Favorite Songs and Hymns For School and Home, page: 0160

450 Of The World's Best Songs And Hymns, With Lyrics & Sheet music for voice & piano.

Home Main Menu Singing & Playing Order & Order Info Support Search Voucher Codes



Share page  Visit Us On FB

Previous Contents Next
I60
Two easily distinguishable mental influences seem to belong to music, according as it is heard by those of musical sensibility who really appreciate it, or by others who are unable to do so. To the former it opens a book of poetry which they follow, word for word, after the performer, as if he read it to them; thinking the thoughts of the composer in succession wiih scarcely greater uncertainty or vagueness than if they were expressed in verbal language of a slightly mystical description. To the latter the book is closed; but though the listener's own thoughts unroll them-Belves uninterrupted by the composer's ideas, they are
very considerably colored thereby. "I delight !» music," said once a great man of science; -1 am always able to think out my work better while it is going on." As a matter of fact he resumed at the moment a disquisition concerning the date of the glacial period at the precise point at which it had been interrupted by the performance of a symphony of Beethoven, having evidently mastered in the inter�val an intricate astronomical knot To ordinary mortals, with similar defic;ency of musical sense, harmonious sound seems to spread a halo like that of light, causing every subject of contemplation to
LET ERIN REMEMBER.
/ Animated.
T. Moore. Arranged by Balfe.
»eem glorified as a landscape appears in a dewy sunrise. Old memories rise to the mind and seem infinitely more affecting than at other times; still living affections grow doubly tender; new beauties appear in the picture or the landscape before our eyes, and passages of remembered prose or poetry float through our brain in majestic cadence. In a word, the sense of the beautiful, the tender, the sublime, is vividly aroused, and the atmosphere of familiarity and com�monplace, wherewith the real beauty and sweet�ness of life are too often veiled, is lifted for the hour. As in a camera-obscura, or mirror, the very
trees and grass which we had looked on a thousand times are seen to possess unexpected loveliness. But all this can only happen to the non-musical soul when the harmony to which it listens is really har�monious, and when it comes at an appropriate time, when the surrounding conditions permit and incline the man to surrender himself to its influences; in a word, when nothing else demands his attention.
An excellent mother, who had learned the lesson of life, writing to her son on the birth of his eldest child, says: "Give him education, that his life may be useful} teach him religion that his death may be happy."
Previous Contents Next