Part 19
The crowd is not quite so large as that of yesterday, and yet the building is well filled. The programme was almost exclusively classical, and was opened with Weber's brilliant "Jubilee Overture," with the baton in Eichberg's hands. It was not given very effectively until the national theme in the _finale_ was reached. This was played superbly by the brasses. The Fifth Symphony of Beethoven was only given in part, the _Andante_ and last half of the _Finale_ being played. It was something to be grateful for, to get even a fraction of the symphony, but it seemed almost cruel to cut the work or mar its unity in the least. It is the first time I have seen the orchestra really get down to its work as if they loved it. There was no talking among them, no listlessness. Every man sat in his place as eager for the start as a hound to slip from his leash, one eye upon Zerrahn, and the other upon his score. Two policemen standing in the aisle near the first violinists are talking together, and Carl Rosa and a half dozen others snap at them to stop their gossip. _Apropos_ of Carl Rosa, he has proved himself an artist through this jubilee. He has been in his place every day promptly at the hour, and has played through every note of every programme. I regret that Ole Bull, who has been in the city during the whole week, only appeared on the opening day. It will be a matter of surprise to his admirers that he should so far have lacked enthusiasm as to absent himself upon such an occasion. The two movements of the symphony were played conscientiously and _con amore_, and there was little to ask for which was not given in its production.
Zerrahn seems to have a partiality for Mendelssohn, for when he came to the "Elijah" chorus, "Thanks be to God, He laveth the thirsty land," his instructions were more than usually explicit. The chorus, however, did not get the beat, and for a moment there was danger of a catastrophe. Zerrahn left his stand as quick as a rocket, and, waving his baton, went down into the chorus. The electricity of his manner fused the discordant elements, and with "The waters gather they rush along," all were together. Zerrahn remained at his post, and Schultze took the orchestra in hand, with his bow for baton, and the two batons moved like magic, and chorus and orchestra played like magic to the end, sweeping through the jubilant number like the march of a storm. If the chorus had never sung any thing else this would have paid for the difficulties of organization and been a rich remuneration for all the labors.
Miss Phillipps made her second appearance of the season, and was cordially greeted. She sang the familiar "Lascia Pianga" of Handel's, which is one of her concert favorites. She appeared to much better advantage than on Tuesday, mainly because the selection was in better taste; but, sitting even as near as I did, her voice seemed hard and cold and she was evidently singing with great effort. At the close, the enthusiasm of the chorus, joined with that of the audience, secured her an _encore_, which she acknowledged by repeating the air, and singing part of it to the chorus.
The programme was closed with the Hallelujah Chorus from the Messiah, the whole chorus, orchestra and audience rising to their feet while it was performed. In spite of its inherent difficulties and broken time, it was carried through superbly, and as the final "Amen" pealed out with majestic power, the Jubilee was at an end, so far as the great chorus was concerned.
* * * * *
June 19, 1869.
The day of Jubilee has gone. The great Peace Festival has passed into the annals of musical history. The outside halo of peace which encircled it shone so dimly that I do not conceive any national significance attaches to it. It is to be judged purely as a musical event, and it will take its place in musical annals as an ambitious and bold experiment, and, in large degree, as a grand success. There were points open to honest criticism, and some of these points I have indicated in these letters; but many of these defects were beyond the remedy either of conductor or chorus. It was a musical success, because it has shown that ten thousand people can sing together and one thousand instruments play together, not only both in time and tune, but also with sufficient expression to make effects. It is not to be denied that some very paltry music has been played--in fact, the whole programme of Thursday was devoted just to this class of music--and that many of the numbers in each day were purely meretricious and sensational. But the bare fact of the organization and manipulation of such a vast chorus and orchestra stands now, and will always stand, as a monument of which the projector and his assistants have a right to be proud.
The great chorus dispersed last evening, having accomplished its arduous work. Exhausted as they must have been with the four days' task, I doubt whether any one of the ten thousand singers closed his or her book without regret. It was something to be proud of to have sung and played at this Jubilee. I can appreciate the feelings of a prominent Chicago bass singer, who had been only a listener during a portion of the programme on Friday. The next number was the grand chorus, "Thanks be to God," from "Elijah." He hurried over to me, and, seizing me by the collar, said: "Tell me how I can get into that chorus. I cannot stand this any longer. I _must_ sing the Elijah piece." I directed him how to get admission, and the next I saw of him he was in the front rank of the bassos, joining his voice with the thousands around him in the grand swelling anthem of praise.
To-day has been given almost exclusively to the school-children. It was a grand sight to look at the adult chorus, but it was a beautiful sight to look at the children. Eight thousand of them were gathered together from the public schools. The girls were clad in white, and filled the wings, the boys occupying the places of the tenors and bassos. The children arrived promptly--do they ever arrive any other way?--and took their places without a particle of disorder. The white dresses of the girls, trimmed with ribbons of varied colors, their fresh young faces, and the eager, enthusiastic faces of the boys, made up a picture of beauty not often looked upon. It was like a huge garden _parterre_ of flowers, and, as great shafts of sunlight shot in through the windows and bathed them with gold, and fans waved in the happy throng like the wings of a multitude of birds, it made a sight which may be the sight of a lifetime. The audience also was an immense one, completely filling the building, and thus the _coup d'oeil_ was fully as beautiful, if not as imposing, as on any day during the week.
The performance commenced with the overture to "William Tell," which was rendered with more animation than on Wednesday. The effects of the cellos, headed by Wulf Fries, were particularly striking. Never before have I heard this noblest of all instruments develop the human voice tones as it has to-day. The applause had hardly subsided when Eichberg rapped the juvenile chorus to attention with his baton. The rising of the children was not like that of the adults. The latter invariably rose slowly and successively, rank after rank. The children, in their impatience, fairly sprang to their feet, and stood, books in hand, eager for the signal. When it was given, they took the beat together grandly, and commenced "Hail Columbia" in unison. As they progressed, however, the instruments were quicker than they, and there was some lagging, but the effect was very novel and striking. Although the girls outnumbered the boys, the latter's voices were much stronger and made themselves most clearly heard. The freshness, purity and clearness of the voices easily rendered them superior to the orchestra, and even the organ seemed to affect them but little. There was no difficulty in hearing them, for each one of the little people was singing for dear life and working with all the zest and enthusiasm of a child's nature. By some process known only to children, they came out together at the end of each stanza, although they sometimes diverged widely in the middle.
Think of children singing Mercadante's music! But they did it, and superbly, too. His chorus, "Now the Twilight Softly Stealing," was given by them admirably. It was arranged as a solo for sopranos and altos, and then taken in unison by the full chorus, and I have no musical memory sweeter than the cadences of that chorus, which were given with such beauty and freshness by these children.
Miss Phillipps is set down for the next number, and, as she advances down through the musicians to the stand, the children give her a handsome ovation, the girls waving their handkerchiefs and the boys cheering as only boys can cheer. She is going to sing the _brindisi_ from Lucrezia Borgia--"II Segreto." Everybody has heard her sing it in the bewitching _role_ of _Maffeo Orsini_, but we may never hear her sing it again under circumstances like these, for she is now singing it to at least forty thousand people. Eichberg was cool enough with the children, but he is very nervous now, and he gives the _tempo_ so fast to the orchestra that Rosa and half a dozen others look up in surprise. Adelaide herself grows pale and says to him, "Too fast, too fast." The baton moves slower--and how marvelously the instruments obey! It is all right. Adelaide does not look much like _Maffeo_ in her high-necked white dress, but she sings the famous drinking-song in excellent taste, and succeeds in making her voice heard throughout the hall better than she has heretofore. She gets a hearty _encore_, and repeats the aria, accompanying it this time with a prolonged trill, which was superbly formed.
Again, the children are on their feet. Brinley Richards' solo and chorus "So Merrily over the Ocean Spray," are the numbers. The air is given with a rocking, undulating rhythm, which is admirably preserved by the children, and the effect gains in intensity as the full chorus and organ add their volume of sound.
Almost before the children are in their seats, the tall form of Ole Bull comes down the aisle, and they rise and give him a hearty reception. He chooses his little _andante_ minor melody, the "Mother's Prayer," bends his head over his violin, closes his eyes, and plays away, ravishingly sweet, but so _pianissimo_ that only the orchestra and a few of the front rows can hear him. Those who do hear him have a great treat, and the orchestra is so charmed that it raps lustily upon the backs of its violins.
Parepa, clad in an elegant black moire-antique, receives an enthusiastic ovation. She sings "Let the Glad Seraphim," which she sang the other day when poor Mrs. Dunlap was dying, accompanied by Arbuckle whose cornet needs only a few tricks of tonguing to be superior to Levy's. What superb responses the cornet makes to her, and how perfectly voice and instrument match each other! It is something to remember, this duo. But there is another duo even better. It is Rossini's matchless _Quis est Homo_. And who is to sing it? Only Parepa and Adelaide Phillipps! Aren't you glad now you came to the Jubilee? I will wager something you will never hear this sung again as these two women sing it. I am afraid hereafter I shall listen to the amateurs practising the great duo with less than my usual patience. I never expect to hear it sung better. I never expected it would be allowed me to hear it sung so well. What expression! What style! What artistic method! What a rare and rich vocal blending! Even the orchestra gets enthusiastic, and some of the old veterans look up in absolute surprise at this alto in white and this soprano in black, as they reach the _cadenza_ in a magnificent burst of melody, which starts people to their feet, wild with enthusiasm, crying bravo, waving handkerchiefs, hats, canes and umbrellas. Of course, they have to repeat it, and of course everybody gets wild again.
And then the children sing Old Hundred, and the audience rising, sings it with them. And they sing well, for there are only 9,000 of the choristers in the audience. Isn't it sublime?
"Praise Him above, ye heavenly host, Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost."
And the Jubilee is over. The music is hushed. The voice of the great organ is silent. The great waves of the chorus have subsided. The singers and the players have gone, but I think, to their latest day, they will not tire of telling their children that they sang and played at the great Peace Jubilee.
There are a few parting incidents in the press room, and among them a very graceful deed upon the part of the orchestra in presenting Mr. Gilmore with an elegant watch and chain. And then everybody gives Gilmore three cheers.
The man who has carried this thing in his head two years, and finally organized it into a success, smilingly says:
"_Gentlemen_: We propose to repeat this Jubilee as a centennial--one hundred years hence. You are all engaged."
One hundred years hence! Every heart in the great sea of humanity which has surged in and out of the Coliseum this week will be silent then. We shall all be silent then. We shall all be sleeping the sleep of the just, with a stone at our heads and a stone at our feet, where no sound of music can reach us. Other voices will sing above us, and other instruments play, and little shall we reck of it. The record of the Jubilee will outlive us all. But will they have in the music of the future anything better, anything grander, anything sublimer than the music of this week has been?
I think not. And so to the great chorus whose sound has been as the voice of many waters; to the great orchestra which has given us the immortal Fifth Symphony as Beethoven never heard it given; to the mighty pulsation of the great organ heart; to the voices of the children in their sweet, fresh unison; to her that died in the midst of the music, and was translated to the heavens in a chariot of harmony, whose beauty, and loveliness, and true womanliness will be forever sacred to those who knew her; to the Peace Jubilee, with all its pleasant associations and grand accomplishments, hail and farewell.
"Let us have peace."
_THE DOUBLE LIFE._
I write from the pleasant little hamlet of Cherry Valley, under the grateful shade of the locusts and poplars. Scarlet fuschias, pendant from their curved stems, are swaying in the gentle west wind, which is the favorite wind of the flowers. The odorous breath of the geranium and sweet-briar loads the languid air with fragrant blessing. The leaves of the trees overhead just ripple in the wind, like little green waves, and sometimes seem to be whispering together about some of those secrets of nature which you and I can never know, as our ears are too gross--the same secrets which little bugs tell each other in the grass--which the lightnings tell the clouds, as they dart in and out their ragged fringes, like swallows darting in and out the eaves--which the night-winds tell the mountain-tops in the solemn darkness--which the birds sing to each other in umbrageous tree-tops--which the fairies above the earth and gnomes under the earth tell to each other at sunrise and set--the secrets which the Faun knew when he called the animals to him. Some drowsy birds in the trees are piping summer songs to each other. A magic stillness broods in the air in this enchanted valley. Enchanted, because all sounds--the patter of the leaves, the songs of birds, the laughter of children, the lowing of herds, even the drowsy hum of the house-fly--somehow seem to you to be at a distance and, in traveling the distance, come to you fraught with suggestions of music and like veiled spirits of sound, rather than the real substance. The leaves of the corn are flashing like green blades in the sunshine, and the grain-fields on these fertile hill-sides map the country in alternate strips of green and emerald. And overhead, the great concave of the sky, which shuts down upon this valley like a cover, is enameled in blue and white, and scrolled with tufts and whirls of fleecy clouds, past the skill of all cunning architects.
You see, Old Blobbs and Mrs. Blobbs, and Mignon and Celeste, and Aurelia and the baby, and even Boosey and Fitz-Herbert, are all out here together. The circle is complete, save the link that was broken last winter, when the Maiden Aunt went to rejoin him she had mourned so long and for whom she had waited so patiently. But, somehow, we never think of her as gone, although she is sleeping in sound of the surf she loved to hear and in sight of the waves which used to talk to her, in the nights when the storms were all abroad and great ships hurried by in the darkness, like cloudy ghosts of argosies long since rotted in the sands. She seems always to be with us, she was so lovable, so closely bound to us, so gentle in soul, and yet so mysterious in her life--or, rather, in her double life; for I do not think she lived altogether here. Have you never had the feeling come over you, suddenly as a flash leaps from a cloud, that your soul has left the body--that you have shed, as it were, the physical shell which has hemmed you in, and that you are no longer confined within the bounds of matter, but are free as a bird to roam through space? I sometimes think this must be the feeling when death severs the connection between soul and body, and that the effect must be ecstatic to a degree of which we have little comprehension, when every emotion is tempered with this "vesture of decay." I think the Maiden Aunt lived this double life. Sometimes she was intensely human, and her love and care for us all were unbounded. But again there came a strange expression in her eyes and a strange look in her face, as if a chink in the heavens had suddenly opened, and the glamor of its light shone upon her, and through the cloudy rent she were talking with some familiar friend who had gone before. At such times, she did not seem to see us, or even to be aware of our presence. Her eyes had that far-off, penetrating look which you sometimes see in children; and we always left her alone at such times, for she was then very sacred to us.
In the sunset light last evening--and what a sunset it was!--the whole West a sea of rare transparent greenish-blue, flecked with clouds of gold, and purple, and pink, and mother-of-pearl, which floated in it like islands, melting into all fanciful shapes, as the ferns, and palms, and turrets melt in the mirage, the whole landscape bathed in a translucent flood of golden light--in such a sunset, we took one of the Maiden Aunt's letters, which we keep tied up with a lock of her dark and silver-sprinkled hair, and I read therefrom an extract, in which she says:
"I think we live two lives. One of them is the life of this world, a thoroughly material and physical life. It is made up of toils and cares, burdens and pains. It grows out of the lives of others, is closely interwoven with them, and almost depends upon them for its existence. It attaches itself, sometimes, to one other life, as a vine attaches itself to the tree; sometimes it draws sustenance from many. It is, more or less, a superficial life, although it may accomplish great deeds and suffer heroic sufferings. It is of the earth, however, and never soars beyond it. No mystery attaches to it, for it is never called upon to perform mysterious deeds. It is comprised within the limits of threescore-and-ten, and has no past or future. Its mission belongs to the body, and when the body perishes, its mission ends. It has no recollections coming from any time before itself. It makes no prophecies of events in the future.
"The other life we live in ourselves, and it is as mysterious as was the enigma of the Sphinx in the solemn silence of the desert. It takes no thought for the body, for it is the life of the soul. We cannot explain this life to others, for we do not understand it ourselves. It is a starry stranger, imprisoned within the corporeal bars and of mysterious origin and destiny. The fates who weave the fabric of our lives, and Atropos, who stands by with the unerring shears to sever the thread, have no power over it. Have we not lived this life before, and shall we not live it again when the light of this physical life is snuffed out like a farthing rush? If not, how is it that sometimes a sweet strain of music we have never heard before, a solemn voice in the wash of the waves, a perfume of some flower by the wayside, a tone in some human voice, will recall the dim image of something we are confident has never happened in this physical life? If not in this physical life, when and where did it happen? Have we ever lived before this life, and shall we live in it again after this body has decayed? Do we fulfil the mission of this world in the brief span of one life-time? If our life has no end, has it ever had a beginning? Has immortality or eternity a commencement? These are questions which occur to me, especially after those moments when, as I confidently believe, the soul leaves the body, and expands into space and embraces the infinite. I acknowledge that I cannot answer these questions. They are a part of the great mystery of life, which not only envelopes us, but all nature, in its cloud, and reaches, in its influences and its developments, from the grain of sand on the sea-shore up to the Throne of God.
"I think this life, also, is not altogether of itself. Other lives, other fates and other natures are working together in us to add to its mystery. These mysterious influences at work within us compel us to commit acts, which we call impulses, for which we are no more accountable than the hurricane for its destruction. They give us moments when we are filled with a joy almost hysterical, for which we cannot account; and other moments when we are sunk into depths of despair, and all the world seems veiled in black, although we know the sun is shining. At such times, others are acting in us and through us. It may be some old ancestor, who died hundreds of years ago, whose life was so strong in some trait that he sent it down through the years from this one to that one, and it makes its first appearance in you. He or she--he whose life was lost in the passion of some great ecstasy, or she whose life was eclipsed in a cloud of despair which dethroned reason--is speaking with your tongue, and is looking out of your eyes. At such times, your voice assumes a tone not your own; your eyes show a light which is foreign to you. Another has entered and taken possession of you. You cannot estimate the great influence which all those men and women who hang upon your walls and look down upon you from their dim canvasses exercise upon you.
"And this life also manifests itself in sleep, when it takes us into the gorgeous cloudland of dreams, and paints such fantastic images, and unveils a world of which we get glimpses in no other manner--a world of prophecies and strange presentiments, in which, freed from the trammels of the body, the soul roams at will, and sees what has passed and what is to come; in which we suffer tortures keener than those of earth, and enjoy the beatitudes of the blest; in which the poor man is richer than Dives, and Lazarus finds rest from his troubles; and in which all of us get compensation for the loss of all we held precious, in communion with and possession of them, although only for a little moment."