gold and a
London reputation. It is strange to observe how universally the
musical tribute is paid. A tenor turns up from some Russian provincial
town; a basso works himself to London from a theatre in
Constantinople; rumours arrive of a peerless prima donna, with a voice
which is to outstrip everything ever heard of, who has been dug out,
by some travelling amateur, from her native obscurity in a Spanish or
Norwegian village; an extraordinary soprano has been discovered in
Alexandria; a wondrous contralto has been fished up from Riga. The
instrumental phenomena are not one whit scarcer. Classical pianists
pour in from Germany principally; popular pianists, who delight in
fantasias rather than concertos, and who play such tricks with the
keyboards, that the performances have much more of the character of
legerdemain than of art, arrive by scores; violinists, violoncellists,
professors of the trombone, of the ophicleide, of the bassoon, of
every unwieldy and unmanageable instrument in fact, are particularly
abundant; and perhaps the most popular of all are the particularly
clever gentlemen who, by dint of a dozen years' or so unremitting
practice, have succeeded in making one instrument sound like another.
Quackery as this is, it is enormously run after by no small proportion
of the public. Not that they do not appreciate the art of the device
at its proper level, but that the trick is curious and novel; and most
people, even the dignified classicists, have a gentle toleration for a
little--just a little--_outre_ amusement of the kind in question.
Paganini was the founder of this school. He might have played on four
strings till he was tired, without causing any particular sensation;
but the single string made his fortune. Sivori is one of the cleverest
artists of the present day, who resorts to tricks with his violin, and
wonderfully does he perform them. At a concert last season, he
imitated the singing of a bird with the strangest and happiest skill.
The 'severe' shook their heads, but smiled as they did so, and owned
that the trick was clever enough, and withal agreeable to hear. But it
is gentlemen who make one instrument produce the sounds of another,
or, at all events, who extract from it some previously unknown effect,
who carry all before them. The present phenomenon in this way is
Bottesini, who, grasping a huge double-bass, the most unwieldy of
instruments, tortures out of it the notes of a violin, of an oboe,