expressions; but rugged and indelicate. The songs of the succeeding age – of Waller, Suckling, and Cowley – were, like the contemporary lyrics of France, witty, but quaint and metaphysical; – abounding in euphuisms and conceits, and utterly destitute of natural feeling. The classical style of poetry, which followed, introduced into song-writing a better taste in composition – simpler language, and smoother measures. But still there was no nature; the scene was always Arcadia, the subjects the fantastic loves and griefs of nymphes and shepherds. Such was the prevailing taste, even down to the time when Burns began to follow the inspirations of his untutored, and therefore unfettered, muse. He struck at once into a different path. His songs were the emanations of an ardent mind, glowing with real passion, and melting with real tenderness. His inborn elegance preserved him from vulgarity of thought and expression; and his taste, and strong feeling of melody, impared grace and smoothness to his verse. His captivating productions awakened his own country, and England also, to a sense of insipidity to the style which had hitherto been prevalent. He illustrated, by his example, the force of truth and nature. This example has been followed be many beautiful writers of our time, and he may thus be said to have become the founder of a school of song-writing, unrivalled in any age or country.

It is thirty years since the editor of the work before us engaged Burns to write new verses to the Scottish melodies. The poet entered at once into the ideas of his correspondent, respecting the want of such poetry, and it is generally known with what enthusiasm he embarked in the undertaking, and to what a magnificent body of natural song that enthusiasm gave birth. The poet’s untimely death left the work far from being completed; but the editor has since availed himself so effectually of the aid of all the great song-writers of the present day, (Moore only expected, whose assistance, on account of his own undertakings, was out of the question,) that all the valuable Scottish melodies may now be considered as being provided with good and suitable poetry. We cannot give a more correct account of the poetical part of the work, than is contained in a brief statement in the preface to the present edition. “The poetry in these volumes,” says the Editor, “comprises the most select and complete collection of songs ever offered to the public; a very large portion of which were written, at the solicitation of the Editor, expressly for this work, by Robert Burns; and, after his lamented death, by Sir Walter Scott, Professor Smyth, and Joanna Baillie. The work is also graced with several of the elegant songs of Thomas Campbell, and Lord Bryon; and it contains the best songs of the olden time, and of Ramsay, Hamilton, Thomson, Smollett, Skinner, Macneill, Hogg, Cunnigham, and many others.” In so great and various a work, occasional failures in execution must necessarily have occurred, and might be pointed out; but they are as few and unimportant as could possibly have been expected; and we therefore have no disposition to make them the subject of minute criticism.

We might extract a few songs from this work, but really two or three picked out of as many hundreds, would hardly be a better specimen of the publication, than two or three bricks of a great edifice. Every song of Bruns, at all worthy of his name, (and perhaps a few more,) is to be found in the collection; and the verses of the still more modern writers are, almost all of them, possessing great poetical merit. The contributions, in particular, of Joanna Baillie are delightful. They are full of arch simplicity, combined with great tenderness; and, in the happy and unaffected use of the language of the olden time, the reader is constantly reminded of the author of the plays on the Passions. Some of her songs, too, are very Scottish, both in their language, and in the sketches of manners and character which they contain. Professor Smyth of Cambridge, who has contributed largely to the work, is remarkable for the smoothness and flow of his verses, and shows, in every line, that he is not only a poet, but a musician; a great quality in a song-writer. His poetry, moreover, indicates an elegant and cultivated mind, and a heart overflowing with every kind and amiable feeling. Sir Walter Scott appears in his usual energy and vigour. His “Maid of Isla” is a sweet and beautiful song. His “Donald Caird” is the very perfection of humorous description; and his “Pibroch of Dhonuil Dhu” is, perhaps, one of the most inspiring warcries that ever was uttered.

The symphonies and accompaniments to the melodies owe their birth the greatest masters Germany can boast. At the commencement of the undertaking, the editor, as appears from the correspondence with Burns, engaged Pleyel, then in the zenith of his fame, to compose them; a task which devolved Kozeluch to continue, when Mr. Thomson had the good fortune, or rather the judgement, to put the work into the hands of Haydn, by whom a great portion of it was executed. On the death of that illustrious man, Beethoven contributed largely to it; and latterly, we observe the names of of the highly-gifted Weber, and of Hummel, which appear, for the first time, in this new edition. In the use that he has made of the talents of these distinguished persons, the editor has by no means been parsimonious; for the same airs has appeared, in successive editions, clothed in totally different grabs – the least successful having been displaced to make way for superior arrangements; and the different styles of the composers give the work a variety and spirit which no single individual could have imparted to it.

The engagement of foreign instead of British musicians in the present work, has been made a subject of complaint against Mr. Thomson. That there are now composers in this country able to accompany national melodies, or any melodies, in a very beautiful manner, we entertain no doubt; but the question is, were such to be found while the undertaking was in progress? – Have not the brilliant instances of genius, exhibited in many of these accompaniments, shown to our own artists the road to improvement, and stimulated their efforts? – If so, – and we have no hesitation in asserting the facts – then the editor of the present volumes is entitled to the thanks even of those who might have felt themselves most aggrieved by the preference shown, and is undeserving of the censure which, inconsiderately, has been cast on him. It was Mr. Thomson’s duty to bring out his work in the most perfect manner possible, in the discharge of which he employed those to whom universal opinion ascribed the greatest share of talent; those who are taken as models by our own countrymen, and with whom British musicians are too modest and judicious to enter into competition.

The melodies of Scotland, indeed, afford ample room for the exercise of the highest musical talent. They differ widely both in style and expresion. Some are as smooth and regular as Italian airs, while others are wild and grotesque in extreme. Some are sportive, others nobel and grand, and a very great number breathe the deepest melancholy. Are airs like these to be accompanied by a series of dry and meagre chords, such as a twelvemonth’s study of thorough-base would suggest? If the rich colouring of a beautiful harmony is found to add clearness to the design, heighten the grace, and even strengthen the expression, of melody, in every sort of original composition, from the simplicity of the peasant’s strain, to the sublimity of sacred song, why should the case be different with the airs in question, because they are old and national? The nature of the harmony, no doubt, must accord with the style of the air. The notes of the country girl Zerlina, in Don Juan, are accompanied very differently from those of the animated statue of the Commendatore; yet, artless and simple as is the lovely air, “Vedrai, carino,” who has not felt the expression, as well as beauty, is immeasurably increased by the accompaniments? – who does not know, that, to write these accompaniments, required, even as much as the air itself, the taste and genius of Mozart?

In music, as in the other fine arts, the most simple effects are far from being produced by the most obvious means. The greatest simplicity of effect is often accompanied with the most consummate skill in construction, and requires the greatest dexterity in execution.In the accompaniments to the Chorus of Fairies, in the “Oberon” of Weber, there is a passage, which, though very chromatic, and absolutely bristling with sharps and flats, yet, when touched with lightness and delicacy, is the mere sighing of a breeze*. By confounding simplicity of construction with simplicity of effect, we fall into the common error of supposing, that the use of learned harmony must destroy the simplicity of national music. In the melodies before us, Beethoven and Weber have produced effects not only perfectly original, but exquisitely simple, by means which, perhaps, no other composers would ever have dreamt of. As to the notion, that the Scottish airs are too wild to be susceptible of harmony, all who understand the matter, know that it proceeds from sheer ignorance of the subject. Every air, containing that which is melody to a cultivated ear – and it is only such airs that can find a place in a collection like the present – may be clothed in appropriate harmony, if the composer knows where to find it. Those singular phrases of progressions of melody which are particularly characteristic of national music, and were once supposed to be incapable of any alliance with regular harmony, are now becoming common in the most scientific works of the greatest composers. The music of Beethoven and Weber is full of them; and it may be mentioned, as a curious instance, that the subject of the allegro movement of the second quartet by the former, dedicated to Count Rasoumoffsky, is almost the same as a very wild Javanese air, which our musical readers, who may be desirous to trace the coincidence, will find in Crawford’s History of the Indian Archipelago. Numberless passages of a similar kind may be pointed out, accompanied with full harmony, and made subject to the strictest laws of counterpoint.

The accompaniments, in the present work, are so constructed as to produce a satisfactory effect on the piano-forte alone; but, when the additional parts, for the violin, flute, and violoncello, are used, the airs, thus performed in a chamber, have almost as much richness as if accompanied by a full orchestra in a theatre or concert-room; and we know of no musical work which furnishes such an inexhaustible supply of delightful materials for the most agreeable of all concerts – that which is got up in the bosom of an elegant domestic circle.

The very unusual length to which the interest we took in this subject has led us to carry the present article, made us doubtful whether it would be prudent to extend it further by an extract; but, feeling that an example in score of the manner in which so distinguished a composer as Weber treated a Scottish air, might prove instructive to the musician, and could not fail to gravity the curiousity of the connoisseur, we must exceed our regular limits, for the purpose of inserting the melody of “John Anderson, my Jo,” with the accompaniments, as they appear in the author’s original manuscript:–

In our next we propose to complete this subject, by giving a specimen of Hummel’s mode of accompanying a Scottish air. Weber and Hummel are selected because they are quite new to public in this particular line of their art.

In a former article on Scottish melodies, we entirely overlooked a cheap edition, in six volumes, royal octavo, of the work now reviewed; a plublication expressly intended and calculated for the use of those who desire a book of less price. That smaller, but exceedingly neat work contains almost the whole of the poetry and music of the large edition, with the same accompaniment for piano-forte, compressed into two staves; and also includes a selection of Irish an Welsh airs, from two other seperate works, published by the same editor; to wich we shall shortly direct our attention.