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Music from the North. 173
with her gossips, the men clubbed together in a Salique fashion, to sit, to drink, to sing. Hence the form of the male part-song. It would be superfluous here to recall how women have later struggled for their rights in Germany, with an issue for good or for evil insomuch as duty or feeling has got the upper hand—or to speak of those magnificent occasional amateur meetings in which the two halves of creation unite to honour music in its grandest vocal forms, which have flourished since a more equal distribution of the lot has been admitted.
I am merely outlining the causes which have given certain forms to what maybe called National Music. These influences manifest themselves more largely in the North than in the South of the land where music was written to German words. Vienna was one-third Bohemian, one-third Hungarian, one-third Styrian, with a people more credulous, not less richly endowed with imagination of its sensual sort, but less thoughtful. Suabia and the Rhine-land possessed traditions of their own of Minnesingers and minstrels, which disposed them to a certain tuneable grace of their own, without yielding anything very peculiar in quality. The indigenous tunes of these charming districts are lively and good-humoured; |
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