Punch: Punch (32.1857)

June 27, 1857.]

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

257

WHAT I HEARD, SAW, AND THOUGHT, AT THE
SYDENHAM FESTIVAL.

{By One who has no Wish to be Mistaken for a Critic.)

" I Favour you with this communication, Mr. Punch, because I am
quite sure no other Editor will print it. Prom the Times down even
to the Penny Morning Startler, every newspaper, I know, has a repu-
tation to maintain for giving insertion only to the most profound of
criticism; and I should as soon expect you to report verbatim one of
Mr. Spooner's speeches as I should anticipate that any one of your
contemporaries would give a corner to a correspondent so uncritical as I
am. For at the outset, Mr. Punch, I must candidly confess to you that I
know as little of orchestral slang as I do of High Dutch (Billingsgate),
or the chaff of a fast Cherokee or Feejee Islander. In my present
ignorance I own I could no more explain what is meant by ' harmonic
progressions ' than attempt to give the plot of an Astleian hippodrama;
*ndl should as soon expect to follow 3iR Charles Napier's reasoning
as to comprehend such a phrase as ' contrapuntal complications.'

" But among your countless readers, Mr. Punch, there are no doubt
some thousands who feel puzzled like myself when they hear of a
' fugued passage' being exquisitely ' rendered,' or of the ' counter-
subject ' being 'formally constructed,' or of the 'plain song abounding
in florid divisions ;' and it may not be uninteresting to some of them
to meet with a few paragraphs about the Handel Festival which will
have the novelty of not being unintelligible. And, as I heard the
performances from first to last (barring a few bars, which I was robbed
of by some cheats who tried to swindle an encore) I feel inclined to
write a letter upon what I chiefly made a note of.

" In the first place, Mr. Punch, I think the sight at Sydenham was
as wondrous as the hearing. A deaf man or a blind one would have

j equally been charmed there. To see the orchestra alone was worth
£oming up from the very Land's End or John o'Groat's house—

j I expect that for my lifetime I shall keep in my mind's eye that acre

, of white waistcoats, with the rood which was sown with brighter
dresses in the midst of it: and I shall not easily lose sight of that
forest of fiddlesticks, or the turning of the leaves, as thickly fluttering
as those in Vallombrosa, of the chorus-books. Other pens have pre-
ceded me, and I suppose there is hardly a newspaper in the kingdom

i but has described the " sea of heads " on the shoulders of the audience,
and has aptly carried out this marine expression by next bringing in
the horticultural remark that a " parterre of blooming faces " was pre-
sented by the ladies. But without the aid of reference to these des-

! criptive writers, I shall long remember the delighted looks of all the
listeners : among whom I wished King Handel could himself have
been in earshot, and have sat the honoured guest of our pleased Queen
Victoria.

" Accustomed as I am to hypercritical society, it is no new phrase
to me to hear that the English have small reverence for music, and
can by no means be regarded as a musical nation. As a convincing
proof that this is more than ever now the fact, I find two thousand
singers giving Handel their week's services and months of prepara-
tion, and I find also nearly twenty times their number giving their
guineas or their half guineas to hear them. I do not mean to say that
all of these were led there oidy by their ears. I am conscious that on
some people the sound of a fine chorus has not so much effect as the
sound of a fine codfish : and to many of the weaker sex good millinery
is at least as attractive as good music. Two young ladies who sat by
me during Saturday's rehearsal distinguished themselves from the rapt
listeners around them by reading each a volume of a well-thumbed
novel, from which they barely once looked up throughout the whole
performance. My fingers itched, I own, to twitch the volumes from
their laps, and apply them with some emphasis to the peccant ears of
the perusers. But I reflected that tastes differ, and that minds are
variously constituted: and that the power of appreciating the music
of Handel is limited in some people to the handle of the polka-
grinder's organ-box, or hurdy-gurdy.

" Still, with my remembrance of this festival—and such memories
as these are joys to us for ever—I cannot think John Bull can have
no music in his soul. And yet less can I believe that such a festival
as this can pass without leaving its good influence behind it. When I
see, as I have done more than once this week, strong men moved to
tears by a few chords of a chorus, I can neither think them weak for
thus showing their emotion, nor can I believe but that it is good for
them. H ever I forget my selfish self it is when I am listening to
such strains as those of Handel. I never come away from one of his
oratorios without thinking that I feel the better for the hearing. This
week my only shadow of regret has been that my friends, even to the
Ajitipodes, could not every one of them have lent me their ears, that I
might fill them with the sounds I was myself so revelling in.

" As for giving you statistics of the parts I most enjoyed, I might
as well try to enumerate the corks which I heard pop at the refresh-
I merit counters, or to calculate what acres the ham sandwiches would

have covered, or how far the ices if heaped up would have out-topped
Mont Blanc. I don't muck envy the man who having eaten his cake
can sit down and ruminate, and try to pick the plums out, and remem-
ber how they tasted. Nor have I any sympathy with those cold-blooded
critics who can come away unwarmed by the fire of a composer, and
write a cool collected detail of each black spot they noticed. Such
men seem to me to use their ears only in the way of business, and take
the pains to listen to the Hallelujah just to see if all the 'points' are
rightly 'taken up.' What delights them most is to detect a faulty
passage, or discover something wrong in the conductor's 'rendering,'
which they do by stretching to their utmost ears quite long enough
already.

"Mind, I don't mean to deny the value of good criticism, whether in
musical or any other matter; but I detest from my heart all that
usage of slang phrases which savour so of quackery and the ' Omne
ignotum pro magnifico' delusion. Let us hope that two years hence
all this will be exterminated, and that the lovers of sound will be
guided only by sound judges. We are then, it is said, to have another
festival, surpassing even this, as this has far surpassed all which have
gone before it. And, as practice makes perfect, I would recommend
all those who intend to take a part in it

' Nocturna versare maim, versare diurna ;'

or if not day and night, once a month at least, until 1859 to take a turn
at Handel.

"I am, Mr. Punch, one who hopes then to have

" A Voice in the Matter."

DISTURBERS OF PUBLIC HARMONY.

Encore ! Encore!

Oh what a bore

To hear a set of boobies roar

At Concerts, one

Song being done,

The prelude to the next begun !

O ye unwise!

Cease those outcries,

Which from sad want of taste arise,

Devoid of brains,

Orchestral strains

You drown—the deuce requite your pains !

Fiddle-Faddle at the Font,

At the head of the " Fashionable Arrangements for the Week,"
published in the Post, was the

" Christening of the infant daughter of the Countess Bernstorff, at Prussia
House."

We have always supposed that christening was a religious ordi-
nance, and never imagined it to be a fashionable arrangement.