Charles Dickens and Music | Page 9

is to some extent
anticipated in Major Tpschoffki of the Imperial Bulgraderian Brigade
(G.S.). His real name, if he ever had one, is said to have been Stakes.
Dickens has little to say about the music of his time, but in the
reprinted paper called Old Lamps for New Ones (written in 1850),
which is a strong condemnation of pre-Raphaelism in art, he attacks a
similar movement in regard to music, and makes much fun of the
Brotherhood. He detects their influence in
things musical, and writes
thus:
In Music a retrogressive step in which there is much
hope, has been
taken. The P.A.B., or pre-Agincourt
Brotherhood, has arisen, nobly
devoted to consign to
oblivion Mozart, Beethoven, Handel, and every
other
such ridiculous reputation, and to fix its Millennium
(as its
name implies) before the date of the first
regular musical composition
known to have been achieved in England. As this institution has not yet
commenced
active operations, it remains to be seen whether the

Royal Academy of Music will be a worthy sister of the
Royal
Academy of Art, and admit this enterprising body
to its orchestra. We
have it, on the best authority,
that its compositions will be quite as
rough and
discordant as the real old original.
Fourteen years later he makes use of a well-known phrase in writing to
his friend Wills (October 8, 1864) in reference to the proofs of an

article.
I have gone through the number carefully, and have
been down upon
Chorley's paper in particular, which
was a 'little bit' too personal. It is
all right now
and good, and them's my sentiments too of the Music

of the Future.[8]
Although there was little movement in this direction when
Dickens
wrote this, the paragraph makes interesting reading nowadays in view
of some musical tendencies in certain quarters.
[1] In his speech at Birmingham on 'Literature and Art'
(1853) he makes special reference to the 'great music
of
Mendelssohn.'
[2] Moore's Irish Melodies.
[3] Moore.
[4] 'Seven Dials! the region of song and poetry--first
effusions and last dying speeches: hallowed by the
names of Catnac
and of Pitts, names that will entwine
themselves with costermongers
and barrel-organs, when
penny magazines shall have superseded
penny yards of
song, and capital punishment be unknown!' (S.B.S. 5.)
[5] The 'Hutchinson family' was a musical troupe composed of
three sons and two daughters selected from the 'Tribe of Jesse,' a name
given to the sixteen children of Jesse
and Mary Hutchinson, of
Milford, N.H. They toured in
England in 1845 and 1846, and were
received with great enthusiasm. Their songs were on subjects
connected
with Temperance and Anti-Slavery. On one occasion

Judson, one of the number, was singing the 'Humbugged
Husband,'
which he used to accompany with the fiddle,
and he had just sung the

line 'I'm sadly taken in,'
when the stage where he was standing gave
way and he
nearly disappeared from view. The audience at first

took this as part of the performance.
[6] Miss Rainforth was the soloist at the first production
of Mendelssohn's 'Hear my Prayer.' (See The Choir,
March, 1911.)
[7] John Curwen published his Grammar of Vocal Music
in 1842.
[8] Quoted in Mr. R.C. Lehmann's Dickens as an Editor
(1912).
CHAPTER II
INSTRUMENTAL COMBINATIONS
VIOLIN, VIOLONCELLO, HARP, PIANO
Dickens' orchestras are limited, both in resources and in the number of
performers; in fact, it would be more correct to
call them
combinations of instruments. Some of them are of
a kind not found in
modern works on instrumentation, as, for instance, at the party at Trotty
Veck's (Ch.) when a 'band of music' burst into the good man's room,
consisting of a drum, marrow-bones and cleavers, and bells, 'not the
bells but a portable collection on a frame.' We gather from Leech's
picture that other instrumentalists were also present. Sad to relate, the
drummer was not quite sober, an unfortunate state of things, certainly,
but not always confined to the drumming fraternity, since in the
account of the Party at Minerva House (S.B.T.) we read that amongst
the numerous arrivals were 'the pianoforte player and the violins: the
harp in a state of intoxication.'
We have an occasional mention of a theatre orchestra, as,
for instance,
when the Phenomenon was performing at Portsmouth (N.N.):

'Ring in the orchestra, Grudden.'
That useful lady did as she was requested, and shortly
afterwards the
tuning of three fiddles was heard,
which process, having been
protracted as long as it
was supposed that the patience of the
orchestra could
possibly bear it, was put a stop to by another jerk of

the bell, which, being the signal to begin in earnest,
set the
orchestra playing a variety of popular airs
with involuntary
variations.
On one occasion Dickens visited Vauxhall Gardens by day, where 'a
small party of dismal men in cocked hats were "executing" the overture
to Tancredi,' but he does not, unfortunately, give us any details about
the number or kind of instruments employed. This would be in 1836,
when the experiment of day entertainments was given a