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138 National Music of the World. |
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where there is one functionary to bridle a horse, and another to put on his saddle; where one man will sit on his seat to stitch the coming baby's cap, while the man whose duty is grown-up embroidery addicts himself to the lady mother's robe of state. Caste, in national music, is a thing which has never been studied aright, so far as I am aware. Stranger than these double-bass voices, but akin in their training, seem to have been—or perhaps yet are—the players on the horn-bands of Russia; automatons of one note, referable again to the state of serfdom; of no more real value or sentiment in regard to art than so many organ pipes—than so many pins which decide the A, B, or C, ground out of the barrel of the hand-organ.
Those who care to follow the subject may measure these strange machines with a home-set of popular musicians, and who are somewhat mechanical also— our bell-ringers : each of whom, also, has only one note to care for. But bell-ringing, besides its being a hearty and voluntary exercise for the athletic, has something of variety and unexpectedness in its changes—an appeal in them to calculation as well as to recollection, which the playing of these Russian monotones has not.
The Russian voice, however, be it free or slave, |
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