Association, which has so largo a share in the operations of the human mind, often contributes much to the effect of music. Indeed some airs, possessing no intrinsic merit, owe their influence solely to this principle. and among these the famous Rans des Earhes,which, in times happily gone by acted with such irresistible force on the expatriated Swum soldier .It . t was many yearn after the battle of Culloden, and not till all fears of the Pretender had subsided, that the Scotch bagpipeni ventured to play any of the Jacobite tunes, which, when revived, were heard with delight, though hardly one of them would have continued to be listened to but as connected with the history of the country.
After all, however, that has been written and said, from the days of Aristotle down to Zhe present period, of music as an imitative art, it most be conceded that modulated sounds please, by some mysterious means, many to whom they present no imitation of anything, material or immaterial, and who associate with them no other idea than that of melody or of harmony.
Thus far our attention has been directed to instrumental musio, or that which is dependent on no auxiliary for effect, on no words to explain its meaning, on no gesticulation or scenery to illustrate it. We have now to consider music as produced by the humau voice in alliance with language, whether poetical or prose, and with or without instru mental accompaniment 'Vocal music is entirely devoid of that ambiguity which some think a merit in instrumental music, and some consider a defect. Words fix the intention of musical sounds, leaving nothing for the hearer to con jecture; for though the more or less of truth in the expression will depend on the skill of the composer, yet he must be utterly destitute of reason to give to revenge the tones of love, or to joy those of despair. It is true that he does not always read with discriminating judgment the words selected by him, or committed to his charge— that in emphasis he is sometimes erroneous, and in accentuation fre quently faulty ; and for these failings iu the artist, the art itself has been unjustly condemned by writers whose repute gives weight to their censure. But the heaviest charge brought against composers of vocal music, and that which has exposed them to the keenest ridicule, is their eagerness to express the literal meaning of a particular word rather than the sentiment, the sense of the entire passage. This exceedingly vulgar kind of imitation, which has not inaptly been called musical punning, may be traced to a gross misapprehension of the rule, that " the sound should seem an echo to the sense," and is the vice not only of composers of an inferior order, but occasionally of some of the highest class. The great Handel himself is not wholly exempt from its influence. In the fine chorus, "Wretched levers, quit your dream" (in Acis and Galatea'), when the line " Hark ! how the thund'ring giant roars" occurs, he makes the bases roar in a long division, till they nearly gasp for breath. But this is a verb that proves very seductive to composers ; in two of our best glees it sets the voice a-roaring through several bars the one, because the poet (Ossian) asks, " Who comes so dark from ocean's roar 7" In the other, because the poet (Gray) says, " The rocks and nodding groves re-bellow to the roar 1" Handel's favourite air, " What passion cannot music raise and quell P " from Dryden's Ode to St. Cecilia's Day,' sends the voice tumbling down n full octave at the words "faces felL" In the same work the singer is condemned to ascend to a note which few can reach, and none can sustain without lungs of very unusual capacity, merely because the author says, "The trumpet shall be raised on high." Our greatest English composer, Purcell, could not resist the temptation offered by the words " They that go down to the sea in ships," from the 107th Psalm, in setting which be commits the bass voice to so very low a deep, that there was only one man in his day who could sing the anthem. "Some eminent musicians," Sir William Jones observes, " have been absurd enough to think of imitating laughter and other noises ; but if they had succeeded, they would not have made amends for their want of taste in attempting it; for such ridiculous imitations must necessarily destroy the spirit and dignity of the finest poems."
This discerning and elegant writer most likely points at the song and chorus," Haste thee, nymph," in Handel's setting of Milton's ‘L'Allegro,' in which is the line, " And Laughter holding both his sides." The singers in this, it must be allowed, never baulk the intention of the composer, but affect to laugh almost convulsively. Many other instances of similar mistaken efforts at direct imitation might be adduced from the works of Handel, and that great composer's supremacy in the art renders him especially liable to animadversion when misled by an erroneous conception of the words ; but he has been charged with many supposed imitations which ho never contemplated, such as the the &c. We have however said as much as is necessary on this part of our subject In the accompaniment to vocal music, much greater freedom of imitation is allowable thau in the voice part : kept within those bounds which good sense and cultivated taste prescribe, it affords very efficient aid, by giving greater force to the poetry, and contributing to the completion of the general design. It also adds harmony to song, a most important, if not an indispensable support. Nearly all that imitation can do, should—es the elder Dr. Gregory, of Edinburgh, in some admirable remarks on music, has observed—be assigned to the accompanimmits, as these, on account of the greater compass and variety of instruments, are better adapted to such a purpose than the voice, which ought to be left at liberty to express the sentiments. If Handel has sometimes failed in imitations by the voice, he has often suoceeded in those by the accompanying instruments. We need but refer in proof to his beautiful song in '11 Penseroso'— " Oft on is plot of rifting ground I bear tho far.off curfew sound,"— where he has imitated the bell by the deep-toned strings of the bases, confining the voice to those notes of pleasing, contemplative melan choly, the idea of which the words so completely excite. The same skill and discrimination are shown in the song of Galatea, " Hneh I ye pretty warbling quire," in which the flute imitates the birds, leaving the singer to express in simple sounds that languishing tenderness indicated by the poetry. Handel was the first who endeavoured to excite the idea of light through the agency of musical sounds : his chorus in the oratorio of Samson,' " 0 first created beam ! " was written with this design ; and moreover suggested to Haydn that grand com position on the same subject which is admitted to be one of his noblest triumphs. But the still bolder attempt of the former great master was to convey to the mind, through the same medium, a notion of darkness. With this view be composed the sublime chorus in Israel in Egypt,' beginning, " He sent a thick darkness over all the land," the accompaniments to which, assisted by the words, produce on persons susceptible of musical impressions all that solemnity of effect, not unmixed with awe, intended by the author. The same may be said of the remaining plagues, in which the instrumental is the imitative and suggestive portion of the music, while the vocal portion is frequently but a simple plaintive air. The accompaniment to the words "There came all manner of flies," is wonderfully expressive of myriads of flitting, buzzing, fluttering, humming insects in motion ; and the description of the entrance of the frogs even into the king's chamber, is rendered vivid by the measured leap performed by hundreds of instruments, and that without the slightest approach to the ludicrous. That grand chorus which announces the congealing of the waters, is mainly indebted for the extraordinary sensations which it produces to the marvellous accompaniments, which seem to betoken a solidifying stiffening process, gradually extending over the whole orchestra and over the listeners. Some of the grandeur of these effects is due to the greatly increased orchestras of the present day, which go far to realise the compoeer's original idea. A full orchestra in former days contained perhaps 100 performers, whereas at the present time 1500 skilled musicians may take part in these choruses.