Connecticut western news., 1896-11-05

And though here and there, from this and that part of society, and from this and that part of the earth, there comes up thrilling solo of love, or warble of worship, or sweet duet of patience, they are drowned out by a discord that shakes the earth.
 Paul says, The whole creation groan- eth" And while the nightingale, and the woodlark, and the canary, and the blower sometimes sing so sweetly that their notes have been written out in musical notation, and it is found that the cuckoo sings in the key of D, and that the cormorant is basSo in the winged choir, yet sportsman's gun and the autumnal blast often leave them ruffled and bleeding or. dead ill meadow or forest. Paul was right, for the groan in nature drowns out the prima donnas of the sky.
 Tartini. the great musical composer, dreamed one night that he made con- tract with satan, the latter to be ever in the composer s service. But one night he handed to satan violin, on which Diabolus played such sweet music that the composer was awakened by the emo- tion and tried to reproduce the sounds. and therefrom was written Tartini's most famous piece, "The Devils So- nata," a dream ingenious, but faulty, for all melody descends from heaven. and only discords ascend from hell. All hatreds, feuds, controversies, backbit- ings and revenges are the devils sonata, are diabolic fugue. are demoniac phan- tasy, are grand march or doom, are al- legro of perdition,
 The Ear of Bach.
 But if in this world things in general are out of tune to our frail ear, how much more so to beings angelic and de- ificl It takes skilled artist to fully ap- preciate disagreement of sound. Many have no capacity to detect a defect of musical execution, and, though there were in one bar as many offenses against harmony as could crowd in between the lower F of the bass and the higher G of the soprano. it would give them no dis comfort, while on the forehead of the educated artist beads of precipitation would stand ont as a result of the har- rowing dissonance. While an amateur was performing on a piano and had just struck the wrong chord, John Sebastian Bach, the immortal composer, entered the room, and the amateur rose in em- barrassment, and Bach rushed past the host. who stepped forward to greet him, and. before the keyboard had stopped vibrating, put his adroit hand upon the keys and changed the painful inharmony into glorious cadence. Then Bach turned ,p1 eyaro ca In tip, tp thp host
 But the worst of all discord is moral discord. If society and the world are painfully discordant to imperfect man, what must they be to a perfect God People try to define what sin is. It seems to me that sin is getting out of harmony with God, disagreement with his holi- ness, with his purity, with his love, with his commands, our will clashing with his will, the finite dashing against the in- finite, the frail against the puissant, the created against the creator. If thousand musicians, with flute and cornet-a-pis- ton and trumpet and violoncello, the hautboy and trombone and all the wind and stringed instruments that every gathered in Dusseldorf jubilee, should resolve that they would play out of tune and put concord to the rack and make the place wild with shrieking and grating and rasping sounds. they could not make such pandemonium as that which rages in sinful soul when God listens to the play of its thoughts, pas sions and emotion-discord, lifelong discord, maddening discord.
 The world pays more for discord than it does for consonance, High prices have been paid for music. One man gave $225 to hear the Swedish songstress in New York, and another $625 to hear her in Boston, and another $650 to hear her in Providence Fabulous prices have been paid for sweet sounds but far more has been paid for discord. The Crimean war cost $1,700, 900, 900, and the American civil war $9, 500, 900, 900, and the war debts of professed Christian nations are about $15, 900, 900, 900. The world pays for this red ticket. which admits it to the saturnalia of broken bones and death agonies and destroyed cities and plowed graves and crushed hearts, any amount of money satan asks. Discord! Discord!
 Will Be Put In Tune.
 But have to tell you that the song that the morning stars sang together at the laying of the worlds cornerstone is to resound again. Mozart's greatest overture was composed one night when he was several times overpowered with sleep, and artists say they can tell the places in the music where he was fall ing asleep and the places where he awak- ened. So the overture of the morning stars spoken of in my text has been asleep, but it will awaken and be more grandly rendered by the evening stars of the worlds existence than by the morning stars, and the vespers will be sweeter than the matins. The work of all good men and women and of all good churches and all reform associa- tions help to bring the race back to the original harmony. The rebellious heart to be attuned, social life to be attuned, commercial ethics to be attuned, inter- nationality to be attuned, hemispheres to be attuned.
 In olden times the choristers had a tuning fork with two prongs, and they would strike it on the back of pew or music rack and put 1t to the ear and then start the tune, and all the other voices would join. In modern orchestra the leader has complete instrument rightly attuned, and he sounds that, and all the other performers tune the keys of their instruments to make them cor respond and draw the bow over the string and listen and sound it over again until all the keys are screwed to concert pitch and the discords melt into one great symphony, and the curtain hoists, and the baton taps and audiences are raptured with Schumann's Para disc and the Peri'' or Rossini's "Stabat Mater" or Bach's ''Magnifcat'' in D.
 Now, our world can never be attuued by an imperfect instrument. Even a