Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843. Various

Chaucer. Old Music! Hail, ye inspired sons of the lyre! A noble host are ye, enshrined in the hearts of all loyal worshippers of the tuneful god. And yet (we grieve to confess it) we, even we, spite of all our enthusiasm, have been seen laughing at "old music," the aspiring psalmody of a country church singing-pew.

      Oh, to see the row of performers, the consequential choir, transcending in importance (in their own eyes) the clerk, the curate, the rector, and even the squire from the great hall, majestic and stern though he be, with his awful wig and gold-headed cane! There are the fubsy boys—copied apparently from cherubim—who, with glowing, distended cheeks, are simpering on the ceiling, doing the tenor, with wide open mouths that would shame e'er a barn-door in the village; their red, stumpy fingers sprawling over the music which they are (not) reading. The pale, lantern-jawed youths, in yellow waistcoats and tall shirt-collars, who look as if they were about to whistle a match, are holloing out what is professionally, and in this instance with most distressing truth, termed counter. "Counter" it is with a vengeance; and not only so, but it is a neck-and-neck race between them and the urchins aforesaid, which shall have done first. The shock-headed man, with chin dropped into his neckerchief, and mouth twisted into every unimaginable contortion, as though grinning through a horse-collar, has the bass confided to his faithful keeping; and emits a variety of growls and groans truly appalling, though evidently to his own great comfort and satisfaction. The bassoon, the clarinet, the flute—but how shall we describe them! Suffice it to say, that they appeared to be suffering inexpressible torments at the hands of their apoplectic-looking performers; who were all at the last gasp, and all determined to die bravely at their posts. And then the entranced audience, with half-shut eyes and quivering palms! Oh, it was too much; we lost our character typo irretrievably that day; half suppressed titters from the squire's pew were not to be borne. In that unhappy moment we sinned away some quarter of a century's unrivalled reputation for good manners and musical taste. Old Fiddlestrings never forgave us, never did he vouchsafe us another anthem, spite of our entreaties and protestations, and the thousand and one apologies for our ill-timed merriment, which our fruitful brain invented on the spot. To his dying day he preserved the utmost contempt for our judgment, not only in this department of the fine arts, but also on every other subject. Not to admire his music, was condemnation in every thing—an unpardonable offence. We, who had been his great friend, patron, (or rather he was ours,) to whom he had so often condescended on the Saturday evening to hum, whistle, and too-too over the tune—of his own composing—that was to be the admiration of the whole parish on the succeeding day—we were henceforth to be as the uninitiated, and left to find out, and follow, as we best might, the very eccentric windings of his Sunday's asthmatic performance; which always went at the rate of three crotchets and a cough, to the end of the psalm, which he took care should be an especial long one.

      Poor old man! we see him now, with his unruly troop of Sunday scholars (in training for some important festival, to the due celebration of which their labours were essential) singing, bawling we should say, out of time and tune, to the utter discomfiture of his irritable temper, (there is nothing like a false note for throwing your musical man into a perfect tantrum,) and the bringing down on their unlucky heads a smart tap with the bow of his violin, which led the harmony. There they stood with their brown cheeks and white heads, fine specimens of the agricultural interest; each one of them looking as if he could bolt a poor, half-starved factory child at a mouthful—but certainly no singers. It was beyond the power even of the accomplished old clerk himself to make then such—an oyster, with its mouth full of sand, would have sung quite as well; but still he laboured on with might and main—with closed eyes, and open mouth—delightedly beating time with his head, as long as matters went on not intolerably; for David's musical soul supplied the deficiency in the sounds that entered his unwearied ears. And then he sang so loud himself, that he certainly could hear no one else, his voice being as monopolizing as the drone of a bagpipe—or as a violent advocate for free trade! Happy urchins when this was the case! for they were sure to be dismissed with the most flattering encomiums on their vocal powers, when, if truth must be told, the good old man had not heard a note.

      But he is gathered to his fathers, and now sleeps beneath the sod in the quiet churchyard of——. We well remember his funeral. 'Twas a lovely day in spring when the long, lifeless trees and fields were bursting into all the glory of May—for May was spring then, and not, as now, cousin-german to winter; while the gay sunbeams played lovingly, like youth caressing age, on the low church-tower, gilding the ivy that waved in wild luxuriance around it. Slowly moved on the lowly train that bore to the "house appointed for all living" the mortal remains of one whom they well loved, and whose removal from among them—essential as he had always seemed to the very identity of the village—was an event they had never contemplated and which they now, in its unexpectedness, sorely lamented. The village choir preceded it, singing those strains which poor David's voice had so often led; and surely, for once, the spirit of the old man rested on his refractory pupils; for rarely have I heard sweeter notes than those that swelled on the balmy air, as the dusky procession wound its way across the heath, waving with harebells, and along the narrow lane, whose hedges were beginning to show the first faint rose, till it reached the church porch, where the good rector himself was waiting to pay the last token of respect to his humble friend; while groups of villagers were loitering around to witness the simple rites. Entering within the church, again was the voice of melody heard, and again was as sweetly chanted that mournful psalm, which is appointed, with such affecting appropriateness, for the burial of the dead. "I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not in my tongue; I will keep my mouth, as it were, with a bridle, while the ungodly is in my sight." Then came the dull, hollow sound of "earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes;" and so, amid many tears, (and we confess our eyes were not dry,) closed the grave over one who, despite some innocent, though mirth-provoking failings, was honoured by all who knew him for the stern, unbending integrity of his character, and the strictness with which he fulfilled all the duties of life. David was an honest man, one whose "word was as good as his bond," who "promised to his hurt, and changed not." Would that as much might be said of many who move in a higher sphere, and make far larger professions of sanctity than he did! But he shall be remembered, when their names are blotted out for ever.

      "Only the actions of the just

      Smell sweet in death, and blossom in the dust."

      The music which we hear in our social intercourse, is too generally—we say it in grief, but in truth—detestable. "Like figures on a dial-plate," sit the four-and-twenty Englishmen and Englishwomen, who have been drawn together to receive their friend's hospitality; till the awful silence convinces the host that some desperate effort must be made to break the spell, and that the best thing is some music to set them a-talking. Some mimini-pimini Miss is in consequence selected as the victim, (or rather, the victimizer,) and requested to "pain" the company. She fidgets, bridles, and duly declines, at the same time vigorously pulling off one of her gloves in evident preparation for the attack. After much pressing, she reluctantly yields to what she had from the first made up her mind to do; takes her seat at a grand pianoforte, behind a couple of candles and an enormous music-book, and—crash go the keys in a thundering prelude, (the pedal, and every other means of increasing the noise being unscrupulously resorted to,) which, after superhuman exertions, lands her in what, to our affrighted and stunned ears, is evidently the key of Z flat! Who would have thought those delicate hands could thus descend with the vigour of a pavior's hammer on the unhappy ivories, that groan and shriek beneath the infliction, as though fully sensible of the surpassing cruelty with which they are treated.

      But hark! she sings—"Romè, Romè, thou art n'more," (sic)—a furious scramble on the keys, with a concluding bang—"On thy seven hills thou satt'st of yore,"—another still more desperate and discordant flourish, which continues alternating with her "most sweet voice," till she has piped through the whole of her song: when the group around, apprehensive of a repetition of the torture to which they have been subjected, overwhelm her with thanks and expressions of admiration, under cover of which they hurry her to her seat. Such is the stuff palmed off on us, varied as it is by glees, screamed out by four voices all in different keys; solos, squeaked out by stout gentlemen, and roared by pale lanky lads of eighteen; duets by young ladies, who accidentally set out on discordant