The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1852-06-29 00:00:00

MUSIC AND THE DRAMA.

THE THEATRES.—The season at the Theatre-royal
terminated last week, but the company and the whole of
the rich scenery, properties, &c., prepared for Miss Van-
denboli's play of Truman'a Heart, Lave been removed to
the Amphitheatre, where it will be produced twice this
week, with the same caste as before. The piece selected
for this (Tuesday) evening is Richelieu.
THE MEMBERS OF THE LITERARY AND DRAMATIC
SOCIETY entertained Mr. Barry Sullivan at a public dinner,
at Mr. Whiteman's, Brunswick Hotel, in Hanover-street,
on Saturday. After the cloth was drawn, and the usual
loyal toasts given, the chairman, proposing the health of
their guest, Mr. Barry Sullivan, presented him with a
beautifully written address, engrossed by the honorary
secretary, Mr. J. F. Tafe, and a copy of Kenny Meadows's
Shakspeare, in three volumes.

ALBONI has arrived out at the States by the Hermann,
but it is not her intention to sing for a few months.
FANNY ELSSLE the favourite danseuse, has married
a Dr. Hahn ; with Ile stipulation, however, that she shall
retain her maiden name.

MISS LOUISA PYNE, the first of English vocalists, we
regret to learn, is suffering from congestion of the brain,
caused, it is said, by over exertion in her profession.
MADLLE. WAGNER has given "submission" in the case
of " Lumley v. Wagner and others," to the full extent of
the prayer of the bill which Mr. Lumley had filed against
them, and they now offered to pay all the costs of the
suit, and consented to the injunction. The restraint
imposed by the writ of injunction in this case would not
extend beyond the period during which Madlle. Wagner
had bound herself not to sing at any other theatre than
that of Mr. Lumley.

MADAME GOLDSCHMIDT (Jenny Lind) has sailed for
Hamburg; after declining every proposition made to her
to sing in this country. Mademoiselle 'Wagner, also, has
taken her departure. after having effected a compromise
of the dispute with Mr. Lumley, by consenting to the in-
junction being made perpetual (which means to subsist
during her engagement with him), and agreeing to pay
his costs of suit. We hope the fair prima donna has not
been frightened away from us altogether, and that she will
return next year under happier auspices.

THE SOCIAL STATUS OF THE MUSICIAN.—When a
man is named to us as a medical practitioner, we can pretty
well assign to him his proper grade in the scale of social
rank. When a man is spoken of as a lawyer, we at once
invest him in idea with certain professional appendages, and
accord to him a rank among the variety of civil occupations.
When we hear of a divine, we become immediately aware
of his position, and know at once how to address, if occa-
sion be, our letters to him. But when people speak to us
in general terms of a musician, we are perfectly at a loss
as to his station in society. We know not whether he is a
person of any mark and weight. We cannot even tell
whether he belongs to the respectable classes—whether he
pertains to the educated order of men—or, whether his
musical quality is claimed in virtue of an ability to mani-
pulate a flute, in the public ways, to lacerate an unhappy
psalm-tune on the violoncello, or by a familiar gyratory
process to give an airing, one by one, to a number of
tunes shut up in a box. And yet the art of the musician
—the musical art—is, and always has been reckoned, one
of the liberal arts. By that designation were originally
intended those arts which afforded fit occupation for free
men, or, to translate into modern ideas as well as phrase-
ology, arts which become the gentleman. It is an art
which requires a long and laborious preparatory educa-
tion, more so than most of those which confer rank and
estimation upon their professors. It is founded upon tr
profound basis of mathematical truth. It has, like lay--
guage, its grammar—grammar with a scheme of bold in
novations and well-deliberated infractions, analagous to.
an extensive system of rhetorical figures—all which re-
quires that the sun should be watched down, and the stars
flouted with the midni.ght lamp, through consecutive
years ; that scores of dusty volumes and volumes of in-
tricate scores should be successively evolved ; and that the
whole should be topped up with a manual dexterity equi-
valent to that command of limb which enables the funam-
bulist to pirouette upon the tight-rope, or the balance-
master to sustain on the point of his chin the pole whose
gentle undulations- keep the plate at its extremity in a con-
dition constantly to illnstrate•the " vis c.entrifuga " which
Sir Isaac Newton so learnedly expounds. In short, it is
the laborious- and absorbing nature of his endless studies,
which makes- the ill.understood musical student insensible
of his own whereabouts amongst his fellows, and leaves his
existence an enigma to others. and to himself a discord of
suspension, the resolution of which is to be found either in
eternal fame--or in bedlam ! The tendency of recent events,
however, is manifestly towards the re-organisation of
a system which may give to music, in its place among the
liberal arts, a due civil and social preponderance. Pro-
fessors manifest a desire to claim—and we cannot see a
shadow of a reason why they should not—that considera-
tion which is universally admitted to be due to educated
men. Society is quite willing to admit the distinguished
few to its highest grade but while the general public
seem even yet scarcely to know what to make of the pol-
10—the undistinguished multitude—whether to consider
them as "fish or flesh, or good red herring," a certain
class of people, very estimable in themselves, and upon
whom we would not wish to imply even a covert censure,
are apt to indulge themselves in speaking of musical peo-
ple as erring mortals ought not to speak of their fellows.
While we profess, as we feel the most profound respect
for their extreme sensitiveness on the subject of moral
appearances, they must still bear to be reminded, in the
words of an eminent divine, that they err, if they suppose

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