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Music from the East. |
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opera as there is of lagoon in his treatment of Shakespeare's noble Venetian tragedy—of Alp and glacier and hill echoes ringing through the air, in the scenes, now fresh, now sublime, of the Swiss legend—as there is of the cruel, ceaseless, monotonous Turkish tone in the chorus of which the opening phrase has just been cited. Here is no question of science, but, to repeat, of brilliant natural gifts.
To return. The illustrations of 'Turkish Music,' and its style and capabilities, within very narrow bounds, as improved and employed by scientific musicians, could be multiplied ad infinitum; during as wide a range of dates as separates Andreas Romberg's ' Turkish Symphony,' written for Constantinople, from M. Felicien David's ' Desert,' which may be said to represent the quintessence of all the forms of Eastern melody with which we have been made acquainted.
Ere I have done with this sketch, I must recall another, and the most marvellous, employment of the rude and monotonous Eastern cries or tunes, in conjunction with a busy and inexorable rhythm, made by a master of his art, which stands by itself, because of its wondrous force and felicity. This is in Beethoven's chorus of the Whirling Dervishes in |
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