The clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1883-1888, 1885-10-07
MUSIC AND MUSICIANS

Music Is great and beautiful art.
l am not musical myself, which has al
ways been source of great ioy to nv
friends. but in the course of MANY
years of enforced association with mu-
sicians have got to know something
about the music business.
| did not voluntarily contaminate NV
young soul with the society of musi-
clans. | have ever cherished deep
distrust of the criminal classes: but
fate orders mans life for him. | can
only say in exten0ation of my sin that
L have never known a musician with
out being sincerely sorry for it, sooner
or Iater-except in the case of one
man who had his trombone in pawn
and couldn't get it out to play to me.
Musicians run in the scale of moral
ity from bass-drummers down to vio-
Enists. / have known bass-drummers
to be estimable citizens, in good gen.
eral repute. But the violinist is a man
who has sinned beyond redemption. |
do not say that the yiolinist does not
do great work IN this world. think
he does. He inelines other men to
lead good and virtuous lives, so that
they may not meet him in the hereaf-
ions to every rule. Ii the violinist
calls himself a fiddler, and speaks of
his instrument as a fiddle, there is
hope for him. He may be lured from
classical music and induced to play
plain and recognizable tune. and then
there is chance of reclamation.
The inconsistency of musicians has
often been noticed. | have known
pianists to deny their artistic kinship
to organ-grinders. L have argued
with them and tried to point out to
them that the difference between the
two styles of operators is but differ
ence of degree and not of kind. and
that it comes to much the same thing
in the end whether pain is inflicted by
sheer manual dexterity and the tips of
the fingers or by the interposition of a
crank. But you can not reason with a
musician.
There is another popularity about
musicians which every body must OBJ
serve who mingles with them for any
length of wasted time-there are no
good musicians except the one who is
talking to you and few who are dead.
All others, you will find in the course
of the conversation, are hopelessly on
the wrong track, as far as true art is
concerned. Some of them may be
well enough in their way, but their
way is all wrong. When they are
dead, very dead, like Beethoven, and
Handel, and Bach, they are frequently
spoken of by other musicians in terms
of high praise. l have heard Beetho-
ven warmly commended by man
who played the eornet il picnic gar
den on the East river
Bach is an exceptional case All
musicians like Bach. He is extremely
dead, and the general sound sentiment
of the people may be relied upon to
keep him dead. The resurrection and
revivification of the late Bach would
be warmly opposed by any civilized
people. Bach's chief claim to respect
among musicians is that he wrote
much of his music so that it can be
played backward as well as forward.
This kind of thing he called a fugue.
Fugues are used for emptying concert
halls and other places of public resort.
They are even more sure and effective
than an alarm of fire.
When a musician dies his friends
cast gloom over the Joy that ami
mates the neighborhood by goingNto
the house of the departed and playing
dirges over him. They then send in
their bill TO the stricken widow for
their services as a band. After that
they pass resolutions testifying to
their grief at the loss of their col
league and their sympathy with his
afflicted family. The resolutions, how
Al
paid.
Yes. music is a great and beautiful
art, Alpheus, my son; and what there
is about it that makes most musicians
mean and envious and cross-grained
and cranky, L don't know. But so
they are, and so they will 90 on, and
the world will forgive them for music's
sake.
There is that long haired wretch at
the piano over across the way. He is
as narrowminded and jealous and
wrong-headed as the rest of them, and
he has been torturing me with SYM
phonies and sonatas all the evening,
but forgive him now and forget it all,
for he is playing an old air that brings
me back to summer evening of years
ago, when all the stars were out in the
heavens except two that shone in the
darkness as she walked by my side,
when the hollyhocks waved pale and
tall and ghostly in the moonlight,
when the white bloom of the locust
trees swayed in the breeze above, our
heads, and when l talked more nom
sense in fifteen minutes than a violin
could express in year.-K. C. Bun
2ler.