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Music from the East. |
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whereas, during a century past, they have contributed to modern art some of the most complete creators and interpreters that have ever existed— such as Mendelssohn, Meyerbeer, Pasta, Rachel, Rraham, Ernst, Joachim, Moscheles;—the members of the gipsy horde, though they universally show aptitude and proficiency to a certain point, in the devices that charm ear and eye, never seem able to advance beyond indication and capricious wilfulness. Gipsy music is of very limited value, if disconnected from the gipsy performance of it, and from the impression made by it on those who, for the sake of sensation, will endure and relish anything, no matter how eccentric it be. Comparatively few gipsy tunes, save a Russian or Hungarian dance or two, which, possibly own some such parentage, have passed into the world's store of melodies. I think Schubert is the only great composer, and after him the Abbe Liszt, in his ' Rhapsodies Hongroises,' who has used them heartily; and close as is the resemblance of tribe with tribe—whether the folk are to be found burrowing in the cliffs embossed with wine and oleander and Indian fig, that face the Alhambra at Granada, or threading their tedious way across some Transylvanian waste—it is not
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