more beautiful? No; our woods surpass those of France in beauty. What then gives this French cabinet furniture the preference in an American market? Simply the elegance of form. The designs are both novel and beautiful, far surpassing those introduced by our cabinetmakers. There is a peculiar fitness in French designs; each utensil has a form especially adapted for its use, which adds to its value while it imparts beauty of figure. Let those who doubt the necessity of using appropriate forms of ordinary utensils take their soup from a washbowl, or their wine from a saucer, or their tea from a wineglass, and they will soon realize the necessity for adaptation of shape. These adaptations and beauty of figure should pervade the furniture of the lowliest cottage. Taste gives happiness without cost, and the eye of the labourer will soon find pleasure in fine designs, if the furniture of his table be such as to embrace the arts of design; and this improved taste will be manifested in all his creations. Indeed, all men are rendered happier and better by the power to appreciate fine forms; the mind becomes refined, and with it a gentleness of feeling, and consequent kindness of heart, renders the community happier and less restive in disposition. But a short time since, and England was without a school for the arts of design; and until the time of Wedgwood the only ornament to be found on English crockery was such as they copied from the Chinese ;-instead of inventing superior patterns, they copied those of a nation they call barbarian. Wedgwood established a school for the arts of design in his own factory, and employed the best talent in its organization. He not only improved the quality and beauty of this great branch of manufacture, but really gave birth to a school of art, and many of the best artists of England at this time received their first instructions in the factory of Wedgwood. In our own country we are fast profiting by an improved school of art. But a few years since, and all our manufactures were of the most homely sorts. As a familiar instance, we would name the iron railings in common use. Within our recollection there was not one ornamental iron railing in the United States. A German blacksmith, by the name of Paulus Hedl, was the first to improve this class of manufacture. He had learned the arts of design at home, and could imitate the beauties of his trestle-board on the anvil. He made the iron railing around the grounds of the President's house at Washington, and the demand for his wares soon rendered him rich; and now, instead of the monotonous parallelisms of straight iron rods, pierced through a single horizontal bar and pointed at the top, we have beautiful forms, which give so much elegance to iron railings as to cause us to forget their inhospitable intention. The old square-sided ten-plate stove has given place to a variety of forms so beautiful as to be desirable for furniture, besides increasing the amount of surface, so as to radiate an increased quantity of heat. The High School of Philadelphia, and the Free Academy of New York, have established classes in the arts of design; and a few years will find our workshops filled with designers of no mean capacity. Much may yet be done to improve our comforts and taste by the application of the arts of design to the ordinary wants of life; for, despite the high praises which have been awarded to modern architecture, it has as yet scarcely felt the influence of true art. Why should our doors be in the form of a gallows, wanting nothing to complete the picture but a rope suspended in the centre? Why not get rid of the right-angled corners of our rooms, and thus be freed from the caged sensation which all must feel in a square room without ornament or relief from the monotony of right angle and parallel lines? Why not support our mantel-shelves by figures of the Caryatides, Hercules, or some other figure indicative of strength? We know that the leg and foot of the lion, when leaping down a precipice, assumes the figure which enables the least amount of matter to exert the greatest amount of resistance, and why not so construct the abutments of buildings, the legs of tables, and even the corner supports of steam-engine frames, so as to imitate Nature in her handiwork? Our Academies of Art and Art Unions have done much to improve the public taste, and their influence cannot but prove most beneficial. Engravings are now widely circulated, of the best kinds, and, instead of the grotesque libels on art which formerly were to be found in every house, we now see works of superior merit. Let not the stoic think that the fine arts have no useful effect, for, in addition to their direct usefulness, as already noted, they give rational and harmless employment to our leisure hours, and many hundreds of our youth are spending hours of leisure in examining fine works of art, who, a few years since, would have been compelled to look for amusement in the tavern, or some worse place. Historical events are fastened on the memory when taught through the medium of pictures; the beauties of nature, before unobserved, are rendered attractive. Our young men associate more with females, and thus the asperities of their nature become softened. Visit the exhi bitions of the various Academies and Art Unions throughout the country, and there you will find the youth of both sexes innocently enjoying each other's society, and improving their minds and tastes. Let those who would argue that the fine arts are unnecessary as a branch of education but carry their argument to the full extent, and they will cut a hole through the centre of a | large blanket or skin, to admit the head through to the light, and wear no other clothing; for the mere purpose of keeping out the cold and giving free use to the limbs, this style of dress would accomplish the object, and is fully sufficient for the use of those who cannot appreciate the beauty of the human form, nor the necessity of rising beyond the brute creation. MUSICAL DEPARTMENT. BY JOHN S. DWIGHT. SCHUBERT'S SONGS. SCHUBERT always chose fine words, some genuine little poem, when he composed a song. He never set mere rhymed sentimentalities to music. He went to the real lyric sources; each song, both in the music and the words, seems just as much a creation, just as indi WE present our musical readers this time with one of the wild, imaginative melodies of FRANZ SCHUBERT. For depth, for spirituality, for power to set the deepest chords within us vibrating, there are no songs like his. A Ger-vidual and vital, and distinct from every other man of the Germans, and a modern (whose brief life, like a strange breath of melody, was nearly all spent in the first quarter of this present century, and first caught attention only in the dying notes of its swan-song), an artist, trained in the profound German science, he has produced two or three hundred songs, each as original, as characteristic, and as likely to survive, as any of the old people's songs which come down from generation to generation in all countries. He seems to have been inspired to sing the deep experiences of the human heart, and to bequeath that music to mankind. The specimen here given of his songs, is not the best or the most characteristic that we might select. Indeed, it is one of his lightest efforts. We choose it because it is short, and not so difficult as most of Schubert's songs are, especially in the accompaniment. But it shows as well as any other, how perfectly his genius could marry the fit music always to the sense of the poem. You scarcely need Walter Scott's words to make you feel that this music expresses all the soul-sick restlessness of an active and ambitious temperament allowed no scope. Who has not needed in his own way sometimes the music of the "imprisoned huntsman" to unburthen his own sad restlessness withal? And in the attempt to utter it, how naturally the music changes to the major of the key, and brings with it the revival of hope in the place of dull complaint! song or poem, as each little wild-flower in the woods. His flowers of song are worthy to be entwined in the same wreath with Beethoven's "Adelaide," that wonderful tone-translation of the whole book of Love; for each is a sentiment, a poetic or spiritual experience of life, reproduced as a living, organic musical whole. It is with the deeper moods that Schubert is most familiar; and it was through several of his deepest and greatest songs that he was first known in this country. Without words, as translated and expanded into broadly harmonized piano-forte pieces by the sympathetic genius of LISZT, his "Ave Maria," his "ErlKing," his "Elogy of Tears," his "Wanderer," &c., were introduced to American audiences by the two Rackemanns, and others of the better sort of new school pianists. Then some of the songs themselves were published with English words, in the "Gems of German Song," by G. P. Reed, Boston;-a serial publication, still continued. These are all remarkable for the richness and beauty of their accompaniments, which abound in highly suggestive and wildly modulating harmony. Perhaps the greatest of them all is one more lately published, and less widely known, called the "Young Nun," in which to a wild, tremulous accompaniment, a maiden likens the stormy night to the storm of worldly passion that once raged in her own breast, and as the music brightens, she defies the winds and lightnings; for in her breast now all is peace," and she "waits for the holy bridegroom," whose coming she contemplates with a serene ecstasy, while the song dies away with whispered allelujahs. Equally interesting and characteristic are the strains suggested to him by some of those exquisite little poetical conceits of Henri Heine. Such is the "Fisher Maiden," where the poet asks her to turn her little skiff to the shore, and sit with him, hand in hand, gazing into the water; for, "My soul is like the ocean, And has its ebb and flow," &c. Schubert's music could translate that thought at once; it was the very vein for him. Such, too, is that still more mystical and delicate one, commencing: "Thou art the rest, The soothing spell, The longing thou, Which thou dost quell." But there is no limit to the variety of his subjects; and he has sung them all truly, but as a deep soul like Schubert would be supposed to sing them. In the domestic and the naïve he is no less happy. Witness his "Lullaby," his "Postilion," his "Song of the old Fiddler," &c., &c. Could we, by this brief mention, induce any of our young readers who cultivate the gift of song, to forsake the superficial, sentimental, manufactured English songs, or opera airs, and seek acquaintance with some of these real wild flowers of German melody, we should feel the end of this article answered. The Italian Opera is well in its way; and there are good English songs. But the world is flooded with compositions without genius. Most of the songs now-a-days are manufactured; in Germany, songs grow. Italian Opera airs are full of melody and sweetness, but one is too much like another; it is an endless re-galvanizing into life of a vein of sentiment and melody long since exhausted. But every Gorman composer of any note produces songs which could have been produced by no other. Each has its distinct style and meaning, and seems like a fresh inspiration, as if nature gave it a form to preserve, as she has given to each plant and crystal. THE MUSICAL SEASON. A MONTHLY MAGAZINE must go to press so early that no record of events, musical or other, can be brought down very close to the date of publication. Yet so far as the winter has advanced, while we write, the musical doings in our Eastern cities have been unusually significant. We can but hint of them under the following heads: 1. JENNY LIND AND SHOOTING STARS.-The musical firmament has not seemed so free from those phenomena since the (not very distant) day when we Americans were not a musical people at all. Too much of the popular musical excitement since that day has been the work of solo-playing or solo-singing adventurers from the old world, who came out here to amaze our ignorant senses with extravagant feats of execution on piano-forte or violin, and with all sorts of flashy and bewildering musical pyrotechnics, in which the player made himself the principal figure, thrusting the composer into the background. There is no telling how many "pianists or violinists to the Emperor of all the Russias," how many duplicate Paganinis and Thalbergs have gleamed through our horizon and drawn out the multitudes to clap their hands in wonder. It has not been unmingled with much that was good and genuine; but, as a general rule, and more and more in these last years, it has been only brilliant concerts and new "stars" that could enlist large audiences. JENNY LIND This winter one star-one of the fixed stars-seems to have absorbed all this wondering interest, and so filled our musical sphere with light that the whole swarm of meteors have turned away on other courses. has not only satisfied the popular craving for excitement for the wonderful in music, but she has been a revelation of the true and everlasting Spirit of Art to our people. She has popularized the artistic ideal. Her singing has been of the same spirit, part and parcel of the same living essence, with the musical creations of the great German composers and tone-prophets. She has been a true interpreter, her song a true embodiment, of the spirit of Handel, Haydn, Weber, Mendelssohn, as well as of the floating popular melody of the North, and of the warm operatic airs of Italy, which as a woman of genius she can illustrate in their peculiar characteristics, though the spiritual depth of her own Northern nature finds not its chief interest in them. She therefore has absorbed, to the glory of real and high Art, that popular interest in music which before turned mainly on the personality of a singer and the secondary excitements of concerts of display. She has elevated our standard of taste, while the hosts of shooting stars and concert-givers have not dared to court popular favour in the wake of her extraordinary success. This kind of concert-giving, 3. CLASSIC MUSIC.-The taste inspired, and the room left for it (as we have said above) by JENNY LIND, have been well improved this therefore, contributes little to this season's, ries of music must be placed on some such record. The WALLACES, brother, wife, and democratic and widely associative footing, to sister, have given some charming and grace- secure a permanent support. ful entertainments, in the modern, variation school. The DOCTORS have tried the Leopold de Meyer tricks over again in Tripler Hall. Madame ANNA BISHOP, with BоCHSA's general-winter, especially in Boston. Large and steady ship, has kept up a great run of brilliant, perhaps we should say "monster," concerts in New York. But she has mingled large doses of classical with claptrap in her appeals; and what success she has had may be set down very much to some popular loyalty, however unappreciative, towards the great classic names in music. 2. OPERA. This may be all summed up in MAX MARETZEK and his PARODI. She is the "bright, particular star" of those whose musical idea is bound up in the dramatic, and sometimes melo-dramatic, passion of the modern Bellinis and Donizettis, especially in tragic "Norma." She certainly has great lyric qualities of voice and action and conception. She sweeps across the stage, a very tragic muse. Her style is uniformly intense; she carries points with immense skill and energy, and takes her audience by storm. She is evidently, in her art, a product almost exclusively of the modern Italian operatic school. As a singer, all her culture and her striving seem to have been subordinated to this one end of dramatic effect. But we mean no criticism upon her; and it is not a star, even of the first magnitude, that makes an opera. A successful opera is one which interests the public as a musical whole. The composition is one half. The chorus, orchestra, subordinates and stock-principals, quite as much as the great prima donna or tenore, constitute the other half. MARETZEK has a good orchestra, and fair chorus. He has TRUFFI and BENEDETTI, always favourites, and, equally so in his way, NOVELLI. There is more merit in his company, and he has brought a richer repertoire (including "Don Giovanni," "Lucrezia Borgia," ""La Sonnambula," "Norma," "Der Freyschutz," ," "Gemma di Vergy," "Ernani," and many more favourite operas), than the public patronage of opera has warranted. He has not done that great business which would enable him to command the first-rate, or even the second-rate, talent of the world, and place New York on a level with the European cities as a seat of opera. And the fault seems to be that nearly all operatic experiments in this country have appealed to fashionable rather than to popular support. Music in America is to be supported by the people. The other fine arts derive their patronage from the small contributions of the millions in the shape of "Art Unions." And the most expensive luxu audiences are there found for the deep and quiet satisfactions of music. Two thousand subscribers attend once a fortnight the concerts of the "Musical Fund Society," there to hear the orchestral symphonies of Beethoven, Mozart, Mendelssohn, and Robert Schumann. At one of those concerts, fugues of BACH upon the organ were encored with great enthusiasm ; and in the same programme figured MOZART'S Symphony in G minor, BEETHOVEN's overture to "Leonora," and a Septuor by HUMMEL. The orchestra numbers about sixty musicians, who are bound together in close fraternity by pride in their art and by a benefit fund. Their efforts in this high and true direction are warmly seconded by the best portion of society, and the effect is to inspire and raise up socially the musical profession in Boston. There, too, are series of "Chamber Concerts" given through the winter by the "MENDELSSOHN QUINTETTE CLUB," and by the 66 BEETHOVEN QUARTETTE CLUB," who play the classic quartettes, trios, &c., of Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, and Onslow, to audiences of several hundred. Their music even is in much demand in the larger places immediately around, or accessible by railroad from their Boston centre. The great sacred music, also, is well cultivated. The old HANDEL AND HAYDN SOCIETY have been performing the oratorios of the "Creation" and of "Elijah" with more spirit and to better audiences than in past years; while the MUSICAL EDUCATION SOCIETY, a younger organization, with a chorus of two hundred and fifty voices, have kept open the deep, rich fountain of HANDEL's glorious music, commencing with his immortal "Messiah" as a part of the Christmas festival. In New York, oratorios have been several times produced by the HARMONIC SOCIETY, by MADAME BISHOP, and once the "Messiah," at a LIND concert. The PHILHARMONIC SOCIETY, perhaps the finest orchestra in the country, have played symphonies to audiences of about five hundred. In a city where such genuine artists as the pianists TIMM, SCHARFENBERG, DRESEL, RACKEMANN, &c., reside, there must be much of the deepest musical communion in private circles; but chamber concerts, as in Boston, do not there exist. Philadelphia has been mainly occupied with the opera, and with miscellaneous concerts, and we are not aware that, up to our time of writing, it has anything to offer under this classical head. |