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Music from the West. |
215 |
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This is to be accounted for by the fact that Scot-hind had a civilised Court of her own till a late period; and that thus the products of the North country were naturally more largely interchanged with those of other European countries, than could be the products of exclusive Wales or of careless, harassed Ireland.
Boieldieu twisted about their tunes largely in his 1 La Dame Blanche,' a comical pasticcio from ' The Monastery,' and in ' Les deux nuits.' Niedermeyer set most pleasantly ' Auld Lang Syne' as a villanella in his ' Marie Stuart.' I have found as a rule, that whenever our national music is mentioned on the Continent, the tune has been approved with a complacent ' Oui, e'est Ecossais;' and two minutes after, something is sure to follow about the 'Bride of Lammermoor,' although the tunes had got abroad before the greatest novel of the Great Unknown was written.
I must name as among the most complete examples of national forms turned to musical order, the Scherzo of Mendelssohn's Third Symphony in A minor, called from this very Scherzo 'the Scottish' Symphony, as his Second Symphony was called Italian because of its final Saltarella. |
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