Cardinal Newman as a Musician

Edward Bellasis

Cardinal Newman as a Musician

Music's ethereal fire was givenNot to dissolve our clay,But draw Promethean beams from Heaven,And purge the dross away.J.H.N.

It is a remark of St. Philip Neri's latest biographer that, "Our Saint was profoundly convinced that there is in music and in song a mysterious and a mighty power to stir the heart with high and noble emotion, and an especial fitness to raise it above sense to the love of heavenly things."1 In like manner the Saint's illustrious son, Cardinal Newman, has spoken of "the emotion which some gentle, peaceful strain excites in us," and "how soul and body are rapt and carried away captive by the concord of musical sounds where the ear is open to their power;"2 how, too, "music is the expression of ideas greater and more profound than any in the visible world, ideas which centre, indeed, in Him whom Catholicism manifests, who is the seat of all beauty, order, and perfection whatever."3 Music, then, to him was no "mere ingenuity or trick of art like some game or fashion of the day without meaning."4 For him man "sweeps the strings and they thrill with an ecstatic meaning."5 "Is it possible," he asks, "that that inexhaustible evolution and disposition of notes, so rich yet so simple, so intricate yet so regulated, so various yet so majestic, should be a mere sound which is gone and perishes? Can it be that those mysterious stirrings of heart, and keen emotions, and strange yearnings after we know not what, and awful impressions from we know not whence, should be wrought in us by what is unsubstantial, and comes and goes, and begins and ends in itself. It is not so; it cannot be. No; they have escaped from some higher sphere; they are the outpourings of eternal harmony in the medium of created sound; they are echoes from our home; they are the voice of angels, or the Magnificat of saints, or the living laws of Divine governance, or the Divine attributes, something are they beside themselves, which we cannot compass, which we cannot utter."6 And with him, as with St. Philip, may we not say that music held "a foremost place in his thoughts and plans"?7 True, out of its place, he will but allow that "playing musical instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle."8 Music and "stuffing birds"9 were no conceivable substitutes for education properly so called, any more than a "Tamworth Reading-Room" system could be the panacea for every ill; but so long as an art in any given case did not tend to displace the more serious business of life; should it become for such an one an "aid to reflection," or, per contra, profitably distract him; in brief, if it anywise helped a soul on to her journey's end, then welcome the "good and perfect gift."

Thus, of a pupil's violin playing, September, 1865: "There are more important things, and I had some fear that he might be neglecting his proper studies. Now since he has not been, his music is all gain… To my mind music is an important part of education, where boys have a turn for it. It is a great resource when they are thrown on the world, it is a social amusement perfectly innocent, and, what is so great a point, employs their thoughts. Drawing does not do this. It is often a great point for a boy to escape from himself, and music enables him. He cannot be playing difficult passages on the violin, and thinking of anything else." Perhaps he was speaking from experience, for he told us in September, 1875: "I began the violin when I was ten years old," and his two brothers used to accompany him in trios, Frank playing "the bass." On going to Oxford he kept up his music. Thus in February, 1820: "Our music club at St. John's has been offered, and has accepted, the music-room, for our weekly private concerts;" and later: "I went to the R's to play the difficult first violin to Haydn, Mozart, &c.;"10 and in June, 1820: "I was asked by a man yesterday to go to his rooms for a little music at seven o'clock. I went. An old Don – a very good-natured man but too fond of music – played bass, and through his enthusiasm I was kept playing quartets on a heavy tenor from seven to twelve. Oh, my poor eyes and head and back."11 When the news arrived of his success at Oriel he was practising music. "The Provost's butler – to whom it fell by usage to take the news to the fortunate candidate – made his way to Mr. Newman's lodgings in Broad Street, and found him playing the violin. This in itself disconcerted the messenger, who did not associate such an accomplishment with a candidateship for the Oriel Common-Room, but his perplexity was increased when on his delivering what may be considered to have been his usual form of speech on such occasions, that 'he had, he feared, disagreeable news to announce, viz., that Mr. Newman was elected Fellow of Oriel, and that his immediate presence was required there,' the person addressed merely answered, 'Very well,' and went on fiddling. This led the man to ask whether, perhaps, he had not gone to the wrong person, to which Mr. Newman replied that it was all right. But, as may be imagined, no sooner had the man left than he flung down his instrument and dashed downstairs."12 And again, "With a half-malicious intent of frightening them (his electors at Oriel), it was told them that Mr. Newman had for years belonged to a club of instrumental music, and had himself taken part in its public performances, a diversion, innocent in itself, but scarcely in keeping, or in sympathy with an intellectual Common-Room, or promising a satisfactory career to a nascent Fellow of Oriel."13 So thought the quidnuncs; nevertheless, Mr. Newman "went on fiddling." His pupil, F. Rogers (the late Lord Blachford), joined him herein, and writes, January, 1834: "Your sermons … and Beethoven are most satisfactory. I wish I could hope to join you in the last in any moderate time. However, I do expect you will take me to Rose Hill to hear some of it again, if it were only to remind me of those evenings I used to spend with you when at Iffley. I am afraid you will have enough of my bass to satisfy you without Beethoven in the course of next term." N.B. – "He was to be in Froude's room over my head, – J.H.N."14 Mr. Bowden also played the violoncello, and Newman was further supported by one who was a musician, and a deal more besides. "Mr. Blanco White," he writes, November, 1826, "plays the violin, and has an exquisite ear."15 "I have only one sister alive now," he said sadly in September, 1875, "and she is old, but plays Beethoven very well.16 She has an old-fashioned, energetic style of playing; but one person, I remember, played Beethoven as no one else, Blanco White. I don't know how he learned the violin, but he would seem to have inherited a tradition as to the method of playing him." "Both were violinists," writes Mr. T. Mozley of Blanco White and Mr. Newman, "but with different instruments. Blanco White's was very small… Poor gentleman! Night after night anyone walking in the silence of Merton Lane might hear his continual attempts to surmount some little difficulty, returning to it again and again like Philomel to her vain regrets.17 With Reinagle … Newman and Blanco White had frequent (trios) at the latter's lodgings, where I was all the audience… Most interesting was it to contrast Blanco White's excited and indeed agitated countenance with Newman's sphinx-like immobility, as the latter drew long rich notes with a steady hand."18 Dr. Newman was still "bowing" forty years later, by which time the alleged "sphinx-like immobility" had made way for an ever-varying expression upon his face as strains alternated between grave and gay. Producing his violin from an old green baize bag,19 bending forward, and holding his violin against his chest, instead of under the chin in the modern fashion, most particular about his instrument being in perfect tune, in execution awkward yet vigorous, painstaking rather than brilliant, he would often attend at the Oratory School Sunday practices between two and four of an afternoon, Father Ryder and Father Norris sometimes coming to play also. For many years Dr. Newman had given up the violin,20 but finding some of the school taking to the strings, he took it up again by way of encouraging them to persevere in what he deemed to be so good a thing for his boys. And he quietly inculcated a lesson in self-effacement too, for albeit he had begun the violin very long before our time, he invariably took second fiddle. He had no high opinion of his own performances. Answering the Liverpool anti-Popery spouter's summons to battle, he relied rather on his friends' estimate of his powers than upon his own. "Canon M'Neill's well-known talents as a finished orator would make such a public controversy an unfair trial of strength between them, because he himself was no orator. He had in fact no practice in public speaking. His friends, however, told him that he was no mean performer on the violin, and if he agreed to meet Canon M'Neill, he would only make one condition, that the Canon should open the meeting, and say all he had to say, after which he (Mr. Newman) would conclude with a tune on the violin. The public would then be able to judge which was the better man."21 With mere fiddling, a fluency void of expression he had little patience, and when, at a term "break-up," a youth's bow cleverly capered about on a violoncello, he uttered no compliment when the boy had concluded his flourishes. It was a mere display for executive skill, without feeling.

Readers will remember here the passage in Loss and Gain: "Bateman: 'If you attempt more, it's like taxing a musical instrument beyond its powers.' Reding: 'You but try, Bateman, to make a bass play quadrilles, and you will see what is meant by taxing an instrument.' Bateman: 'Well, I have heard Lindley play all sorts of quick tunes on his bass, and most wonderful it is.' Reding: 'Wonderful is the right word, it is very wonderful. You say, "How can he manage it? It's very wonderful for a bass;" but it is not pleasant in itself. In like manner, I have always felt a disgust when Mr. So-and-so comes forward to make his sweet flute bleat and bray like a haut-bois; it's forcing the poor thing to do what it was never made for.'"22

In the same mood, when a quartet of Schubert was played to him in March, 1878, the sole remark he let fall was, "Very harmonious and clever, but it does not touch the heart."

In March, 1883, he observed that he missed the minor key in Palestrina, and on our adding that, perhaps, Mendelssohn had too much of it, he went on, "It cuts me to the heart that minor," and so he liked the mixed mode to the Psalm In exitu Israel, and was much affected by the slow movements in Beethoven's Ninth Quartet and C minor Symphony, and the Allegretto of the Symphony in A.

I cannot of that music rightly say,Whether I hear or touch or taste the tones,Oh, what a heart-subduing melody!23

There was just that human element about it, so "deeply pathetic," which in the same way made him prefer Euripides to Sophocles, for all the latter's "sweet composure, melodious fulness, majesty and grace."24 And here we may add, that as late as January, 1890, apropos of a Greek play for his school, he was as keen and eager as ever about the merits of Euripides, expressed himself as being at a loss to understand the critics invariably preferring Sophocles to the other two, and evidently placed Euripides and Æschylus first and second respectively. A frequently true and natural feeling, whether displayed by the author of the Bacchæ, or by the composer of Fidelio, evidently almost atoned, in his estimation, for every deficiency.

He writes to his sister, October, 1834: "There is a lady here" (at Tunbridge Wells), "who plays most beautifully. I think I never heard such a touch – why, I cannot make out, for she has not long fingers to be brilliant. So you must set yourself to rival her. It would be interesting to examine the causes of expression, which you might easily do. Strength of finger is one thing certainly. This lady is not brilliant in the common sense – that is, smart and rattling – but every note is so full-toned, so perfect, that one requires nothing beyond itself. This in Beethoven's effective passages produces a surprising effect. I accompanied her last night and am to do so again to-night."25 He wrote in September, 1865, of a certain boy's progress with the violin: "He plays fluently, so to say; by fluency I mean in time, in tune, and with execution. This is stage one; stage two is eloquence, by which I mean grace, delicacy, and expression. To gain this nothing is better than to accompany his sisters. A boy who always is first fiddle is in danger of artistic faults parallel to those which are implied in the metaphorical sense of the words. When he comes back I think he has had enough of the music-master, and I shall try to make him turn his thoughts to a higher school of music than is suitable to a beginner, but I cannot tell whether he is old enough to take to it. I recollect how slow I was as a boy to like the school of music which afterwards so possessed me that I have to come to think Haydn, in spite of his genius, almost vulgar." And just as Blanco White would seem to have thoroughly initiated Mr. Newman into the mysteries of Beethoven, so did Dr. Newman lead on his boys (as they would say) "to swear by" that master. They might start with Corelli, and go on to Romberg, Haydn, and Mozart: their ultimate goal was Beethoven, and round would come the "Father Superior" with ancient copies of the quintet version of the celebrated septet, and arrangements from the symphonies; nor were the first ten quartets, the instrumental trios, the violin sonatas, and the overtures forgotten. The "Dutchman," with his force and depth, his tenderness and sweetness, was the Cardinal's prime favourite. "We were at the concert," Mrs. Newman writes to him at school, "and fascinated with the Dutchman" (the name he had given to Beethoven to tease his music-master because of the van to his name), "and thought of you and your musical party frequently."26 "They tell me," he said in May, 1876, on occasion of hearing at the Latin Play, the scherzo and finale of the Second Symphony, "that these first two symphonies of Beethoven are not in his style; to me they are Beethoven all over. There is no mistaking that scherzo." And again in October, 1877, after a rendering of the allegretto of the Eighth Symphony, on our observing that it was like the giant at play, he said: "It is curious you should say that. I used to call him the gigantic nightingale. He is like a great bird singing. My sister remembers my using the expression long ago." And although he betrayed a little doubt as to Beethoven's tone being essentially religious, he was unwilling to hear anything said against him.27 The late Father Caswall, once distracted, while singing High Mass, with Beethoven's Mass in C, half-humorously vented his wrath at recreation against the Credo. Said he: "I think that's a condemnable Credo." "Oh, I rather liked it," was Father Newman's rejoinder. "More dramatic than reverent," had been the remark made to the latter in September, 1882, by the then Warden of Keble, after the conclusion of the Mount of Olives at the Birmingham Festival. The Cardinal said little or nothing at the time, but his affection for Beethoven came out subsequently. "When you come to Beethoven," said he, "I don't say anything about good taste, but he has such wonderful bits here and there." And in the department of cadenza and variation he deemed him without an equal.

Distrusting their talent lest it should run away with them, and they neglect the rubrics, Dr. Newman was sensitive over musicians of the day setting to work upon liturgy. Of sorts of liberty taken we have modern examples in Gounod's Mors et Vita Oratorio, where O felix culpa, &c., is planted in the middle of the Dies Iræ, and in his Messe Solennelle, where Domine, non sum dignus, &c., figures as a solo in the Agnus Dei (a less objectionable case, the treatment being fortunately devotional). Berlioz, too, in his Requiem, introduces before the Tuba mirum the words, Et iterum venturus est judicare vivos et mortuos. And in a passage where he would appear to be depicting Beethoven's power, after alluding to "the marvellous development which musical science has undergone in the last century," Dr. Newman continues: "Doubtless, here, too, the highest genius may be made subservient to religion," but "it is certain that religion must be alive and on the defensive, for if its servant sleep a potent enchantment will steal over it… If, then, a great master in this mysterious science … throws himself on his own gifts, trusts its inspirations and absorbs himself in those thoughts which, though they come to him in the way of nature belong to things above nature, it is obvious he will neglect everything else. Rising in his strength he will break through the trammels of words; he will scatter human voices, even the sweetest, to the winds; he will be borne upon nothing else than the fullest flood of sounds which art has enabled him to draw from mechanical contrivances; he will go forth as a giant, as far as ever his instruments can reach, starting from their secret depths fresh and fresh elements of beauty and grandeur as he goes, and pouring them together into still more marvellous and rapturous combinations; and well indeed, and lawfully, while he keeps to that line which is his own; but should he happen to be attracted, as he well may, by the sublimity, so congenial to him, of the Catholic doctrine and ritual, should he engage in sacred themes, should he resolve by means of his art to do honour to the Mass, or the Divine Office – (he cannot have a more pious, a better purpose, and religion will gracefully accept what he gracefully offers; but) is it not certain from the circumstances of the case, that he will be carried on rather to use religion than to minister to it, unless religion is strong on its own ground, and reminds him that if he would do honour to the highest of subjects, he must make himself its scholar, must humbly follow the thoughts given him, and must aim at the glory, not of his own gift, but of the Great Giver."28 How entirely is this spirit in accord with the Congregation of Rites; with the sentiments, indeed, of every lover of true church-music. He was thus very slow to take (if he ever really took) to new-comers on the field of sacred music. And holding, as he did, that no good work could be adequately adjudged without a thorough knowledge of it, he was disinclined to be introduced to fresh musical names at all, on the bare chance, that might never occur, of what had been a casual acquaintanceship ripening into intimate friendship. He had in early days found time and opportunity to comprehend certain masters, Corelli, Handel, Haydn, Romberg, Mozart, and Beethoven, but Schubert, Schumann, Wagner ("I cannot recollect all the fellows' names"29); who were these strangers, intruding somewhat late in the evening upon a dear old family party? Thus, writing of Mendelssohn's chief sacred work in March, 1871, which he had been reluctantly induced to go and listen to, and which he never got to hear again: "I was very much disappointed the one time that I heard the Elijah, not to meet with a beautiful melody from beginning to end. What can be more beautiful than Handel's, Mozart's, and Beethoven's melodies?" Now, of course, there is plenty of melody in the Elijah, though it may be conceded that Mendelssohn's melodious gift is less copious than that of Mozart, but the fact was, Cardinal Newman never got to know the Elijah, doubtless deemed it long, and felt content to feed upon the musical pabulum that he had so long found satisfying. And underlying this particular form of the gravamen against Mendelssohn, we should say that there existed a species of irritation with some of the modern oratorio. Was it not very possibly in his eyes a kind of Protestant rejuvenescence of an eighteenth century Biblical institution, all quietly founded, without acknowledgment, on St. Philip's own Catholic creation,30 and nowadays bidding fair to do duty at convenient intervals for proper religious worship with large numbers alike of church-goers and of people who never go to church? Better oratorio here, it may be said, than nothing at all, and that may be conceded; but we have an impression that the Cardinal looked jealously at the use of Scripture for general musical performances in concert-halls. He was a little put out, too, by librettists interlarding Holy Writ with their own "copy." Scripture was good, and Gounod, for example, might be good, but both together in literary collaboration were – well, not so good. While allowing that there was something of interest in the history of the latter's Redemption Oratorio, insomuch as when first conceived long ago its composer had entertained thoughts of embracing the religious state, he could with difficulty be induced to go and hear it, at its first production in Birmingham on the last day of August, 1882. Nor could he be got to say anything about it by way of a compliment. "As the work of a man of genius one does not like to criticize it," was what he let fall, and he was rather troubled by its "March to Calvary," which he likened in private to "the bombardment of Alexandria." At the 1876 Festival, Wagner's Supper of the Apostles was to his ear "sound and fury," and Brahms' Triumphlied fared no better in 1882. We happened to be with him at the Friday morning performance, September 1. A certain party came in late, and talked away behind us all through the G minor Symphony of Mozart, whose "exuberant inventiveness"31 excited our wonder. When the din of the Triumphlied came on, her voice was quite drowned, and the Cardinal whispered: "Brahms is a match for her."32

He got to know fairly well Mendelssohn's canzonet quartet and Schumann's pianoforte quintet Op. 44; but we recall no musical works heard by him for the first time in very late life making any particular impression on the Father, with one notable exception; Cherubini's First Requiem in C minor, done at the Festival, August 29, 1879. We were to have gone with him, but a Father who accompanied him wrote to us instead next day: "The Father was quite overcome by it, and that is the fact. He kept on saying, 'beautiful, wonderful,' and such-like exclamations. At the Mors stupebit he was shaking his head in his solemn way, and muttering, 'beautiful, beautiful.' He admired the fugue Quam olim very much, but the part which struck him most by far, and which he spoke of afterwards as we drove home, is the ending of the Agnus Dei– he could not get over it – the lovely note C which keeps recurring as the 'requiem' approaches eternity." When it was done twice in its true home, the church, later, on the 2nd and 13th November, 1886, he said, "It is magnificent music." "That is a beautiful Mass" (adding, with a touch of pathos), "but when you get as old as I am, it comes rather too home." A diary noting the service on All Souls' day, says: "His Eminence was at the throne in his purple robes. I was in the gallery at the end of the nave, and the dim-lit sanctuary (with the Cardinal's zucchetto the only bit of bright colour in the gloom), the sublime music, all had a most impressive effect." On November 13, 1885, he heard in the church and for the first time, the Florentine's Second Requiem in D minor, for male voices; and thought it beautiful and devotional, and in no way lacking in effect through the absence of soprani and contralti, which he had not missed. He was most struck with the piano passage in canon beginning with the words Solvet sæclum. On September 1, 1882, he heard at the Festival the same composer's Mass in C, and characterized as "beautiful" the fugue at the end of the Gloria, the part in the Offertory where the chorus enters in support of the soprano solo, and the conclusion of the Dona. It came as a relief to him after Brahms, who was not understood at a first hearing, and this inability in general to grasp good music at once is exhibited in his Italian correspondence. "This last week," he writes from Rome in April, 1833, "we have heard the celebrated Miserere, or rather the two Misereres, for there are two compositions by Allegri and Boii [it should be Bai, and a third is now added, composed by Father Baini] so like each other that the performers themselves can scarcely tell the difference between them. One is performed on the Thursday and the other on Good Friday. The voices are certainly very surprising; there is no instrument to support them, but they have the art of continuing their notes so long and equally that the effect is as if an organ were playing, or rather an organ of violin strings, for the notes are clearer, more subtle and piercing, and more impassioned (so to say) than those of an organ. The music itself is doubtless very fine, as everyone says, but I found myself unable to understand all parts of it. Here and there it was extremely fine, but it is impossible to understand such a composition on once or twice hearing. In its style it is more like Corelli's music than any other I know (though very different too). And this is not wonderful, as Corelli was Master of the Pope's Chapel, and so educated in the school of Allegri, Palestrina, and the rest. These are the only services we have been to during the week."33