Great Britain -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; Short stories
Five years later, when Christian Trevalga died in the asylum at ----,
some loose scraps of paper were found, on which he had jotted down a few
disconnected thoughts about music. They are, perhaps, worth giving, for
they are more explicit than he ever cared, or was able, to be when he
was quite sane; and, fragmentary as they are, may help to complete one's
picture of the man.
'It has been revealed to me that there is but one art, but many
languages through which men speak it. When the angels talk among
themselves, their speech is art; for they do not talk as men do, to
discuss matters or to relate facts, but to express either love or
wisdom. It is partly the beauty of their voices which causes whatever
they say to assume a form of beauty. Music comes nearer than any other
of the human languages to the sound of these angelic voices. But
painting is also a language, and sculpture, and poetry; only these have
more of the atmosphere of the earth about them, and are not so clear. I
have heard pictures which spoke to me melodiously, and I have listened
to the faultless rhythm of statues; but it was as an Englishman who
knows French and Italian quite well follows a conversation in those
languages. He has to substitute one sound for another in his mind.
* * * * *
'When I am playing the piano I am always afraid of hurting a sound. I
believe that sounds are living beings, flying about us like motes in the
air, and that they suffer if we clutch them roughly. Have you ever tried
to catch a butterfly without brushing the dust off its wings? Every time
I press a note I feel as if I were doing that, and it is an agony to
me. I am certain that I have hurt fewer sounds than any other pianist.
* * * * *
'Chopin's music screams under its breath, like a patient they are
operating upon in the hospital. There are flowers on the pillow, great
sickly pungent flowers, and he draws in their perfume with the same
breath that is jarred down below by the scraping sound of the little
saw.
* * * * *
'Chopin always treats the piano like a gentleman. He never gives it a
note that it cannot sing, he is always scrupulous towards its whims, he
indulges it like a spoilt child. Schumann comes back cloudily out of a
dream, and sets down the notes as he heard them, upon paper; then he
leaves the piano to make the best of it.
* * * * *
'Most modern music is a beggar for pity. The musician tries to show us
how he has suffered, and how hopeless he is. He sets his toothache and
his heartache to music, putting those sufferings into the music,
without remembering that sounds have their own agonies, which alone they
can express in a perfect manner. He forgets also that joy is the natural
speech of music, and that when he comes to sound for the expression of
his joy he is asking it to sing out of its own heart.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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